Low versus Economic Wages 



In about sixteen counties wages have 

 been, and still are, altogether too low 

 to secure efficient work. Not only is it 

 bad from the farmer's point of view to 

 pay so low a wage, but from the national 

 point of view it is altogether wrong. If 

 farmers in these counties cannot so organize 

 their farming operations as to be able 

 to pay a higher wage, then they will have 

 to give place to farmers who can so 

 organize. That low wage is not economic. 

 The labourers in the northern counties, 

 whose wages may be 40 or 50 per cent, 

 higher than the southern average, more than 

 make up for the higher wage by the 

 efficiency of their work. Take for in- 

 stance the case, an extreme one, of a 

 milker in a southern county receiving four- 

 teen shillings a week in cash, plus certain 

 extras, and a north-country milker receiving 

 twenty-four shillings in cash, plus similar 

 extras, — the one man milks ten cows, the 

 other twenty, the yield of the cows being 

 about the same. 



It is not only a question of actual wages. 

 Man does not live by bread alone. It is 



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