252 ENGLISH AGRICULTURAL LABOURER. 



and yet the minimum wage applies equally to all persons em- 

 ployed in agriculture whether they are engaged in wheat and oat 

 production or not." x 



That the farmers hailed Mr. Lloyd George's speech with 

 elation could be seen by reading the farmers' papers which 

 were published immediately afterwards. They had been 

 given their price for 1917 Cos.- which was a distinct 

 advance from the 42*. recommended by the Selborne Com- 

 mittee of 1916. 2 They would not meet trouble half way by 

 looking at the declining figures for the following years. 

 Mr. Lloyd George was indubitably their champion. They 

 would forgive him all the unkind things he had said in his 

 Land Campaign. 



How Mr. Lloyd George arrived at these figures no one seems 

 to have been able to discover. We only know that he was 

 " assured by a farmer who is one of the most upright men 

 I have ever met and who I am perfectly certain would not 

 mislead the Government that on the prices we were guar- 

 anteeing the farmer on the whole he would not get much 

 out of them having regard to all the conditions." One 

 wonders who this upright gentleman was who had so im- 

 pressed the ingenuous Premier. Mr. Lloyd George, appar- 

 ently, never stopped to enquire of a labourer how much it 

 cost to maintain him and his family in a condition of 

 physical efficiency and comfort. 



Wages had now risen generally to 22s. a week. There 

 were instances, as in Dorset, where i6s. was the wage in 

 January, and at Ledbury, in February, it was discovered 

 on a farmer making an appeal for exemption for his son, that 

 he had been paying a man who had just left him only ios. 

 a week. I>ut these instances, we hope, were isolated cases. 



During the summer of this year the N.A.L.U. managed 

 to raise wages in the Thorne district of Lincolnshire from 

 24s. to 3os. a week. The Nottingham Co-operative Society 

 granted the full demands of 3os. and 32s. respectively to 

 the different grades of men working on their farms, whilst 

 in Salop the average wage was brought up to the 25s. 

 standard. In Suffolk, a lock-out occurred in the Darsham 



1 H'fl/y5 fl'iaxl C:a:,t!f, ist April, T'<2. * (\\. Oo;<j. 



