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Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXV, Issue 1182, 9 December 1913, Page 4

be has paid rent, the produce of his labour should be considered by his employer as entirely independent of his wage. It must be further be remembered that during summer most ordinary labourers work at least ten or ten and a half hours a day, and men in charge of animals an hour and a half more than this. A man who has done this has not much energy left to continue the same kind of work in his spare time. “In the same way I think we have no right to consider the earnings of wife or children. A woman who is attending to her house and a family of young children ought not to have to go out to work—she needs all her energy for housework and for child-bearing, and the children need all theirs for school and play. Charles Lamb once remarked that ‘the children of the poor have no young times’ ; and Dr Adkins, a young county medical officer ot health, is stated in a White Paper just published by the Home Office to have said that ‘children cannot do both things—school and work. If you are going to improve the race you must either stop the labour they are doing or stop the schooling. They cannot do both ; their little bodies wiil not stand the strain of the education and the work.’

“There is no getting over the fact that in the low-paid counties in the South of England the lot of the agricultural labourer is not only bad, but very bad indeed. And this is the more serious because, while in many Continental countries the time which a man passes as an agricultural labourer is only a phase in bis life, and the great majority ot men expect sooner or later to become independent small holders, in England the vast majority of agricultural labourers who remain in the country never become independent at all. “No wonder that the best labourers are leaving the countryside, either migrating into the towns or going to the colouies or America. I would unhesitatingly, therefore, put the betterment of the conditions of the agricultural labourer as the most pressing need of rural life- “ How can his conditions be bettered? Firstly, he must, in the lower-paid counties, receive a large addition to his wage. Farmers may be inclined to say they cannot afford to pay this because the labour is of such poor quality. But is it uot poor because the pay is so small ? Somehow this vicious circle must be broken. Low-paid labour is seldom cheap. It is bad for the wage-payer and supremely bad for the nation. If the farmers in the North of England can afford 22s 6d for their labourers, and the farmers ia Scotland 255, why caunot the farmers in the South, where laud is just as good and rents no higher, afford the same wage ? If, however, they can really show that they cannot afford to pay the wages, then does it not follow that the landlord must lower the rents ? Is not the payment of a living wage the first charge upon every industry ? • “We now pass to the housing of the labourer. The inadequacy of rural cottages, both in number and quality, has come to be a matter of common knowledge, but only those who have made a detailed«study of the subject know the true extent of this evil.. It is no exaggeration to say that thousands or families are housed under conditions which no good farmer would permit for a moment in the case of his cattle or horses. Families, for want ot better accommodation, are forced to live in houses which destroy their health, both physical and moral. In the South of England especially, the overcrowding is often unspeakably bad, making it impossible to observe the common decencies of life, and girls are condemued to live for years under conditions to which nothing would induce us to subject our daughters for a single day. No wonder that immorality is rife. But no satisfactory solution of the housing problem can, I believe, be found until wages are high enough to enable the labourer to pay a commercial rent for his cottage. When they are, the problem will be easy of solution.’’