CHAPTER X. 



AGRICULTURAL WAGES. 



At the time I write there is a disposition in some 

 quarters to put forward a legal minimum wage 

 for agricultural labourers as the remedy for all 

 the troubles of the land in England. When 

 this minimum wage is enacted, the tenant 

 farmer is to have the legal right " to pass it on " 

 to the landowner by demanding a revision of 

 rent. Ultimately, therefore, the landowner will 

 pay. 



The proposal seems to me to smack a great 

 deal more of a political desire to get at the land- 

 owner than a patriotic desire to remedy the 

 causes of agricultural depression. If the posi- 

 tion were that the landowner was getting rack- 

 rents, that the tenant farmer was passing on the 

 pinch to the agricultural labourer, and that the 

 labourer passed it on to the land by slovenly 



