THE RURAL PROBLEM 35 



wage would be correspondingly great. It might well 

 happen that in such instances the transfer would absorb 

 50 per cent, of the rent at present paid to the landlord. 



This at least it is safe to say. Assuming the average 

 number of acres per labourer to be 50, and the average wage 

 per labourer 18s. id. in England, then the average effect of 

 a wage of 23s. would be to add about 4s. 9d. per annum per 

 acre to the cost of farming. Assuming again that the 

 tenant can transfer the whole of this on to the landlord, 

 and that the average rent per acre is at present £l (as to 

 which it is impossible to say, but £l an acre is the figure that 

 farmers themselves often quote as an average), then the 

 minimum wage law would take about 24 per cent, from the 

 rent of the average landlord. This 24 per cent, is, of 

 course, the mean of cases where the burden w r ould be 

 far less or far more — less where the labourer is already 

 fairly decently paid, more only when the landlord is 

 receiving the existing rent at the price of the labourer's 

 squalor and semi-starvation. 



Proposals to " tax the landlord " are open to several 

 objections, such, for instance, as that they spring from 

 political hatred of this particular class, that they would 

 act as a relief to the industrial capitalist at the landowner's 

 expense, that they would confer no benefit on the country- 

 side, but actually cripple agriculture, on the prosperity of 

 which the agricultural labourer depends. 



A -legal minimum wage for agricultural labourers, though 

 it would in effect tax the landlord right heavily, is open to 

 none of these objections. It would achieve its object 

 directly, and not indirectly. It would go, every penny of 

 it, straight into the pockets of those who need it most, and 

 for whom it is intended. It is the key to the whole problem 

 of rural development, which without it cannot be, and 

 which with it will come almost of itself. Not one class 

 only, but all classes, not agriculture only, but the whole 

 community, will share the prosperity which will ensue when 

 a living wage abolishes, once and for all, the waste of 

 material that is so pitiful a feature of modern village con 

 ditions, and brings at last the opportunity of civilised life 

 to the children of the soil. 



D2 



