26 THE RURAL PROBLEM 



of labourers would be levelled up, and an enormous increase 

 in the total cost of agricultural labour must inevitably 

 result. 



On the other hand, such an increase can quite well be 

 borne. If fair wages can be paid in certain parts of the 

 North of England, they could be paid in the Midlands or in 

 the South. Take the case of Cumberland. In the west of 

 that county we find 22s. and 23s. a week being paid, with 

 no reduction for wet weather and for the shorter hours of 

 winter. Five or six weeks' full pay is commonly allowed 

 for sickness, and no distinction of wage is made between 

 the different classes of labourers. The main reason for 

 this is that close at hand there is employment to be had 

 in the towns at 30s. to 40s. a week, and shorter hours withal. 

 The competition of great industrial centres prevents the 

 rural employer outside from sweating his men. What the 

 natural law of competition can do for the North a minimum 

 wage law could equally well do for the South. 



It may be argued that in the North, and in other places 

 where wages are high, it will be found that the very indus- 

 trial centres which cause the competition for labour provide 

 also the markets which enable agriculture to stand the 

 strain of the higher wage. There is an element of truth in 

 this, and it cannot be too strongly urged that, if agriculture 

 is to be revived, there must be a more systematic marketing 

 of the produce, on lines to be recommended in a later 

 chapter. But, on the whole, the price of agricultural 

 produce is fixed not by local but by world conditions. If 

 that price admits of high wages in Cumberland or in Scot- 

 land, it will admit of them in Oxfordshire and Dorsetshire. 



Another objection to a minimum wage law will come 

 from those who look for reform not to artificial statutory 

 regulation from outside, but to the spontaneous process of 

 organisation among labourers themselves. There have 

 been many attempts to form Trade Unions in the county 

 districts, but up to the present they have met with scant 

 success. The backward conditions of life and thought in 

 the villages, the isolation of the labourers, and the tyranny 

 of the tied-cottage system have combined to prevent the 

 industrial movement from bearing fruit in the country. 



