i)8 
The Labour Bill in Farming. 
Eastern Counties farmers who set their hands to the'plough or 
drill, when lately deserted by their men, found that in the 
same hours tlie}^ could do half as much again as their men got 
through, and without over-fatiguing themselves. What reason- 
able stimulus, just both to employers and labourers, can be 
offered to the latter to do what they could surely do, if they 
liked, with much less effort than employers unused to exhausting 
labour, and many of them, like Hamlet, " fat and scant of 
breath"? 
2. I do not think this problem insoluble, and piece-work 
seems to be the best way out of the difficulty. Piece-work is a 
protection to the farmer, who then pays only for work actually 
done. It affords also the strongest inducement to the labourer 
to put forth his full energies. The system is not without diffi- 
culty in its application. Upon almost every farm it will require 
some amount of special adaptation and management. The soil, 
the seasons, the implements, the course of husbandry, all require 
careful study. Above all, the farmer must not be niggardly in 
the rates he fixes. The attempt to introduce piece-work will be 
sure to break down if employers attempt to take the lion's share 
of whatever surplus exists over and above an average day's work. 
Given an average day's work, and the usual pay for it, then the 
extra work done, measured by the same standard of pay, would 
yield a fund, of which two-thirds might fairly go to the labourer, 
and one-third to the employer for his trouble in planning and 
laying out the work, and for capital invested. It is of no use to 
conceal the fact that the adjustment of a fair tariff to meet the 
varying conditions of different farms in different districts would 
involve much trouble, and more personal supervision than is 
frequently given by farmers. But it is a farmer's business to 
take trouble in what concerns the cultivation of his farm ; and 
there is no task to which he might devote himself with greater 
advantage to his lal)()urers, to himself, and to the State, than 
tliat of endeavouring to apply this piece-work system to his own 
holding. ■ » 
The system is not new or untried. It has long been prac- 
tised in some departments of farm-work by men of prai;tical 
experience in various parts of lOngland. Elsewhere I have 
described the working of the system upon a light-land farm of 
;d)()ut 800 acres rented by Mr. W. Mathew, of Knettishall, near 
Thetford;* and the main facts may, I think, with advantage be 
innlxcs one's, flcsli orcep to seo some of our men at work. Many appear to bo 
nnxions to do us little as possible when the eyo of the master or the bailiti'is otl" 
tluMll." 
• Mr. Herbert J. Lilile, in a paper read before the Farmers' Club, on "The 
