Edition Bobbett1. Texts by Elizabeth F. Bobbett: 1.1.3. Correspondence, Letters to newspapers

1936 Elizabeth Bobbett: Letter to the Wicklow People, 21.11.1936

Women and Agricultural Wages Board

Through your paper I appeal to the farmers’ wives and daughters and to all girls engaged in country employment, which includes work on a farm, to protest most emphatically and demand recognition for your labour under the Agricultural Wages Bill. I wish to point out that at present the farmers’ wives and daughters, although they do a very considerable amount of work on the farm, are not included in the relief given under the agricultural grant for the rates.

Over a certain poor-law valuation a farmer gets allowed £12 10s off his PLV for each man or son employed on the land. The farmer who has no son, but, perhaps, three daughters, is given no relief whatever, and again, though the daughters receive no fixed salary, their labours are unjustly taxed by 3d per lb collected off their butter. I wonder how many business men would stand such a tax – 3d in every 1s – which may in some cases come up to £20 or £30 a year (an additional head rent). When is it all going to end? The farmers must be put in a position to pay any increased wages. We all agree the agricultural labourer is the worst paid of all, except the farmer himself.