202 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 
institution of the Agricultural Wages Board in 1917 the tendency was 
in the direction of a slight but steady reduction in the proportion 
coming to the workers; the effect of the Wages Board Orders was to 
steady this tendency and, ultimately, to bring labour back approximately 
to the position it occupied in 1913-14. If the figures could have been 
continued for another year it is likely that they would show a material 
increase in the workers’ share, but, even so, it would be found that this 
increase had been achieved without reducing the farmer’s share below 
his pre-war proportion. In the second place, the figures confirm the 
experience of landowners in that the landlord has received no part of 
the increased prosperity of farming, whilst, as everyone knows, his 
expenses of maintenance have enormously increased. Briefly, the 
situation is that, thanks to the Agricultural Wages Board (and _ its 
appointed members may take heart from the fact), the workers have 
been maintained in the same position as regards their share in the net 
returns as that in which they were before the war, whilst the farmer 
has received his share in the increase realised during the past few years, 
together with that which would have gone to the landlord had the 
pre-war scale of distribution been maintained. Rents and wages under 
normal conditions are slow to adjust themselves to changes in farming 
fortune, and, except in a time of violent economic upheaval, it is right 
that this should be so, for if the landlord may be regarded as a deben- 
ture holder, and labour as a preference shareholder, then the farmer, 
as the ordinary or deferred shareholder, has to bear the brunt, and if 
he must take the kicks so also is he entitled to the halfpence. 
Turning now from problems in which either the nation generally 
or whole classes of the industry are concerned, it may be stated that 
there are many economic problems arising on the farm itself in the 
solution of which the individual farmer should be able to derive help 
from the economist. Some of these problems are so simple that their 
solution should be obvious, but the fact remains that waste in its most 
easily eliminated forms is constantly to be met with on the farm. The 
need for the study of the economic use of manual labour has already 
been referred to in another connection, but, granted that the balance 
between the employment of land, capital and labour on any farm has 
been established, cases are continually met with where labour is being | 
mismanaged. It is a not uncommon practice at threshing-time to take 
the horsemen from their work to assist at threshing, and as this opera- 
tion can only be performed in dry weather, it may be assumed that 
the horses might usually be employed on threshing days. With manual 
labour costing about 7s. 6d. a day and horses about 5s. a day, the advan- 
tage of hiring casual labour for threshing, even at high rates of pay, will 
be obvious when it is remembered that the horseman whose horses are 
standing idle represents a daily cost for the manual work performed by 
him of some 18s. On a Midland Counties farm, where the maximum 
possible horse-hours in a certain week in November last were 238, the 
time actually worked by horses was found to be eighty-seven, owing to 
threshing operations, and the wastefulness of the labour-management 
in such a case is obvious. Again, employers in certain cases object to 
