BETTER CONDITIONS AT HOME 93 



long hours, and lack of good cottages. The repre- 

 sentatives of the Agricultural Labourers' Union who 

 appeared before us expressed similar views. 



27. The tendency to emigrate has been greatly 

 stimulated of late by the activities of the Dominion 

 Governments, especially Canada. Previous to the 

 outbreak of war, every spring, country villages were 

 placarded with advertisements of the good wages and 

 offers of land to be obtained oversea, while it was 

 nobody's business to bring home to the agricultural 

 labourer the hardships and difficulties which must be 

 faced as an offset against the advantages which the 

 settler's life in these distant countries has to offer. 



There will always be men of the type of mind 

 whom nothing would keep from emigrating. But as 

 regards the great majority of farm labourers and a 

 large proportion of the new would-be workers on the 

 land, we are convinced they would rather stay in the 

 Old Country if they could be sure of satisfactory 

 wages and housing, and if they knew they had a 

 chance of rising above the status of a wage earner. 



28. So far these conditions have not been pro- 

 vided. On the other hand, the Nation has encouraged 

 the notion — and the Majority Report endorses it — 

 that the Mother Country is under an inevitable dis- 

 ability ; that she cannot in some respects make the 

 discharged sailor or soldier as good an offer as the 

 Dominions, or as foreign countries such as the United 

 States and the Argentine. 



We do not accept this view as sound. The reason 

 why our Dominions and some foreign countries are 

 able to outbid us is that they long ago realised the 



