AGRICULTURAL LABOUR.
THE way in which it is herein proposed to discuss this subject is by stating first some of the causes and conditions of the question; then pointing out the natural remedies, and illustrating these by practical examples.
Leaving to others such generic facts, if they may be so called, as revival of trade, influx of gold, rise in prices, education, and the demand for colonial labour, it will be of more practical use to call attention to two specific causes; one of which, however, may appear to some paradoxical, and the other remote: for one is the progress of improved Farming, and the other is Poor Law Administration, Results of these two causes respectively: a tendency to nomadism, where there should be permanency, and a tendency to stagnation where there should be locomotion. Further consequences: want of permanent relations between employer and employed, and want of prospect and outlet for the employed.
Now it would be wrong to suppose that improved farming or development of agriculture in any direction can be anything but beneficial to the labourer and all connected with the land in the main; but during the process from the old to the new system, that is from the comparatively small farmer without capital, machinery, or science, to the manufacturer of beef and corn who makes the land produce double, in the march of improvement the human part of the system, the labourer, requires a little reconsideration and readjustment in regard to his land and his home.
(1.) His land. Improved farming has merged
