The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1873-06-07 00:00:00

THE FARMERS' DIFFICULTY.

The Time.:hei pellhel tha following letter, which ia well

worthy of attentfon :

-
As an illustration of one way in whil the labour
difficulty may eventually be met I would adduce the
case of • certain farm of 500 acres, on which the
manual labour bill amounts to £B4O a year. This in
with wages ranging from 2s. to 2s. Bd. per day for men,
Is. 3d. to Is. 6d. for women, and corresponding
payments to boys and girls, according to age and
ability. If the Union movement should ulti-
ruately emceed in denying labour to farmers except
for earnings and privileges representing an increase
of, say, 50 per cent, upon the present scale of
wages, where is the money to COUP` friar? How could
the occupier find the additional £420, making his
labourbill £1,260f or no aiore work clone than before? The
farmer will certainly not rednee his own income of £5OO
(taken as half his rental) for he would rather relinquish
business altogether, or seek his fortune in a different
line, than continue the slow and hazardous trade of
husbandry for any smaller profit upon his capital.
The tithe rent-charge on the farm will remain
permanently averaging about £175; and the rates, un-
alterable except by way of increase, cannot be brought
under £lO5 per year. Where horses already do the
work of men in hoeing and in reaping the ;resin croos
anrigin mowing and making the hay, and where steam-
power aids in the heavy Baser., besides thrashing the
corn, cutting up fodder, and grinding and preparing
cattle food, there is little scope left for labour-saving
mechanism, unless it be a lightening of the work of
thinning turnips and m 6,101,144 by an improvement
of the drop drill, or, 'sensibly, a cheapening of
harvet operations by an apparatus for tying wheat
in Wiesner. On no item ot necessary expenditure
can any adeqnate saving be looked for. On the
contrary, • general Ale in the labour-market must in-
evitably heighten the cost of every machine or com-
modity which the fanner has to purchase for his
business. Ile cannot hope to recoup himself by
realizing enhanced prices for his principal produce; for
society has taken especial care that he shall have no
p,wer to demand for his corn even Is. I,er quarter
above the price at which the competition of the whole
world can Ir-el, it down ; and as for a good meat-market,
it in paid for by a counterbalancing decimation of his
I animals by imported disease..
I But there remains that considerable item of outlay
the rent, which, theoretically, is the surplus left for
the props ietor after all farm expenses have been paid,
and after the cultivator has been satisfied with a
sufficient profit upon his investment. Is the sum of
£420 for the labourers to be taken out of the rent, which
is now £l,OOO, thus depriving the landlord of 4:420501
imam and depreciating the value of his fee-simple 42
per cent.?
On Both a holding as that referred to this need not
he the came. The manual labour costs I:840 a year, or
335. 7,1. peer acre over the whole average. But, in
reality, the charge is about £2 Bs. per acre upon 320
acres arable, and about Bs. per acre upon 180 scree of
permanent grass. Now, let the proportions of arable •
and pasture be reversed and wages augmented 50 per
cent., and the total labour bill will be no greater than
before—that is, £B4O would still pay the labour, to the
extent of £3 12s. per acre upon 160 acres arable, and
12e. per acre upon 320 acres of grams. The landowner
would preserve his property intact, and each labourer
employed would enjoy a living 50 per cent, better than
that which he earns now. The difference would be in
the number of hands—amounting to only one-third of
the present force.
1 do not advocate any im h wholesale and immediate
laying down of land to permanent grass The above
is merely an illustration of the pi inciple, that on
suitahle coils, an immense displacement of labour by
converting plough land into natant* may hereafter
suable farmers and landowners to save themselves
firm disaster while meeting the difficulty of greatly
enhanced wages. Of course, a gragival extension of
grazing ground is alone practicable, from the necessity
of simultamondy breed rig the additional number of
animals to feed upon it. lint the work is made in-
creasingly ui gent by the threatening state of the
labour-market, and I wish to point out that this is
essentially a landlord's question. It is the surplus
fund or rent which is mainly its jeopardy, and to save
it by increasing the area of permanent pastureland will
require something more than fliers permission for
tenants to make the change. Laying down extra
breadths of grass seeds upon fields which would
otherwise have yieldel crops for the market, wait-
ing until the new herbage has b-conic profitable
grazing ground, and reserving in the herd and flock
animals which would otherwi e have been turned into
money, involve a protracted investment, a delay in
realiz,ng returns, and a derangement of cropping and
of business which comparatively few occupiers could
sustain without substantial assistance. Ilet,ce the
necessity for owners, 84 well as tenants, looking the
labour difficulty fairly in the face, and making pro-
vision against it in due time.
Substitution of a smaller number of highly-paid
workmen in place of the present force can be,raprdly
carried out over considerable tracts of country by
another revolution in airrieultural management
namely, the application of the stesm plough to clay
soil in corn husbandry, with a minimum of labour-
making roots and consumption crops, as practised by Mr.
John Prout, of Saubridgeworth ; Mr. Middleditch, of
131unindon near Swindon; Mr. Boufford, of Pitchill,
near Eveeham, and other noted steam farmers.
And, in a direction altogether different, slicing profit
for the occupier and rent for the owner may be
realised by a system of irrigation and artificial
manuring, as adapted by Mr. Coleman, of Stoke • park,
in Surrey. But the extension of such enterprise is
hopelees unless proprietors enter actively into the
work of improvement, or allow their estates to be
farmed on such terms as will encourage tenants to
effect the amelioration themselves. Thripresent aspect
of the labour question should move the whole agncul
nand intereet to an earnest con-ideration of these
things ; for I much mistake the vitiation if unions of
employers to resist increase o, wages and shortening of
time (necessary though such unions may be) will, in
the absence of mire solid and effectual measures, prove
a satialactury defence against demands which may
ruin us. . . . .

I have the honour to be your obedient servant,
JOHN ALGERNON cLAIMA
- .

Tby Salisbury Hotel, Fise-cat;;;S:T.ii.; Mey 31.

1041041 g the shove loner a gentleman writs !
tour correspondent "J. Algernon Chute" ha., I

think, lost sight of one important aspect of this ques-
tion.

If the labourer gets more money he will spend more,
and the bulk of it will go in beer, meat, dairy produce,
and everything else which a farmer grows directly or
indirectly. This cannot possibly occur without a lies
in price of all these commoditiee, and it is an 01,1:II
toi-stion whether in the long run the farmer gains or
loses. No class of men has so much to gain by the
general prosperity of the working classes.
I shad be told that prices will be kept down by
foreign competition. But is not the foreign corn-
grower as much affected as the English farmer by the
rise in the c )st of labour and its inevitable concomi-
tants, dear machinery anti dear freight ? flowerer,
as regards corn, it is, no doubt, true that competition
Aid keep down prices to a limited extent, but only to a
limited extent. The markets of the world are not
infinite even for corn. If they were, the price of wheat
in Mark.laue would be, practically, independent of the
goodness or badness of the English harvest, Is tWs so
in fact. Is it net rather the fact that when a bail
harvest in England compels 119 to import an extra five
million quarters we have to raise the price very con-
siderably in order to get It?
That a rise in wages must cause some rise in price of
all commodities mainly consumed by the wage-earners
is inevitable. Were it not, indeed, for foreimi com-
petition, the rise would be beyond all measure, if, for
instance, our labourers took a fancy to eat fresh
mutton, then, as more mutton cannot at once be grown,
and the well-to-do classes will not eat any less, some
one mast continue to abstain and the price must rise
to such point as may be necessary to enforce abstinence
on the poorest.
Lastly, I shall be told that the rice in price of nueAt
will be neutralized to the farmer by imported tligeasks.
It is no doubt only too true that the farmer has lost as
much ty "foot and mouth " as he has gained hitherto
by the rise in price, but the two things have no necess
oary connexion together. It would be as reasonable to
say that he would in future lose more by bad harvests
than he would gain by the rise.