The farm labourer in 1872/The subjoined letter was read at the Agricultural Conference at Willis' Rooms in April 1872
The subjoined letter was read at the Agricultural Conference at Willis' Rooms in April 1827, Mr. Mundella, M.P., being in the Chair.
Dear Mr. Mundella.
An invitation has been sent me to attend a Meeting at Willis's Rooms on Agricultural Interests, at which I see you are to be in the Chair. I fear I shall not be able to be there; but as a request is made in the invitation to offer an opinion, and as you seemed to take an interest in the paper I read at Leeds bearing on the subject, I venture to send you two or three observations, the result of my own practical experience; and you can make any use of the letter you think fit.
It appears to me that this movement, if wisely directed, may be a great opportunity of permanently improving the condition of the Agricultural labourer, and, at the same time, benefitting the employer, or farmer, by improving the quality of his labour. For if you raise the wages, you ought also to raise the labourer, and I think it might be shown that the ordinary able-bodied labourer, with increased alacrity and zeal, could easily earn twenty-five per cent more wages by doing twenty-five per cent more work, and be cheap at the money to the farmer.
But it appears to me equally plain, that this agitation may have a very different result, if wrong principles be adopted or advised.
1. Now, the best practical way towards improvement (besides emigration, payment in coin, and a certain rise in wages, where they are evidently too low) is by giving the labourer, as far as possible, an interest in his work, as by task work, or payment by results, as is sometimes done with shepherds for lambs, or with stockmen for calves, and so improving the quality of the labour by increased carefulness and zeal, and increasing his wages by his own exertion.
2. By a system of greater classification, such as is in use among contractors and others, where men will be working side by side at three shillings, two and sixpence, and two and threepence per day respectively. One man is cheap at sixteen shillings per week, another is dear at eleven. I myself know agricultural labourers who would be cheaper at £1 per week than two of their neighbours at ten shillings.
3. A still more simple and ready way to improve the condition of the farm-labourer, and that at no appreciable loss to the farmer, is by allowing him an allotment of ground and good gardens, and to those who can save a little money (say fifteen or twenty pounds) allowing them two or three acres of land to keep a cow, or the run of a cow on the farm, on payment of a rent, thus promoting carefulness and thrift, and introducing slightly the co-operative principle without a fusion of capital. The land ought to be held in connection with a farm, or an estate, so long that is as the labourer worked thereon. The results of this system, as shown on my own estate, in raising the labourers, and inducing them to save money, and so placing them in a condition of comfort and independence, notwithstanding low wages, is quite inconceivable. But the wholesale plan of giving every cottager land for a cow, suggested by a Borough Member lately in the House of Commons, would be, in my opinion, most pernicious and ruinous.
4. Something of the low estate of the labourer must, I fear, be attributed to our old enemy, the Poor Law, and the way out-relief is administered in some Unions. I trust we are gradually improving on that now; wherever a surplusage of labour lowers the rate of wages, and a bad system of Poor Law, administered from interested motives by the very employers of labour, still further depresses labour and degrades the labourer by maintaining the men in semi-starvation and dependance, a vicious circle is created that must, by some means or other, be broken through. But we are now being called on to correct the vices of generations by the prescriptions of a day.
I cannot, in the limits of a letter, venture to say much more on so large a subject, but I believe if those who are associated in this movement would give their attention more to those sort of facts (some of which I have hardly heard mentioned in public) they might do great permanent good, without inducing any feeling of hostility between employed and employer. Much ignorance prevails on the subject in many places, and it is difficult to get employers sometimes to understand how expensive low paid labour may be; in some places the farmers seem a little jealous of the men having land, but that is chiefly from not understanding how it should be allotted.
I remain yours very faithfully,
BALDWYN LEIGHTON.
Loton Park, Shrewsbury.