CHAPTER III. 



A MINIMUM WAG?: FOR AGRICULTURE. 

 § 1. The Case for Legislation. 



THE state of things just described points to the 

 necessity that agricultural wages must be raised. 

 On this at least all students of the rural problem 

 are agreed ; difference only arises over the method to be 

 pursued in order to raise them. 



Various round-about ways have been suggested. Tariff 

 Reform and Land Taxation have both been urged, largely 

 on the ground that they would raise wages ; while others, 

 and perhaps sounder thinkers, look either to the State 

 Development of Agriculture or to the formation of Trade 

 Unions among the labourers themselves as the surer wav. 

 But these things do not " raise " wages ; all that even their 

 advocates can claim is that they will lead to changes which 

 will cause wages to rise. Economic predictions of this 

 kind are at best slow and capricious, and when half 

 the economists deny them they must be confessed to be 

 uncertain. 



There is a more direct and immediate method. If you 

 want a thing done, just do it. If the nation wants higher 

 wages for agricultural labourers, let it make a law to say so, 

 and establish a legal minimum wage. Let those who 

 doubt the practicability of this consider the numerous 

 examples of minimum wage laws already existing.* 



It cannot, of course, be gainsaid that a minimum wage 

 law for agriculture would be very different from a similar 

 law, say, for the mining industry in this respect : that in 

 the latter case the wages of a few were levelled up, but 

 the total wage bill was not materially increased, whereas 

 in the case of agriculture the wages of the great majority 



* See Appendix F. 



