Page:Farm labourers, their friendly societies, and the poor law.djvu/8

 insurances demand our special attention, and whose lot is cast within the verge of pauperism. In order to understand the construction and cost, the management and provision of their benefit societies, reference must be made to the Poor Law. And we are glad that at length the necessity of enquiry into the bearing of the Poor Law or Friendly Societies is recognised. The last report of the Commission on the employment of children, young persons, and women in agriculture, recommends further investigation. An important consideration, which underlies the whole question of the insurances of the rural poor, is that their wages shall be sufficient to enable them to save. The variation in the rate of wages is a question into which we need not enter further than to notice that it varies with the price of food and fuel, house and garden rents, and the pernicious custom of part payment in drink or the produce of the farm, and also the means of the farmer. But the point in connection with the wages to which we shall draw attention is one which appears to have escaped the notice of the Commissioners. There is no difficulty in proving that, wherever farm labourers form and maintain benefit societies of the common order, their wages are sufficient to secure to them over and above their present maintenance an independence, provided only they had the means of safe insurances, and would turn them to a right account. It is, we admit, an independence of an humble kind, but still sufficient to raise those who gain it above pauperism, unless under extraordinary pressure and trial, when help from the poor-rate may be honestly claimed, and received without social or moral degradation. And the effort to secure such provision by self-help and prudent management would of itself infuse new life and energies into the English labourer.