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14 Plight of the English Agricultural Laborer Farm Workers Face Low Wages and Long Hours Through Rescinding of "Guaranteed Price" Order Manchester, Kngland (By Mail). THE British Government has decided on the im mediate 'decontrol" of agriculture. This will mean that the farmer will 1oc his guaranteed prices and that the wage- hoard which secure (A tlu agricultural laborer a reasonable minimum wage will be abolished. griculturc is our greatest English industry, and the peasant, they say, is the backbone of his country. During the war the government said that agriculture wis the most vital to us of all our "key' industries. It was because we grew so little and imported so much of our foodstuffs that the German submarine campaign brought us to the brink of destruction and innumerable voices declared that never again must war find us -help kill J dependent on imports from OVCfttM. Thus in the popular esteem the agricultural laborer had ap parently come into his own as a valuable and indis pensable member of the community and it was to be presumed that he would be treated and. in particular, paid according to the new realization of his value. His Pay Was the Lowest THE rural laborer had been the poorest paid of all the WOfktfS. Sober inquirers had described his condition as being little better than that of a serf ; it was the condition of semi-serfdom that drove the laborers M increasing numbers from the fields to the variety and the good wages of the towns. An investigator oi the board of agriculture thus wrote about the laborer's position : ' The farm laborer i the hardest-worked, low-est-paid. worst-fed and clothed and worst-housed class of the whole British community. His pre-war wages did not even warrant his paying 2s. 6d. a week in rent, and, in the vast majority of cases, neither he nor his family could have existed at all but for the supplementary earnings of his wife. In having to work, the wile almost invariably suffered in health. a in spirit; she was obliged to neglect herself, her chil dren, her husband and her home. Both she and her family occupy the lowest rung u; on the so cial ladder, and they are spoken oi in tones of pity, if not of contempt, by their m re fortunate, better organized brethren and fellow --workers. "The farm laborer now, as in the past, ap proaches nearest the state of serfdom. He is, in fact, a serf, with the privilege of sleeping un der a roof which, by courtesy is called his own. though his wages would not allow of his paying a just rent for it. "Hitherto he has had no union to defend his interests ; had not a copper a week to spare for contribution to any scheme of co-operation among his class." How far the laborer was in pre-war days from re ceiving anything that could truthfully be dignified as a living" or "subsistence" wage on which to support not only himself but often also a wife and a large family, may be judged from the following figures which show the weekly wage for various counties in 1907, accord ing to a board of trade inquiry: Countv Wages per week. s. d. Cumberland 20 3 Yorkshire. Rat Riding 19 6 Lancashire 20 8 Cheshire 19 1 Gloucestershire and Worcestershire 16 3 Warwickshire 17 2 Oxfordshire 14 11 Suffolk 15 9 Norfolk 15 4 Sussex 17 9 Wiltshire 16' 0 Hours of Work Unlimited THE highest figures for any county in the whole of England were those for Derbyshire and they were no more than 20s. lOd. The American reader may tran late these figures into his own money by taking four dollars to the pound and he will then be able to com pare the Oxford laborer's wage of three dollars a week with wages in America. It must not be supposed, either, that the figures quoted exclude allowances and perquisites which would substantially increase the ac tual wages, for the figures officially include "cash wages, extras and allowances." For such wages (be laborer had to work unlimited hours in summer and in winter and had to live in the cottage often a mis erable hovel assigned to him by his employer. In other industries in England the motive power which forced up wages has MM the organization of labor into trade unions which dealt with the employers through collective bargaining. The agricultural laborer was Rot organized. It is, of course, very much more difficult to organize the widely scattered people of rural areas than the urban artisans and, in addi tion, all the landlords and farmers were extrrmely bitter and determined against the idea of organization among their laborers. It was only just before and during the war that unions began to be established ef fectually among the laborers and it was the organiza tion of the unions plus the high prices obtained by By W. P. CROZIER the farmers that led to the first substantial increases m vragei in 1917-18, The government, when it pasted the Corn Produc tion u of 1917, r."t only guaranteed high prices to the farmer to Induce him to put more land under the plow but guaranteed the laborer a minimum wage. It is true that it was only 25ft. a week, but even this was large percentage increase on the old wage and the act al(. provided for an agricultural wages board which fthould include rep re tentative! of masters and men and tlso neutral members, hear evidence and periodically fix the laboreri wage, with the assistance of district wages committees on which also all sides should be represented. The wages board made its first order in May, 1920. It was fot the county of Norfolk and fixed a wage rate of 30s. for a week of 54 BOOTS Bl summer and 4S hours in winter. Beyond these boOTS the laborer had to be paid overtime rates of S-'.d. an hour on week days and lOd. an hour on Sundays. There weir some exceptions to the general rule inch as the class of ' C owmen." who for an additional os. had to work the "customary" hours of their calling. This exception was capable of abuse by slave-driving farmers and in 11 it was abolished and farm workers generally came under the common rule Paid for Overtime Sow THE new wage, ranging from 30ft to $6t va small enough in all conscience, especially as the cost of living was now beginning to rise, hut the legal fixing of the laborer's hours was a great boon to him and h could no longer be exploited without limit; he could claim overtime rates and secure them like any urban artisan. From this time on the laborers' wagei grad ually increased by a few shillings a week until at the present moment the minimum rate is 4os. a week and sumo shillings more in the bett r-paid counties of the North of England. Forty-six ihilltngi i a great ad vance on the average for all England of 17s. 6d. in 1907 or the 19s. 10d. which wages had re ached in 1913. but the pound sterling is nowaday! worth only some 9s. in pre-war values. Forty-six shillings, therefore, represents only about 21s. in "real" money (or about $4 in present American values), so that it is still true to say that the laborer has not greatly improved on his pre-war pittance except in so far as he now works reasonable hours and receives fixed rates of over time. And now it is announced that the wage board and the minimum wage, the laborer's charter for a decent living, are to go. The farmers have already announced that at the next meeting of the wages board, before it il abolished they will demand a reduction of six shil lings a week in laborers' wages and there is no doubt that when the board has disappeared they will en- Mountain Road on the Side of a Huge Cliff Near Naples deavor to get wages down still further. s a een. principle it is. of course, right and neccssarv tkJ " which have been largely increased on the basis of BxH is. H Ws ear v H haV. aVyB a t ''v4MfeMPH fcl faV BsVfl (.illm Strim sudden and temporary "boom" in profits should under reduction when severe depression sets in and persist but it is fundamentally right and necessary also that every industry should pay a decent, living subsisten wage to its members, and what is to be said of an C . i . " V4 an in- lustrv wnicn. naving no more than ?U o i. dollars in nre-war values is shnnt tn mi a our r t v v v. u i iniwn m... that humble nittance? That is th fww .l.. . , . . : ,ululc um our .iiTii'ii tnrai anorers nave now tn tar -J . . iu inev are preparing to resist it. Prices Will Not Be Guaranteed IT IS unjust that the minimum wage and the waees board should be abolished because the guaranteed prices are to be abandoned. The one does not depend upon the other. Guaranteed prices extend only to certain cereal crops but the minimum wage applies to all kinds and grades of agricultural workers, whether they are concerned with the cereals for which prices are guar anteed or with the other agricultural products for which there is no guaranty. This was made quite clear long ago in the official organ the W$4 Board Gazette: "Any attempt to make a guaranteed price of wheat a corollary to an agricultural wages board should be strenuously resisted as having no foun dation in history. Wheat-growing, it must be remembered, forms a very small part of the Eng lish farmers' output of agricultural produce. No minimum price is guaranteed for milk, a neces sity as great as bread, for meat or for fruit and rotables, and yet the minimum wage applies equally to all persons employed in agriculture whether they are engaged in wheat or oat pro duction or not." Some say that a 'deal" has already been arranged between the government and the farmers. The gov ernment says to the farmers: "If we maintain the guar anteed prices, we shall be paying a subsidy to you of from 30 to 40 million pounds this year, and we simply cannot afford to do it, since the terrible depression in trade will cause a severe drop in the national revenue. Therefore, the guaranteed prices mu-t be abandoned." The farmers, it is suggested, have in effect replied that if the government does not want to incur their undying hostility, it must relieve them from the hated burden of the wages board and allow them to get wages down as they are able. Whether there be a "deal" or not. there is at least no doubt about the fact that the farmer is losing the guaranty of prices (although he was promised that it should not be w ith or even with out four years' notice) and regaining his old liberty to brat doWfl the wages of his men. The government has thus abandoned both the prin ciples by which, only a year or two ago. it set such store. It established special prices for the farmer m order to induce him to turn pasture into plowed land on the ground that these islands must as far SI ever possible be made self-sufficing and never again be at the mercy of an enemy's attack upon their food supplies. It laid down also the sound and honorable principle that agriculture, like any other industry, must pay a wage to its workers which would enable them to live, if not in comfort, at least in decency. It seems that now the farmer will be allowed to cultivate as mucn or as little land as he pleases, without interference from the state, and that we shall enter "the next war, and when it comes, as much dependent on over5 supplies as we were in 1914. For not only are tne guaranties to be dropped, but the government pro poses also to repeal other provisions in the act ot I -bv which farmers and landowners could be rcc cultivate their lands to the best advantage under p of suffering severe penalties if they did not. Fight Is in Prospect SECONDLY, the abandonment of the wages be a great disaster just as its creation was a g achievement and one highly creditable to Mr. uwg Outside the notorious "sweated industries ,n waits are now fixed by trade boards there wm calling which had for decades cried out for a sta minimum so pitifully as that of the rura have already shown how in borer received only 14s. lid. a week Bttt ItW MJg him 57 vears to work up to that figure j rom which was the average for England ana ,n 1850. It was 13s. 4d. in M ! itifttl before the average reached 14s. Wffl u " JJm if the laborer should again be thrust Dec k. , be forced to fight against being thrust back L SW that do not permit of a decent subsistet ice- hoUt It is improbable that he will be thrust JjR righting. After a long struggle &aI ' , Iaborers of farmers and the great landowners Ju'bershiP arc organized now into two unions, whose rience numbers some 350.000. They ha s of collective bargaining; they have & round the conference table; they ht J It better wages, juster conditions of ork J on thelf sure. If any attack shoutd now be rnaac c. SSbfd of life, we shall expect suffer ment from which the skilled the oWr reproduced in the world of fc harvest W will be the greater as the time ot me proaches. Cat owl of olid rock oa the id o( a huge mountain rliff near Naplca, a road Mil the Caaerto River for aaarly a mile. Here tatbe picturesque road more than one hundred feet a box e the level