30 THE RURAL PROBLEM 



concerned, and are dealing with circumstances peculiar to the 

 particular industry. But in the case of agriculture the liveli- 

 hood of hundreds of thousands of workers all over the 

 country is concerned, the circumstances are, or should be, 

 of common knowledge, and the interests of urban workers 

 are directly involved, seeing that the low wages paid in 

 country districts tend to provide the towns with a constant 

 influx of cheap labour. 



As to details, the rate should be fixed for a whole week, to 

 be paid, wet or fine, with a provision that if the man works 

 more than, say, fifty hours, more must be paid. Both piece 

 rate and time rate per hour must be relatively high, and if the 

 piece rate were higher than the time rate, it would tend to 

 avoid loss by bad weather. Eventually all payment in kind 

 in lieu of cash wages should be abolished. But until this is 

 done (and it would interfere seriously with local customs) 

 part of the business of the Local Boards should be to work 

 out the values of payments in kind, and to secure that they 

 are sufficient to raise the wage in every individual case above 

 the minimum. The Local Boards would also have to regu- 

 late, in their districts, the amount and kind of work which 

 could be performed by young or old persons, who would be 

 exempted from the provisions of the Act, within certain 

 limits laid down by the National Board.* 



Evasion of the Act would be made a criminal offence, and 

 workers would be encouraged to send information to the 

 Boards of any such evasion. The Board would then make its 

 own inquiries, and no one need know from whom the infor- 

 mation came. 



In order to meet the peculiar circumstances of agriculture 

 and avoid the breakdown of the scheme by reason of the 

 intimidation of the labourers and their lack of cohesion, the 

 suggestion has been made to abandon the system of Wages 

 Boards altogether, and administer the Act through the 

 County Councils. No one who knows the composition of the 



* In the case of old men, not worth the minimum wage, but able to 

 do a little work, a State pension supplementing the lesser wage might 

 be paid, leading up to the full old age pension later. The Local Board 

 would have to provide safeguards to ensure that this was not used 

 by employers to enable them to evade the Act 



