SOME OTHER REMEDIES 213 



protective duties ? The promises held out are 

 doubtless quite sincere in many cases. Mr. 

 George Terrell, M.P., has recently declared 

 that the " wages of the agricultural labourer 

 could not continue " at their present figure 

 and that the one and only remedy for this lay 

 in the adoption of Tariff Reform. The farmer, 

 according to Mr. Terrell, would share in the 

 increased prosperity, and so be enabled to pay 

 his men better. This optimism has little 

 foundation. There is no necessary connection 

 between higher prices and higher wages unless 

 indeed the workers are strongly enough com- 

 bined to enforce their claims, and at present 

 our agricultural labourers are singularly 

 helpless from the very fact of their almost 

 complete lack of organized union. " Who," 

 asked Lord Goschen in the House of Lords, 

 " will take the responsibility of saying, ' let 

 us put a tax on food, and I will guarantee 

 that your wages shall be raised ' ? I say that 

 this is a tremendous responsibility, and one 

 which I, for one, would be most reluctant to 

 undertake." Wages, of course, have little 

 to do with the question of import duties. 

 Depending as they do very largely on the 

 laws of supply and demand on the one hand 

 and the power of labour combinations on the 

 other, it is childish to point to the higher 



