!Z7«e Labour Bill in Fanning. 
comes it stops many a gap in the family expenditure. Tlie men 
make two or three shillings a week over their nominal wages. 
As to the farmer, he has equal, perhaps greater, cause for satis- 
I'action. Instead of requiring upon 630 acres of land nine single 
ploughs with eighteen horses, he gradually dropped down to two 
ilouble ploughs with six horses, and a single plough for occasional 
use. He also found that, whereas a man's average daily work in 
drilling used to be about nine acres, it rose under the piece-work 
svstem to thirteen acres ; and on one occasion a labourer, to show 
what he could do, got through sixteen acres. Mr. Sabin estimated 
that, by introducing piece-work upon his farm wherever he could 
do so, he saved nearly ten shillings an acre in labour, while his 
men were better paid, and of course better satisfied. At first, his 
bailiff raised every obstacle to the new method, clinging to the 
•old ways, as baililfs, like other men, often do, because the ways 
are old. Some time, however, after piece-work was shown to be 
a success, the bailiff came to the farmer and said, " 1 think, sir, 
I might as well leave you." " All right, John ! " was the answer. 
" But why ? " " Because, sir, I have so little to do now. Nearly 
all my time used to be taken up in running about after the men 
and seeing that they did their work, but now they go straight 
ahead and want no looking after." 
Doubtless there is some good-humoured exaggeration in this 
way of putting it. We must not expect that, with piece-work, 
the necessity for looking after the men will cease ; only the sur- 
■\eillance will take another form. It will be directed to the 
quality instead of to the quantity of the work ; the men will not 
want watching to see that they keep at work, but to see that the 
work is not scamped. Surely, however, increasing education, 
and therefore increasing self-respect, will make it possible to 
rouse among agricultural labourers that feeling of pride in their 
work which is latent in every class of worker. 
Mr. C. S. Read, M.P., kindly supplies me with the following 
pregnant illustration of the advantages of piece-work to the far- 
mer, as well as to the men :— " I am now paying," he says, 
" some common labourers 1/. a week at task-work, while the 
other men at day-work are receiving only 13.s-., and yet I am sure 
that if the task-work were done by the day, it would cost me ever 
so much more than I now pay for it." Again, to show what men 
can really earn, and what it may be worth the while of an em- 
ployer to pay, I take the following extract from the farm cash- 
book of Mr. J. n. Arkwright, of Hampton Court, Leominster. 
It has been published in contradiction of statements made as to 
the wages earned by one of the labourers mentioned in the 
.account, who has since become the most prominent member of 
the National Labourers' Union. I do not, however, care to enter 
