216 OUR ENGLISH LAND MUDDLE. 



would probably force a certain proportion of 

 land out of cultivation, and would lessen the 

 total of the agricultural labour wage fund. 



Agricultural labourers' earnings in England 

 are certainly deplorably low, though it is not a 

 fact that they are lower, all things considered, 

 than the wages of some other classes of labourers 

 in England. The agricultural labourer is better 

 off, on the whole, than the dock labourer, and 

 some other types of city toilers. But a mul- 

 tiplication of wrongs does not make a right. 

 No industry has a right to claim to survive 

 if it cannot pay a decent living wage to its 

 workers. It is for the community, however, to 

 do all that is in its power to make it possible 

 that an industry should pay a living wage, for 

 it is certain in the natural order of things that 

 an enterprise will not go on long paying wages 

 which are unprofitable. There are a few limited 

 exceptions to that general rule. To some extent 

 the agricultural industry is now an exception, 

 since reasons of sentiment keep estates going, 

 though they are run without profit. But on 

 test it would probably be found that the willing- 

 ness to do that is intimately bound up with the 



