COTTAGES FOR MARRIED WORKERS ON FARMS.

New Zealand Journal of Agriculture, Volume XV, Issue 4, 20 October 1917, Page 204

COTTAGES FOR MARRIED WORKERS ON FARMS.

The following very cogent remarks were , made by Mr. W. D. Hunt, of Invercargill, at the recent conference of the New Zealand Council of Agriculture, when moving an executive remit regarding the provision of financial assistance to enable farmers to erect cottages for married workers: —

The question of making proper provision for married workers on the farms of the Dominion is one that has been dealt with as yet only to a very small extent. If gone into thoroughly it will, I feel sure, do more than anything else to check the drift of population to the towns, , and also be the means of placing more people in the country, than all other means put together. ■

Even before - the war the supply and the conditions of agricultural and pastoral labour were both most unsatisfactory. The demand for labour in the country has always been much greater than the supply, but the demand has always been for single labour. Married labour was not wanted, because. there was no accommodation for it. For years there has • been no difficulty in obtaining married labour for country situations when suitable conditions were provided. The supply has always been much in excess of the • demand, and even to-day under war conditions and a great scarcity of labour there are more married men available for country situations than there are positions to give them. I am satisfied, from my own experience and .observations that if suitable cottages were provided for married men it would largely solve the labour trouble on farms, and largely help not only in stopping the present drift to the towns, but set up a return drift to the country. If a young single man is working on a farm and wants to get married, he has the greatest difficulty in finding a situation on a farm where he will be provided with a comfortable home for himself and his wife. The young man and the girl he proposes to marry may desire, above all things, to remain in the country, but, if they are married, nine times out of ten they are forced to leave the country simply because the man cannot obtain a situation where he can take his wife and live in reasonable comfort. They are compelled to go to some town or township in order to get a house, and the man and his family become permanently lost to the country. The man has to abandon the occupation that he has been trained to and become expert in, and which, if continued in, would probably have resulted in his ultimately becoming a farmer on his own account. As often as not, in the town he goes to he drifts into the last of all occupations — that of a casual labourer — else some other blind-alley occupation that leads to nothing. This all means great loss to the man, to his family, and to the State.

The only remedy for all this is for farmers who employ labour to erect cottages and employ married men. This raises the question of finance. To build a comfortable cottage requires £4OO. Not many farmers can spare this sum right off in cash. I think the State should advance the farmers the. money at as low a rate of interest as possible, obtaining repayment by way of a rate on the farm spread over a long period of years, which would wipe out both principal and interest on the instalment system. It may be argued that this would be unfair to the mortgagee (if any), but Ido not think so. The rate should be a first charge on the land, and would thus come before the mortgage; but the mortgagee would have his security added to by the value of the cottage erected, and by the assurance that the farm would be more adequately worked by reason of a more certain supply of labour. The principle involved is the same as that under which River Boards are formed, and money is borrowed to straighten and deepen a stream, and so drain a large area. The interest and principal is repaid by a rate over the land affected, and this rate comes before all mortgages. The mortgagee is deemed to be compensated by having a better-drained security. , . .

The married men employed on farms in the South where cottages are supplied are generally paid a weekly or yearly wage, but get no food : they find themselves. The cottage is supplied rent-free ; and as much land as is required for a garden and poultry-run is attached to it. A milk-cow is also-supplied, as a rule, and this keeps the man and his family in both milk and butter. Most married men, too, keep a couple of pigs,'which are fed on the refuse from house and garden and the,, skim-milk. These things, apart from, the cottage, cost the farmer almost nothing,' but they are the greater part of a living for an industrious family. A ' man getting £2 ss. a week and the extras mentioned is infinitely better off than a man in town getting £3 a week, and the conditions under which his children are brought up are better almost beyond comparison. The farmer is ever so much better off with a married man on the conditions mentioned than with a single man at £2 a week and his food. Married men take much more interest in their work than single men. Further, the relief to a farmer’s wife by being freed from the labour of cooking for the men is not by any means the least advantage of the arrangement.

There are very few of our farms that could not efficiently employ more labour than they now do, provided they could make satisfactory arrangements for a certain supply. An additional labourer placed on a farm will increase production just as much as an additional settler placed on a section and working it himself. The married labourer can be supplied by a capital outlay of £4OO. The settler requires a capital outlay of £4,500.

I will now try to show the area of the field, that the suggested scheme has to work n According to the census of 1911 we had in the Dominion 19,984 farmers employing labour. The hands they employed numbered 39,439, or an average of two each. In addition, they had relatives assisting without wages to the number of 14,033. Besides, there were 29,941 farmers in business on their own account who did not employ labour. lam sure many of these could do with labour if they could get it. I am quite .satisfied that there is ample

room for the profitable use of 50 per cent, additional labour on our present farms, provided a supply can be obtained that can be relied on, and it would quickly be used if the supply could be obtained. There will be room when the war is over for twenty thousand cottages on our farms. A large number of married labourers on farms would be the very best source possible to keep up the iuture supply of farmers to take up unimproved lands, and also to occupy subdivisions of larger estates being cut up. The provision for married labour would also result in a much larger number of children being brought up in the healthy surroundings of the country. They would grow up .with the country instinct bred into them, and would, I am sure, in years to come prove to be the best of our population.