120 WHAT ACTION IS PRACTICABLE 



it is seen how prices are tending and what the State is 

 getting for its outlay. The guarantee is avowedly a 

 temporary measure to secure an immediate increase 

 of employment and to give the farmer confidence to 

 develop his business. But the quid pro quo upon which 

 the State must insist as a sufficient return for the 

 moment is a minimum wage for the labourers in any 

 districts in which an attempt is made to return to the 

 low pre-war rate of payment. Without better wages 

 and better housing, the more enterprising men will 

 certainly leave the country, and if we wait for the 

 ' haggling of the market " to bring wages up to the 

 proper level, we shall lose the men. The better farmers 

 know already that wages must rise or be maintained 

 at war level. Many of them have in the past been paying 

 such wages almost by stealth ; but many will put up a 

 long, if losing, fight against them, because they have 

 always before them the alternative of resorting to 

 grass land without much personal loss. It may be 

 argued that a minimum wage will be construed as a 

 standard wage, and that the labourers will suffer 

 thereby in districts like the North-Eastern Counties of 

 England or Scotland, where wages before the war were 

 above any minimum that is likely to be fixed. But the 

 farmers in those very districts are already convinced 

 of the necessity of good wages and of their value ; they 

 will have to compete with the industries for their men 

 after the war as before. It is only necessary to protect 

 the labourer in certain districts where agriculture had 

 become practically a sweated trade because of the lack 

 of other outlets for men. The farmer in those districts 

 can equally turn higher wages to profit if he is checked 

 in the attempt to utilize any temporary pressure of 



