SOME HIGH RENTS CONFISCATE WAGES 1 39 



working expenses be left to take their chance after- 

 wards. 



The moral, as well as economic, injustice of some 

 of the high rents, which are apparently being maintained, 

 deserves special consideration. 



It has been frequently said, with or without precision, 

 that many rents in Ireland were only paid by the 

 remittances sent to the tenants by children or other 

 relatives in America. But it certainly can be said with 

 exactness that the whole, or at any rate some portion, of 

 the rent of many of the small farms in Lancashire, in 

 Wales, parts of Scotland, and in other districts, is not 

 made by the land itself, but is really being paid by the 

 gratuitous labour of the farmer's grown-up children. 



Mr Wilson Fox says : " At the present time in some 

 districts it is the farmers' sons and daughters who have 

 suffered rather than the land, for they have been and 

 are giving their best energies towards its cultivation, 

 receiving no reward in the present, and with but little 

 prospect for it in the future." ..." Some large farmers 

 have told me that after feeding and clothing themselves 

 and their families, and paying no wages to their sons 

 and daughters, they have made nothing for the last year 

 or two, while several have told me they have had to draw 

 on capital." When the ordinary wages of grown young 

 men and women in Lancashire towns are considered, it 

 seems extraordinary that this heavy sacrifice should have 

 been made to keep up the farms, and still more astound- 

 ing that, even when this sacrifice was unavailing to 

 prevent loss of all profits, the reductions of rent in 

 Lancashire have not been vastly greater than the 

 relatively small reduction recorded in evidence. The 

 farmers asked Mr Fox : " Prices have dropped 30 to 40 

 per cent., and rents only 5 or 10 per cent. : how are we 

 to get along ? " They might reasonably have urged that 

 they are paying a second rent by giving the labour of their 

 children for nothing. And this injustice seems to prevail 

 in parts of Scotland also, and where the Scotch settlers 

 in Essex and other counties are struggling with difficulties. 



And it is not confined to these instances. Mr Wilson 



