The Future of the Farm Worker. m 



more variety in the rural community and the economic 

 barriers which confine the workers to the less interesting 

 and more laborious tasks would be removed. There would 

 be more opportunity of creating- a real community in place 

 of the classes whose boundaries are so rigidly fixed to-day. 



The future I see for the workers is quite different from 

 that of the advocates of the " agricultural ladder " who 

 want to create small holders, who may climb to be small 

 farmers, and perhaps even large farmers. That is merely 

 to provide a few outlets here and there by which a few of 

 the workers can escape, leaving the mass where they are, 

 working in a small scale precarious industry, where the 

 net productivity will never admit of more than a bare 

 subsistence. I want to see the industry made a definite 

 social service, properly equipped with capital, using the 

 most scientific methods of production, developing labour- 

 saving machinery to increase its productivity, and offering 

 scope to all the workers to become real partners in the 

 industry. The advocates of small holdings appeal to a 

 sound instinct in the workers. Because agriculture has 

 remained a small scale industry and the tradition is yet 

 strong amongst the workers that they ought not always 

 to be working for another man's profit, the appeal of a 

 holding of their own has more force with them than with 

 other classes of workers. The fact that the active demand 

 is less than the politicians would have us believe does not 

 mean that they are reconciled to their present position 

 and prospects. It is simply because they have too real a 

 sense of the difficulties of the small holder under modern 

 conditions and do not believe that it provides the way of 

 escape. 



