The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1874-05-16 00:00:00

THE STRIKE OF FARM LABOUT.ZRS.

A " Borderer" writes to The Tithes :
Sir,--None of the writers in The Times seem to me
to have proposed the only system IT which strikes
among the agricultural labourers can be prevented, and
I the work of the farm carried on without let or hind-
rance. The plan is simple. Let farmers do as we di
in Scotland, and hire for 12 months the staff of ser-
vants, male or female, that is necessary to carry on the
ordinary routine work of the farm, and all will be well.
All other plans will be found useless, and as no
business is so liable to be injured by a strike of the
labourers as farm work, so will the farm labourers, who
are hired from week to week and who are now aware
of their power, take advantage of their position for
their own benefit.
By the ordinary staff, I mean the horse-keepers, or,
as we call them, hinds, shepherd, byre or cattle man,
lads and women to do the lighter work. Here the
servants are hired at the regular hiring markets, in
March the agreement is put in writing, and they
have their goods and chattels brought by the hirer
from their last place to their new abode on the 26th of
May, or Whit Sunday term, when they commence
work. Men get a free house and garden, sonic are
, paid wholly in money, but most prefer and, are paid
, partly in money, keep of a cow or milk, so much grain
I or meal, sin many hundred yards of potatoes net for
them, and so much coal driven for them, in all
equivalent to about .00 a year.
Beer or drink of any kind as payment would be re-
jected with scorn, and as long as the abominable aye-
tern of paving partly in beer prevails in England, so
' long will the men be the stupid, besotted, uneducated,
i and improvident creatures they now:are.
I cannot help saying that I think tine landlords,
clergy, and farmers in England are very much to
blame for not having adopted some means to put an
end to this evil-psslucing custom. When spoor igno-
rant labourer finds himself paid for his labour partly
in beer, he very naturally concludes that beer-drinking
is one of the great objects of his existence, and when
he is accustomed to its daily use, he of course endta
much of his money in drink that ought to go towards
bringing up his family.
Let the men, then, be hired for a year, and a regular
agreement be signed, which Can be broken by neither
hirer nor hired without punishment or damages. Let
the men be paid properly—that is, without perquisites
and without beer—and they will then feel that they
are no poor dependent creatures, looking to others to
do everything for them, but free and independent men,
thrown on their own resources, and bound to bring up
their families respectably, and even to try and save
something against an evil day. Once let them feel the
advantages of money over bear; the pleasure of pos-
sessing a cow, or money in the savings-bank, over per-
quisites and charitable doles, the necessity of honour-
ably fulfilling their contract of hiriag (drunkenness
here vitiates the contract and forfeits wages, and the
English farm labourer will then begin to respect him-
self, and what is more, be ea worthy of respect ass that
most sober, trustworthy, and excellent of all servants,
the Scottish hind or shepherd.