WANTED, A LIVING WAGE 26 



are looking for a fresh occupation after the war will 

 enter an industry which pays such wages as are usual 

 in agriculture ? Those wages are enough to chill even 

 the strongest disposition towards a country life. The 

 discharged soldiers and sailors who have vastly enlarged 

 their experiences during the war, and whose families 

 have received generous allowances, will not look at 

 such wages. No one can blame them. Let us be sure 

 of this, that if the wages are not raised, agriculture will 

 not be reformed. 



The unhappy truth is that in many parts of the 

 country a man who is performing what has just been 

 described as skilled labour not only does not get the 

 natural recompense of skilled labour, but does not even 

 get a living wage. Those who agree with the Minority 

 Report do not ask for what is unreasonable and im- 

 possible. They are content to leave the wages of 

 skilled labour to the future. All they want to do now 

 is to make good the claim of every able-bodied and 

 industrious man working on the land to a decent living 

 wage — such a wage as will attract the soldiers. Nothing 

 seems more certain, if this be withheld at the critical 

 time of demobilisation, than that there will be a serious 

 shortage of agricultural labour. Then, instead of 

 more food being produced on British soil, less than ever 

 will be produced, because more land will be laid down 

 in grass in order to save labour, and the rural popula- 

 tion will shrink correspondingly. As will be shown 

 later, there is a strong probabiUty o :a considerable 

 shortage of agricultural labour as it is through losses 

 in the war. It will be a disaster if no measures are 

 taken to make this shortage good; and it will be a 

 3* 



