160 PROBLEMS OF VILLAGE LIFE 



demand. But no conceivable law of political 

 economy accounts for the fact that labourers 

 of Devonshire receive 17/9 a week and those 

 of Oxfordshire 14/11, all included. The whole 

 wage system in vast areas of rural England, 

 where no outside competition is met with 

 from neighbouring factories, mines, docks, 

 sea-fisheries, etc., is largely determined by 

 mere usage and local precedents. And it is 

 simply due to the lack of organization and 

 combination amongst our farm labourers that 

 these divergencies in payment and the wretched 

 wages themselves have persisted so long. 



As a minimum wage for our agricultural 

 labourers is an absolutely necessary item in 

 any genuine scheme of rural reform, it may be 

 necessary to include in the programme the 

 establishment of Land Courts, which shall 

 determine the amount of the farmer's rent. 

 There are tenant-farmers here and there 

 who will acknowledge that agricultural wages 

 cannot continue on their present scale, but 

 they are prevented from putting their theories 

 into practice and augmenting the weekly 

 wages of their men by two considerations. 

 There is the economic reason that they cannot 

 afford such an increase in the weekly wage 

 bill, and the social reason that an insignificant 

 minority of farmers cannot change the 



