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.