Employment and Wages
It follows directly from what I have just said that a time of high costs and low prices like the present, like the time of lower costs but still lower prices of the late ’80’s and early ’90’s, is not a favourable time for expecting employment to be brisk or wages high. And reasons other than those which we have yet considered make the farmer feel his labour to be specially burdensome at present. He finds that the prices he gets on the average are one and one-third times what they were before the war: what he has to buy costing from one and a half to one and two-thirds what it cost before the war; and he is expected in very many counties in England and Wales to pay his workers about double what he paid before the war. This is a strong point for him. But the labourers’ position is just as strong. “I was not sufficiently well paid before the war. If this is to be recognised in any way at all, I must at the present cost of living (185) have double my pre-war wages.” It is certainly beyond all question that 30/- a week, which is the present wage over a large part of England, is not, even with only 3/- a week rent for house and garden, enough to keep a man and his wife and family in a state of real efficiency. Yet I know from personal experience that this fact is not properly recognised in practice. If one tries to pay more one is regarded as a very rich man, and an extremely stupid one—an idea erroneous as to one’s wealth and possibly exaggerated as to one’s mentality.
How have the two conflicting views of farmer and labourer been reconciled in practice. I can only say that so far as my own knowledge extends—bearing in mind that the farmer has not the business man’s habit of cheerfully setting off a bad year against a good (for the business man knows that trade must improve some time, and then he will make profits, while the farmer has no certainty that things will improve)—things might well have been worse. There has been a good deal of mutual consideration and desire to make the best of difficult circumstances. I have, however, little doubt that it would have been better had the Wages Boards, which had controlled the rise in wages during the rise in the cost of living, regulated the fall in wages during its fall—relaxing control perhaps later when things became more stable.
The reason why I think that things might have been worse is that the District Wages Committee left a good legacy to the voluntary Conciliation Committees which followed them—the men serving on the latter were those who under the Wages Board system had learned to negotiate with and to know and respect the workers—generally some of the best farmers in their districts—and they genuinely tried not to let the workers down with too much of a bump; on the other hand, they knew that the only value their recommendations could have was that they should be voluntarily observed, and therefore they took care not to recommend rates higher than those which the least favourably situated farmers in the district could manage to pay—which meant rates lower than many might have been willing to give. This means that any general rate agreed to voluntarily will be rather on the low side. But I would rather have a rate which is generally observed, even if it is rather low, than that every farmer should be a law unto himself. If there is no recognised standard, and one man with impunity pays a lower rate than his neighbours, other rates also tend to come down, and then the process begins over again.
Looking to the future, the only thing that I can say with any certainty about the wages question is that it needs very careful watching. Let us be sure first of our principle, that the first charge on land, as on any other industry, should be a reasonable standard of living for the workers. Then let us be sure of the fact that there is over a very large part of England and Wales no certain prospect of an improvement in the condition of the labourer compared with conditions ten years ago. The dangers to be feared are that in the present lamentable weakness of the men’s unions large sections of farmers may break away from the recommendations of their leaders; and that if depression continues and war savings become depleted farmers will tend to push wages down in self-preservation. These things must be watched. If the general condition of agriculture improves without a corresponding improvement in the workers’ condition, or if conditions get worse and the brunt of the burden is transferred to the labourer, we ought to be prepared to advocate a return to the old Wages Boards or the adoption of a Trade Board system. It must, I think, be a cardinal point of our Liberal faith that though it is better to leave industrial questions to be adjusted as much as possible by the parties concerned in the industry, the State must be ready to step in in any case in which the workers have not developed the power by their own combination to secure reasonable conditions and prospects. It is to the prospects that I now turn.