V. 



The Future of the Farm Worker. 



So far the changes I have sug-g-ested in the industry 

 have been considered chiefly from their effect on the land- 

 owners, the farmers and the general community. I have 

 said little, except incidentally, of their effect on the workers 

 engaged in the industry. 



I am convinced that there is no hopeful future for the 

 agricultural workers if the industry continues to be run 

 as it is to-day. The farmers are loud in their complaints 

 that the wages of the workers have reached a level which 

 makes it impossible for them to carry on cultivation, and 

 that they will have no option but to lay the land down 

 to grass. No one who has intimate knowledge of farmers 

 will take such complaints too seriously. The outcry is 

 loudest from the least efficient farmers, and they made 

 the same complaints in the year or two before the war 

 when the beginnings of trade unionism forced them to pay 

 a shilling or two more on the miserably low wages then 

 common. They will always grudge paying wages and 

 prophesy ruin for the industry because of the rapacity of 

 the workers. In good times as in bad they always fight 

 stubbornly against any increase in wages. The workers 

 need expect nothing from farmers except what they are 

 able to force from them. 



Nor does the creation of Wages Boards alter the position 

 of the workers in any fundamental way. They may help 



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