VILLAGE TRADE 
 
 UNIONS IN TWO 
 
 CENTURIES 
 
 E, SELLEY 
 
g'tate QfoUep of Agticttlture 
 At (Qocnell IniuetBity 
 
 3tl(ara, «. f . 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tliis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013694777 
 
VILLAGE TRADE UNIONS 
 IN TWO CENTURIES 
 
Village Trade Unions 
 in Two Centuries 
 
 By 
 
 Ernest Sellcy 
 
 NEW YORK 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 

 C^tSiK, 
 
 {All rights reserved) 
 
PREFACE 
 
 I WISH to record my obligation to Mr. A. W. Ashby 
 
 and Mr. L. M. Marshall for their helpful criticisms 
 
 and suggestions, and also to express my gratitude 
 
 to Mr. George Dallas, of The Workers' Union, 
 
 and Mr. R. B. Walker, of the National Agrir 
 
 cultural Labourers' and Rural Workers' Union, 
 
 who have willingly placed at my disposal the 
 
 facts relating to the growth of their respective 
 
 organizations. 
 
 E. S. 
 
 London, July 1919. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 NINETEENTH CENTURY 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 I. THE FIRST UNION 
 
 PAGE 
 ... II 
 
 II. 
 
 THE INTERVAL 
 
 ... 22 
 
 III. 
 
 THE REVOLT 
 
 33 
 
 IV. 
 
 THE NATIONAL 
 
 44 
 
 V. 
 
 OPPOSITION 
 
 S3 
 
 VI. 
 
 COLLAPSE 
 
 64 
 
 VII. 
 
 RESULTS 
 
 80 
 
 VIII. 
 
 TWO LEADERS 
 
 93 
 
 TWENTIETH CENTURY 
 
 I. THE BETRAYAL 
 II. THE NEW UNIONS 
 
 III. THE TRUCE 
 
 IV. THE AWAKENING 
 INDEX 
 
 . 109 
 . 121 
 . 139 
 . 1S8 
 
 . 181 
 
NINETEENTH CENTURY 
 
village Trade Unions in 
 "Two Centuries 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 THE FIRST UNION 
 
 ''How beggarly appear arguments before a defiant deed! " 
 
 The first English Agricultural Labourers' Union 
 was formed in 1833 at Tolpuddle, an obscure village 
 in Dorsetshire. It existed only a few months, and 
 was a complete failure. Had it not been for the 
 senseless brutality of the Government, the story 
 of this little Union might never have been recorded. 
 Yet the story of the " Dorchester Labourers " is 
 a weU-known episode of early Trade Union History. 
 It was a time of great agricultural distress, and it 
 is doubtful whether even a well-organized, powerful 
 combination could have succeeded by direct action 
 in raising the standard of living among farm 
 labourers. There was a sufficient "reserve of 
 labour " to break the back of the most powerfully 
 
 11 
 
VILLAGE TRADE UNIONS 
 
 organized Union. Thousands of starving unem- 
 ployed labourers were ready to work for even less 
 than seven shillings a week, which was the sum the 
 Tolpuddle fanners were paying. Small wonder, 
 then, that this tiny Union with no funds failed in 
 its objects. Let alone, it would have uttered its 
 valiant protest and disappeared. The Union men 
 thus defeated and turned adrift might have ac- 
 quired local celebrity as wicked men who richly 
 deserved the fate which had befallen them. And 
 the clergyman from his pulpit might occasionally 
 have held them up as examples of what would 
 certainly happen to all those with a tendency to 
 be dissatisfied with the dispensations of Providence. 
 Doubtless this fame was not denied them ; but 
 they gained even greater celebrity. They became 
 national bogies. Half a dozen untutored agricul- 
 tural labourers frightened a powerful Government 
 out of its wits. A wave of panic swept the seats 
 of the mighty. The Times wrote of a " dangerous 
 imion," " that criminal and fearful spirit of com- 
 bination." Members of Parliament thought it 
 " abominable " that labourers should " unite to 
 persecute their employers." Poor, down-trodden 
 labourers, earning seven shillings a week, had 
 become " criminal," " fearfiil," and " abominable," 
 because they thought they ought to have more 
 than seven shillings a week, and said so. These 
 utterances show how little the ruling classes under- 
 stood the distress- of the times. Hitherto, unrest 
 in the country districts had made itself known 
 by means of arson. 
 12 
 
THE FIRST UNION 
 
 " In the winter (1830-1)," writes Engels, " the farmers* 
 hay and com stacks were burnt in the fields, and the 
 very bams and stables under their windows. Nearly 
 every night a couple of such fires blazed up, and spread 
 terror among the farmers and landlords. The ofienders 
 were rarely discovered, and the workers attributed the 
 incendiarism to a mythical person whom they named 
 ' Swing '." 
 
 E. G. Wakefield, M.P., in a pamphlet entitled 
 Swing Unmasked (1830), thus describes the lot of 
 the agricultural labourer : — 
 
 " An EngKsh agricultural labourer and an English 
 pauper — ^these words are synonymous. His father was a 
 pauper and his mother's milk contained no nourishment. 
 From his earUest childhood he had bad food, and only half 
 enough to still his hunger, and even yet he undergoes 
 the pangs of unsatisfied hunger almost all the time that 
 he is not asleep. . . . His wretched existence is brief ; 
 rheumatism and asthma bring him to the workhouse, 
 where he will draw his last, breath without a single pleasant 
 recollection, and will make room for another luckless 
 wretch to live and die as he has done." 
 
 Such was the general condition of farm labourers 
 when the Trade Union standard was first raised 
 by the bold peasants of Tolpuddle. The story of 
 how the Union came to be formed is told by George 
 Loveless, a Methodist lay preacher, who was the 
 local " village Hampden." It was in 1831 or 1832 
 that the men first voiced their discontent. 
 
 They met the farmers in the presence of the 
 parson and asked to be paid the same wages as 
 other farmers in the district were paying]; which 
 was said to be los. a week. It was mutually agreed 
 
 13 
 
VILLAGE TRADE UNIONS 
 
 that the wages should be 9s. a week. " No language 
 of intimidation or threatening was used on this 
 occasion." However, the farmers did not keep 
 their side of the bargain, for shortly after the 
 wages were reduced to 8s. 
 
 " This," says Loveless, " caused great dissatisfaction, 
 and all the labouring men in the village, with the exception 
 of two or three invalids, made application to a neigh- 
 bouring magistrate . . . and asked his advice : he told 
 us that if the labourers would appoint two or three, and 
 come to the County Hall the following Saturday, he would 
 apprise the chief magistrate, and at the same time our 
 employers should be sent for to settle the subject. I 
 was nominated to appear, and when there, we were told 
 that we must work for what our employers thought fit 
 to give us, as there was no law to compel masters to give 
 any fixed sum." 
 
 Wages were reduced to seven shillings a week, 
 and the men were told that shortly they would 
 have to be content with six ! Then, and not till 
 then, did the men think of forming a Union. 
 Loveless thus describes how it came about : — 
 
 " The labouring men consulted together what had 
 better be done, as they knew it was impossible to live 
 honestly on such scanty means. I had seen at different 
 times accounts of Trade Societies ; I told thmsx of this, 
 and they willingly consented to forln a Friendly Society 
 among the labourers, having sufficiently learned that 
 it would be vain to seek redress either of employers, magis- 
 trates, or parsons. I enquired of a brother to get infor- 
 mation how to proceed, and shortly after, two delegates 
 from a Trade Society paid us a visit, formed a Friendly 
 Society among the labourers, and gave us directions 
 how to proceed." 
 14 
 
THE FIRST UNION 
 
 This was in October 1833. 
 
 The ritual and code of rules adopted were similar 
 to those in use among the many branches of the 
 " Grand National Consohdated Trades Union," 
 which were springing up everywhere in the towns 
 and cities. The farm labourers were simply taking 
 a leaf out of the town artisan's book. Many of 
 the rules were quaint, but it must be remembered 
 that those were the very early days of Trade 
 Unions. All the Trade Unions of that day ad- 
 ministered an oath of secrecy, and possessed some 
 sort of regalia. The Tolpuddle branch had a 
 figure of " Death painted six feet high " with which 
 to perform the rites of initiation. There was to be 
 an Outside and Inside Guardian, and the Password 
 was to be changed every quarter. 
 
 The lawful intention of the Union is proved 
 by Rule 23 : — 
 
 " That the object of this Society can never be promoted 
 by any act or acts of violence, but, on the contrary, all 
 such proceedings must tend to injure and destroy the 
 Society itself. This Order, therefore, will not counten- 
 ance any violation of the Laws." 
 
 Lodge meetings were evidently run on strict 
 business Hues, for one of the bye-laws directed that 
 no member should be " allowed to eat, read, sleep, 
 swear, bet wagers, or use any absurd language 
 during Lodge hours." This wholesome rule might, 
 with advantage, be adopted to-day by both Houses 
 of Parliament. 
 The oath of secrecy and the ritual may appear 
 
 15 
 
VILLAGE TRADE UNIONS 
 
 humorous to many in these days, but no farm 
 labourer dared to let it be known that he had 
 anything to do with a Trade Union. However, 
 in spite of their elaborate precautions, the Tolpuddle 
 Unionists were unable to keep Judas outside. 
 
 Nothing happened until the Union had been 
 in existence for four months, when, on February 
 21, 1834, placards were posted in conspicuous 
 places, warning the labourers that membership of 
 the Union was a crime 1;o be punished by seven 
 years' transportation. As yet the Union had 
 issued no manifesto, made no claim, uttered no 
 threat. Yet within three days of the publication 
 of this warning, James Loveless, George Loveless, 
 Thomas Stanfield, John Stanfield, James Hammett, 
 and James Brine, " evil-disposed persons," were 
 arrested and thrown into jail. 
 
 Mr. Sidney Webb, in his History of Trades Unions, 
 says : " The trial of these unfortunate labourers 
 was a scandalous perversion of the law." The 
 laws against combination had been repealed in 
 1824 ; therefore it was not illegal to form an associa- 
 tion having for its object the raising of wages. 
 So an old statute intended for the suppression of 
 seditious societies was specially invoked, and the 
 six prisoners, after a brief and farcical trial, re- 
 ceived a sentence of seven years' transportation 
 for the crime of having administered an oath ! 
 
 Referring to this episode, Sir Spencer Walpole 
 writes : — 
 
 " The statute had been rarely enforced : practically 
 it had been disregarded by every Trade Union in the 
 16 
 
THE FIRST UNION 
 
 Kingdom. It was suddenly resuscitated to punish the 
 men who had formed the first Agricultural Union." 
 
 Daniel Q'Connell, speaking in the House of 
 Commons, said : — 
 
 " It was a slumbering statute, and had not been carried 
 into effect against the many associations who took the 
 oath. . . . Only now raked up to inflict an enormous 
 punishment on unfortunate men who were wholly ignorant 
 of its existence and innocent of any moral offence." 
 
 The Times (April i, 1834) summed up the case 
 exactly : — 
 
 " All Freemasons and Orangemen . . . might with 
 equal justice be sentenced to transportation for the fact 
 of having taken secret and unlawful oaths as these poor 
 fellows. ... In the case of the Dorchester labourers 
 the formal charge against them was that of administering 
 and being bound by secret, and therefore unlawful, oaths : 
 whereas the real gravamen of their guilt was their forming 
 a dangerous union, to force up, by various modes of 
 intimidation and restraint, the rate of labourers' wages." 
 
 But after remarking that the sentence was " too 
 severe " (March 21, 1834), it naively added : " But 
 it may be useful if it spreads alarm among those 
 more acute and powerful disturbers of the town 
 populations throughout England." 
 
 Edward Bulwer (afterwards Lord Lytton), Mr. 
 Hume, and others uttered strong protests in 
 ParUament, and condemned the undue haste with 
 which the men were hurried off to the hulks before 
 the general expression of pubUc sympathy could 
 
 B 17 
 
VILLAGE TRADE UNIONS 
 
 have any effect in their favour. The judge who 
 tried the case had only recently been raised to the 
 bench. It took him two days to decide ^yhether 
 he could pass sentence on the accused. Notwith- 
 standing the many protests uttered inside and 
 outside Parliament, there were not lacking those 
 who supported the brutal sentence. Lord Mel- 
 bourne agreed that " the law has in this case been 
 most properly atppUed." But it was reserved to 
 the noble Lord Howick, from his seat in the House 
 of Commons, to utter the most pitiful nonsense. 
 He tried to prove that the labourers knew that 
 they were doing wrong : for (and here one can 
 almost feel the shudder which shook the chamber) 
 did not they hold their meetings at night? 
 
 While awaiting trial attempts were made to get 
 the men to turn informers, but they steadfastly 
 refused. They also rec^ved attention from the 
 prison chaplain. 
 
 " After upbraiding and taunting us with being dis- 
 contented and idle, and wishing to ruin our masters, he 
 proceeded to tell us that we were better off than our 
 masters." 
 
 At the trial : — 
 
 " Our characters were investigated from our infancy. 
 
 . . Our masters were enquired of to know if we were 
 not idle, or attended public-houses, or some other fault 
 in us ; and much as they were opposed to us, they had 
 common honesty enough to declare that we were good 
 labouring servants, and that they never heard of any 
 complaint against us." 
 18 
 
THE FIRST UNION 
 
 Daniel O'Connell, in the House of Commons, 
 read a letter from a solicitor who was present at 
 the trial, in which it was stated : — 
 
 " This evidence was given in a very loose and indistinct 
 manner and varied very materially from the depositions 
 of the same witnesses taken before the County magis- 
 trates. On the principal point, the taking of an oath, 
 the witnesses stated that they could not recollect what 
 was said. The Counsel for the Prosecution in vain 
 endeavoured to elicit such answers as would have sup- 
 ported the indictment ; and such answers as were at 
 last drawn from them with great difficulty, were suggested 
 to them in the form of leading questions, by the judge 
 reading from the depositions." 
 
 After sentence was passed, and as the prisoners 
 were being led away, James Loveless scribbled 
 some verses on a piece of paper and threw it among 
 the crowd. 
 
 This is one of the verses : — 
 
 " God is our guide ! no swords we draw. 
 We kindle not war's battle fires ; 
 By reason, union, justice, law. 
 We claim the birthright of our sires. 
 We raise the watchword liberty. 
 We will, we will, we will be free ! " 
 
 But the matter was not allowed to rest. Public 
 meetings of protest were held aU over the country. 
 Within seven days of the trial WiUiam Cobbett 
 presented at the bar of the House of Commons 
 a petition signed by twelve thousand persons in 
 
 London. 
 
 19 
 
VILLAGE TRADE UNIONS 
 
 Meanwhile the whole of the Trade Union move- 
 ment threw itself into the task of organizing a 
 monster procession to present a petition. The 
 petition was signed by over 250,000 persons. The 
 Government became alarmed. Troops were hurried 
 to London and special constables sworn in. But 
 they were not required. The demonstrators were 
 quite orderly. The Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne, 
 refused to receive any deputations or petitions 
 from the processionists. Nevertheless they marched 
 through London and held a demonstration in 
 Copenhagen Fields. Accounts vary as to the 
 numbers taking part in the procession. The Trade 
 Unions declared that from one hundred thousand 
 to two hundred thousand were present. 
 
 Edward Bulwer, in the House, referred to the 
 " countless thousands who swept the streets of 
 the metropolis in such orderly and formidable 
 procession." Whatever the exact figure might 
 have been, the demonstration was of a monster 
 size. Nothing hke it had ever been witnessed in 
 London before. It was the first of the great 
 demonstrations which have since become a popular 
 method of influencing politics. 
 
 The Government refused to recant, and the 
 men were sent to Botany Bay. However, a body 
 of workmen, known as the London Dorchester 
 Committee, kept up the agitation for release, 
 and collected £1,300 on behalf of the victims. 
 After two years' unceasing agitation they succeeded 
 in inducing the same Government that banished 
 the men to issue a pardon. The funds collected 
 20 
 
THE FIRST UNION 
 
 enabled the committee eventually to place five 
 of the men and their families on small farms in 
 Essex, and to return the sixth to his native place. 
 George Loveless eventually emigrated to Canada, 
 and in 1873 was reported to be " in very prosperous 
 circumstances." 
 
 " This cruel abuse of judicial power," says Hasbach, 
 " only comprehensible in view ol the dread which had 
 been aroused by the Trade Unions, kept the labourers 
 from advancing along this road through one of the saddest 
 periods of their history." 
 
 21 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE INTERVAL 
 
 '' Has the night descended ? 
 Was the road of late so toilsome, did we stop discouraged 
 nodding on our way ? " 
 
 Well might Mr. Jesse Collings write : — 
 
 " The story of the EngUsh agricultural labourer is one 
 of the saddest in our history ... no pen can exaggerate 
 their sufferings and the lowness of their condition. . . . 
 In all but the name they were worse off than serfs of olden 
 times, for serfs, though slaves, had plenty of food, generally 
 land to cultivate, and dwellings which they regarded 
 practically as their own." 
 
 In earlier times the landless labourer was the 
 exception. Men who worked entirely for wages 
 were a comparatively small class. Between them 
 and the farmer was a large class of men who enjoyed 
 a certain amoimt of independence. They divided 
 their time in varying proportions between work 
 for the farmer and work for themselves. The 
 farmer was dependent upon their assistance during 
 the busy seasons, and the men were glad to work 
 for the farmer at such seasons, and also to earn 
 22 
 
THE INTERVAL 
 
 money by occasional day-work. In addition, the 
 labourer's income was often increased by the in- 
 dustry of his wife and family. Before the Factory 
 System was introduced, many industries were 
 carried on in the homes. The Industrial Revolu- 
 tion changed all that. And the Enclosures prac- 
 tically swept the small-holder out of existence. 
 He became dependent solely upon wages. 
 
 The relations of farmer and labourer were now 
 on a different footing. Formerly their interests 
 were mutual ; in good seasons they shared pros- 
 perity together ; in bad ones they were partners 
 in misfortune. Now, in times of depression, the 
 day-workers were turned adrift to starve. Land- 
 less, wretched, inarticulate, they had not the 
 energy to help themselves. They struggled on 
 beneath the heavy yoke of oppression without the 
 knowledge or the imagination which would have 
 made them free. 
 
 " Swing " and his tinder-box commenced once 
 again to speak the " loud though inarticulate lan- 
 guage " of which Carlyle wrote. Frederick Engels, 
 in 1844, said : " Since that year (1831) the incen- 
 diarisms have been repeated every winter, with 
 each recurring unemployed season of the agricultural 
 labourers." Moreover, quoting from the Northern 
 Star, 1843-44, he says : — 
 
 " November 25, 1843, two cases ; several earlier ones 
 are discussed. December i6th, in Bedfordshire, general 
 excitement for a fortnight past in consequence of frequent 
 incendiarisms, of which several take place every night. 
 Two great farmhouses burnt down within the last few 
 
VILLAGE TRADE UNIONS 
 
 days ; in Cambridgeshire four great farmhouses, Hert- 
 fordshire one, and besides these, fifteen other incendiarisms 
 in different districts. December 30th, in Norfolk one, 
 Suffolk two, Essex two, Cheshire one, Lancashire one, 
 Derby, Lincoln and the South twelve. January 6, 1844, 
 in all ten. January 13th, seven. January 20th, four 
 incendiarisms. From this time forward, three or four 
 incendiarisms per week are reported, and not as formerly 
 imtil the spring only, but far into July and August. And 
 that crimes of this sort are expected to increase in the 
 approaching hard season of 1844-45, the English papers 
 already indicate." 
 
 The flaring ricks and smouldering barns were 
 beacon fires flashing out messages which few could 
 interpret, certainly no one in the agricultural 
 districts. They were signals of distress from a 
 suUen, despairing peasantry. 
 
 The boom in industrial prosperity which took 
 place in the thirties eased the situation for a great 
 many farm labourers. Many migrated to the 
 towns, while others left the land to become navvies 
 on the railways, which began to be constructed 
 all over the country. Many, too, who remained 
 on the land, worked on the railways during the 
 winter months. 
 
 Wages in agriculture generally did not improve. 
 Three years after the Union had been suppressed, 
 when the agricultural situation had improved, 
 the average wage for Dorset was 7s. 6d. a week, 
 and in only two counties in the West Midland and 
 South-Westem area did wages average los. a 
 week. Between 1837 and 1850 cash wages fell in 
 every part of England, in the West Midlands and 
 24 
 
THE INTERVAL 
 
 South-Western division from 8s. lod. to 7s. 2d. 
 a week.^ It must be remembered that these figures 
 represented the average. Therefore, while some 
 labourers were receiving more than 7s. 2d. a week, 
 many, especially in Devon and Dorset, were re- 
 ceiving less. 
 
 After 1850 wages gradually rose, until, in 1870, 
 the average for England was 12s. 4^d. In addition 
 to his cash wage, the labourer in some cases received 
 allowances and perquisites, such as a free or low- 
 rented cottage, a strip of potato groimd, fuel, and 
 beer or cider. The value of such allowances varied 
 in different districts. In some parishes the ordinary 
 labourer received nothing but his wage. In North 
 Devon, in 1866, according to Canon Girdlestone, 
 the ordinary labourer received no privileges what- 
 ever. Thus in thirty-three years the average 
 weekly wage for England had risen by 2s. In some 
 districts the increase was very slight. In Norfolk 
 average wages had only risen id. a week since 1837, 
 and stood at los. 5d. in 1870. Wages in Suffolk 
 rose 6d. a week during the same period. Colour is 
 given to these statistics by the evidence before 
 the Royal Commission, which reported in 1867. 
 The commissioner for Dorset, Kent, Chester, Salop, 
 Staffordshire, and Rutland reported that in all 
 six counties the greater number of agricultural 
 labourers were sadly underfed. 
 
 In order to subsist, whole families had to work 
 in the fields. One of the great abuses of the period 
 1830-67 was the exploitation of the labour of 
 
 " See Appendix I. 
 
 25 
 
VILLAGE TRADE UNIONS 
 
 women and children. By 1843 it was the excep- 
 tion to find a district where they were not employed 
 in agricultural work. A man's attempt to increase 
 his family income by means of the labour of his 
 wife and children brought that labour into compe- 
 tition with his own. The result was that the total 
 family income was rarely above subsistence level. 
 Children of tender years were forced to work in 
 the fields, and boys of nine, and even seven, and 
 girls between the ages of twelve and sixteen, found 
 constant employment at stone-picking, bird-scaring, 
 potato-setting, and weeding. Women were usually 
 employed in weeding and hoeing, but in some 
 districts they might be found acting as carters, 
 and doing other work usually performed by men. 
 It became customary for men and women and 
 children to work in gangs, tramping from place to 
 place in charge of gang-masters, who entered into 
 contracts with farmers for the performance of field 
 work. This rough, nomadic fife deprived the 
 children of their scant opportunities for education, 
 and subjected them to much physical hardship. 
 Women and girls worked alongside men in the 
 fields, and, when distance prevented them from 
 tramping to and from their homes, they were 
 compelled to lodge promiscuously in barns and 
 outhouses. The result was grave moral deteriora- 
 tion. Speaking of the gang system, Joseph Arch 
 says : — 
 
 " There was no limit as to age, and I have seen little 
 mites of things in potato fields who were hardly old enough 
 to walk ; and I have seen poor little toddlers set to tumip- 
 26 
 
THE INTERVAL 
 
 singling when they ahoirld hav« been indoors with their 
 mother." 
 
 In 1843 Special Commissioners appointed by 
 the Poor Law Commission reported on the serious 
 consequences of the system, but it was not until 
 1867 that the Gangs Act was passed. sThis Act 
 provided for the separation of the sexes into their 
 own gangs, and forbade the employment of children 
 under eight years of age. 
 
 In those days thousands of farm labourers' 
 children were deprived of opportunities of education. 
 If a lad attended school at all, the circumstances 
 of the family often made it necessary for him to 
 be taken away at an early age in order to augment 
 the family income. The country-side acquiesced, 
 for education was considered the privilege of the 
 farmer, the tradespeople, and the gentry. The 
 farm labourer needed only strong arms, not active 
 brains. The schools that existed in the villages 
 were mostly voluntary, and dominated by the 
 clergy. It was not thought necessary to give a 
 village child the opportunity of acquiring more 
 than a few scraps of rudimentary knowledge. An 
 imperfect acquaintance with the " three R's " was 
 considered enough, provided the child could recite 
 the Creed, the Commandments, and the Lord's 
 Prayer. At Leamington in 1872, at the first farm 
 labourers' conference, an old man who rose to 
 speak said : " All as ever I larnt were the Creed, 
 the Commandments, and the Lord's Prayer, an' 
 I war thout fit to go thru the world, tho' I didna 
 
 27 
 
VILLAGE TRADE UNIONS 
 
 know what any on 'em meant, ony the letter 
 loike." Speaker after speaker prefaced his observa- 
 tions with the apology : " I hav'n't no larnin'." 
 " I never had no schoohn' as I knows on." 
 
 Many farm labourers, rather Ihan see their families 
 starve, stole turnips and potatoes from the farmers' 
 fields, or l&iocked over a pheasant or a hare. And 
 though they might starve and retain their hcmour 
 and liberty, if distress drove them to steal turnips 
 or poach for game they became criminals, and, 
 if caught, were sent to prison. To be caught 
 taking game a second time meant seven years' 
 transportation ! The pheasant could rob a farmer's 
 field and be protected by a set of the most ferocious 
 laws which ever disgraced a civilized country, but 
 the labourer had no protection against those who 
 robbed him of the reward of his labour. 
 
 Mr. George Edwards to this day vividly recalls 
 the sufferings of the farm labourers during the 
 Crimean war. Bread was 4s. a stone, and the 
 price of meat prohibitive. Many famihes literally 
 starved. The alternative was to steal. His own 
 father was caught bringing home turnips for his 
 starving family. For this " crime " he was sent 
 to prison for fourteen days. While the father was 
 in prison the mother and family had to go to the 
 workhouse. 
 
 Those who remained honest were tamed into 
 servitude — a servitude more degrading than any 
 the penal laws could inflict. Years of poverty 
 had ground the spirit of independence out of most 
 of these poor helots. They had learnt by experience 
 28 
 
THE INTERVAL 
 
 to accept their lot as they did the rectory soup and 
 blankets, with resignation. No doubt alms were 
 doled out by kindly people who imagined they 
 were performing acts of Christian service, and who, 
 in many cases, were not themselves rich in this 
 world's goods. But they had not learnt that a 
 certain type of charity degrades the one who gives 
 as much as the one who receives. 
 
 The Royal Commission which reported in 1867 
 regarded his cottage as almost the worst feature 
 of the labourer's lot. Fraser, afterwards Bishop 
 of Manchester, stated that in his district " the 
 majority of the cottages that exist in rural parishes 
 are deficient in almost every requisite that should 
 constitute a home for a Christian family in a civil- 
 ized community." Many were compelled to Uve 
 in their masters' cottages. They were afraid to 
 complain aloud of their misery, or even to beg for 
 any alleviation. To offend the master, in most cases, 
 meant being turned out into the road. Independence 
 was not likely to thrive under such conditions. 
 
 Overcrowding was common, families of eight 
 
 and ten hving in cottages with only one, or at 
 
 most two, bedrooms. Many of the dwellings were 
 
 dilapidated and insanitary — veritable hotbeds of 
 
 disease and death. In such hovels as these the 
 
 labourer lived on sufferance. Theie he might 
 
 exist, worse treated than the cattle. Let him rise 
 
 for one moment above the level of the brute, and 
 
 he would soon be shown that it was dangerous to 
 
 play the part of a human being— by being turned 
 
 adrift, perhaps to starve. 
 
 29 
 
VILLAGE TRADE UNIONS 
 
 Mr. Francis Heath, in his book The English 
 Peasantry, writing of this period, said : — 
 
 " Everything was against them [the labourers]. Badly 
 housed in most cases, living sometimes in miserable hovels 
 unfit for the accommodation of cattle, and leading in 
 consequence a life of semi-starvation, insufficiently clothed, 
 and subjected frequently to the brutal ill-treatment of 
 employers, how could they raise themselves from their 
 unfortunate position ? Even the law would not always 
 afford them protection against injustice." 
 
 Canon Girdlestone, writing of a village in North 
 Devon, says he found the " general sanitary condi- 
 tions very had. Numbers of the labourers' cottages 
 unfit for the housing of pigs. Pools of stagnant 
 water standing in different parts of the parish, 
 varied occasionally by stinking ditches. Heaps of 
 manure thrown up under the windows of many of 
 the dwelling-houses. The whole village was badly 
 drained ; open sewers running through the place, 
 frequently trickUng down from the cottage into 
 the brook, from which the villagers and children 
 often drank, and cattle too.^ Result, disease and 
 death." 
 
 What, then, was the farm labourer to do ? He 
 had no prospects whatsoever, and to talk of thrift 
 was a mockery. How could a man earning los. 
 a week with a family to feed and clothe put by 
 for a rainy day ? People talk of thrift as though 
 the exercise of it is only proved by showing a 
 balance at the end of the year. These labourers 
 and their wives already exercised thrift in its most 
 extreme and vicious form, and after half starving 
 30 
 
THE INTERVAL 
 
 themselves and their children all the year round, 
 generally found themselves in debt with the village 
 shopkeeper. The necessity for such thrift was a 
 standing disgrace for a nation that was increasing 
 its wealth by leaps and bounds every year, and to 
 the class of farmers who were more prosperous 
 than Enghsh farmers had ever been. The populace 
 which cheered the soldiers returning from the 
 Crimea and the Mutiny ignored the conditions 
 of the villages from which the army had been 
 largely recruited. 
 
 In many a rural poorhouse were parents whose 
 sons had died for the honour of Britain, outside 
 Sebastopol or under a tropical sun. Such was 
 the prospect of thousands of English farm labourers. 
 The proper place for the worn-out veterans of the 
 soil was the poorhouse. At the end of many 
 laborious years they were doomed to submit to 
 the indignities of a pauper's lot. 
 
 " Nothin', genelmen ! " said an aged labourer at the 
 first Leamington Conference in 1872, " arter havin' kep' 
 one's character, and braat — ^naay dragged — up large 
 families, as is doin' creditable ; arter havin' kep' un ofi 
 the parish ; arter havin' lived days un days on a bit o' 
 bread wi' maybe a Uttle hedge fruit, or the matter o' a 
 ra' turnip — nothin' to fall back on but half a crown a 
 week and a loaf ! and the country be so rich ! Why, we 
 be waarse off then the convicks. Ween dun our best, 
 an' now as weer old an' can do no more, we've fourpence 
 a day an' a loaf onct a week." 
 
 Sometimes a newspaper correspondent would 
 provide a sensation for his readers by a graphic 
 
 31 
 
VILLAGE TRADE UNIONS 
 
 account of conditions in remote villages. In 1846 
 The Times sent a special correspondent to Dorset- 
 shire to report on the " shocking conditions," and 
 the Morning Chronicle published letters in 1849 
 which described the labourers' pitiful case. This 
 was good " copy," but it brought the labourers 
 no reUef. At one time the Daily Telegraph col- 
 lected funds through its columns and distributed 
 them among distressed labourers. 
 
 On a moonlight night in January 1846 " a thou- 
 sand half-clad and nearly wholly starving peasantry 
 met in a lane at Goatacre, Wiltshire, to make 
 known their wretchedness to the Queen." A thrill 
 of horror ran through the drawing-rooms ; senti- 
 ment was quickened — that was all. Nothing was 
 done to improve the lot of the labourer. The 
 great mass of town-dwellers were too engrossed in 
 the gains and losses of an expanding commercialism 
 to realize poignantly the hopeless conditions of 
 the agricultural labourer. As for the philanthropist, 
 he was usually busy diagnosing the city slum. 
 True, the labourers did not complain aloud. Too 
 many of them had wearily acquiesced in the theory 
 which was perpetually preached to them — that their 
 condition was ordained by Providence. They had 
 not even the energy or the desire to help themselves. 
 The soul of the labourer was in danger of perishing 
 through lack of vision. 
 
 32 
 
CHAPTER III 
 THE REVOLT 
 
 "My call is the call of battle ; I nourish active rebellion." 
 
 Canon Girdlestone in 1863 was transferred from 
 a Lancashire village, where the labourers were 
 well paid and properly nourished, to the village 
 of Halberton, in North Devon. In a letter to Mr. 
 Francis Heath, the Canon wrote : — 
 
 " In North Devon as a rule, with, of course, certam 
 exceptions on the estates of philanthropic owners, wages 
 are for labourers 8s. or gs. a week, with two or one- 
 and-a-half quarts of cider daily, valued at 2s. per week, 
 but much over-valued. Caxters and shepherds get is. 
 a week more, or else a cottage rent free. The labourer 
 has no privileges whatever. He rents his potato-ground 
 at a high rate. Though fuel is said to be given to him, 
 he really pays its full value by grubbing-up for it in old 
 hedges in after-hours. In wet weather or in sickness 
 his wages entirely cease, so that he seldom makes a full 
 week. The cottages, as a rule, are not fit to house pigs 
 in. The labourer breakfasts on tea-kettle broth — hot 
 water poured on bread and flavoured with onions ; dines 
 on bread and hard cheese at 2d. a pound, with cider very 
 washy and sour, and sups on potatoes or cabbage greased 
 with a tiny bit of fat bacon. He seldom more than sees 
 
 c 33 
 
VILLAGE TRADE UNIONS 
 
 or smells butcher's meat He is long-lived, but in the 
 prime of life ' crippled up," i.e. disabled by rheumatism, 
 the result of wet clothes, with no fire to dry them by for 
 use next morning, poor living, and sour cider. Then he 
 has to work for 4s. or 5s. per week, supplemented scantily 
 from the rates, and, at last, to come for the rest of his 
 life on the rates altogether. Such is, I will not call it 
 the life, but the existence or vegetation of the Devon 
 peasant. He can hardly keep body and soul together." 
 
 Canon Girdlestone tried to persuade the farmers 
 to treat the labourers better, but in vain. One 
 Sunday morning, in March 1866, at a time when 
 a cattle plague was raging, he delivered a sermon 
 in Halberton Church, taking for his text : " Behold 
 the hand of the Lord is upon thy cattle." He asked 
 the farmers " if they did not think that God had 
 sent the plague as a judgment upon them for the 
 manner in which they treated their labourers, to 
 whom they had been accustomed to give less 
 consideration than to their cattle." 
 
 The sermon raised a great outcry in the parish. 
 Abuse was heaped upon the Canon by the farmers, 
 and the clergy and gentry of the neighbourhood 
 completely boycotted him and his family. As 
 Professor Thorold Rogers wrote : — 
 
 " Mr. Girdlestone had the ordinary fate of those who 
 attack the doings of the landed interest. His better- 
 behaved opponents denied the accuracy of his statements, 
 and published their own account of the facts. His rougher 
 critics, the farmers, threatened him with violence and 
 the horse-pond. It is not quite clear that his poor clients 
 thought him their kindest friend in letting the world 
 know what was their condition." 
 34 
 
THE REVOLT 
 
 The Canon wrote a letter to The Times describing 
 the conditions in North Devon. As a result he 
 was overwhelmed with letters from all parts of 
 England and Ireland offering to provide good wages 
 and comfortable homes for labdurers. This showed 
 him that the way to raise wages in North Devon 
 was to reduce the supply of labour. Therefore in 
 1866 he set to work to arrange for the migration 
 of many of the labourers into districts where labour 
 was scarce. 
 
 The farmers of Halberton went mad. They 
 threatened to refrain from church attendance, in 
 fact to close down the church, to prevent the singing 
 of the choir, the playing of the organ, and the 
 ringing of the bells. Some, not in a spirit of worship, 
 attended the Wesleyan Chapel. Here, however, 
 they were confronted by another man who was 
 not afraid of them : they were told to go back to 
 their own church ! 
 
 Between 1866 and 1872 some four or five 
 hundred men, two-thirds of them with families, 
 were sent away by the direct instrumentahty 
 of Canon Girdlestone to Lancashire, Yorkshire, 
 Kent, Sussex, and various pairts of the British 
 Isles. The men left 8s. a week to obtain from 
 13s. to 22s. a week with cottage and garden 
 free. With few exceptions all who went away 
 prospered, and many procured situations for their 
 former neighbours. 
 
 The work of Canon Girdlestone had the effect 
 of awakening the labourers in the neighbouring 
 counties of Dorset, Wiltshire, and Somerset, and 
 
 85 
 
VILLAGE TRADE UNIONS 
 
 migration, commenced in these counties also. The 
 dry bones were beginning to stir. Other influences 
 which sprang up during the period showed the 
 new spirit which was abroad in the country-side. 
 Labourers commenced to join societies, such as the 
 Oddfellows, and in some districts co-operative 
 societies were formed. Although little improvement 
 was effected in the labourer's position by these 
 means, yet they gave him vision and taught him 
 to combine for definite ends. Here and there, in 
 isolated districts. Labourers' Unions were formed 
 for the purpose of raising wages, but, generally 
 speaking, they failed in their object. 
 
 In 1866 an Agricultural Labourers' Protection 
 Association was formed in Kent, " to organize the 
 agricultural labourers with a view to the amelio- 
 ration of their social conditions and moral elevation, 
 and to endeavour to mitigate the evils of their 
 serfdom." As labour was scarce, wages were 
 raised without much difficulty, but higher wages 
 had the effect of checking migration, and the result 
 was that the farmers were able to reduce wages. 
 Agricultural Labourers' Unions were formed in 
 Buckinghamshire, Herefordshire, and Hertfordshire 
 for the purpose of raising wages. The Hereford- 
 shire Union was formed in 1871. Its watchword 
 was " Emigration, Migration, but not Strikes." It 
 had its origin in the village of Leintwardine, and 
 was supported by the Rector. So successful were 
 its operations, that in less than a year it had spread 
 into six counties, and its membership amounted to 
 about thirty thousand. Through its instrumen- 
 36 
 
THE REVOLT 
 
 tality the surplus labour was sent into Yorkshire, 
 Lancashire, and Staffordshire, where the wages 
 were six or seven shillings a week higher. The 
 resvdt was that in a very short time wages in Here- 
 fordshire rose on an average two shillings a week, 
 and the improvement extended to the neighbouring 
 counties. This was the largest combined effort 
 which had yet taken place. The Lincolnshire 
 Labourers' League was formed in May 1871, though 
 little was heard of its activities until a year later. 
 
 Great events often turn on the tiniest hinges. 
 In. February 1872 two or three labourers at Weston- 
 under-Weatherly, in Warwickshire, wrote a letter 
 to a local newspaper, in which they described the 
 intolerable conditions under which they had to 
 live. Some labourers in Charlcote, near Welles- 
 bourne, happened to read it, and were stirred into 
 action. They held a meeting at Wellesbourne, and 
 one of their number addressed it. One of them 
 had worked in the Black Country, where he gained 
 some knowledge of Trade Unions and their prac- 
 tices. It was decided to form a combination. The 
 men made no secret of their action, and the news 
 spread quickly from village to village. They looked 
 around for a leader. The man they selected was 
 Joseph Arch, a farm labourer and lay preacher, 
 who hved in the neighboiuring village of Barford, 
 and who had gained a local reputation as an orator 
 and a champion of his class. 
 
 It was arranged to have another meeting under 
 the chestnut-tree at Wellesbourne. Joseph Arch 
 set out for the meeting " dressed in a pair of cord 
 
 37 
 
VILLAGE TRADE UNIONS 
 
 trousers, and cord vest, and an old flannel jacket." 
 The fate of the Dorsetshire labourers rose to his 
 mind. He knew that, if possible, the law would 
 be used to ensnare him, and that every opportunity 
 would be taken to ruin him and make his life un- 
 bearable. The scales of justice were not likely to 
 be held evenly in the hands of a magistracy of 
 landlords and clergy. How could a handful of 
 half-starved agricultural labourers fight against 
 prejudice, privilege, and oppression ? 
 
 Since the morning, the news that a meeting was 
 to be held at Wellesbourne had spread like wild- 
 fire. No handbills, no posters, no paragraphs had 
 advertised the meeting. From mouth to mouth 
 the news had spread. The shepherds and horsemen 
 carried the glad tidings^ from village to village. 
 
 By the time Arch arrived over a thousand persons 
 had gathered on the village green at Wellesbourne. 
 This was the best testimony to the spontaneity of 
 the movement. The Duke of Marlborough some 
 weeks later described it as one which had been 
 brought about by " paid agitators " who were 
 seeking only their own mean ends, and who had 
 succeeded in disturbing " the friendly feeling which 
 used to unite the labourer and his employer in 
 mutual feelings of generosity and confidence." 
 
 Francis Heath says that it had been arranged to 
 hold the meeting in a large room at the inn, but 
 long before the hour fixed the room was filled to 
 overflowing. So they adjourned to the village 
 green. A pig-kilHng board was brought out and 
 placed beneath a chestnut -tree ; Arch mounted the 
 88 
 
THE REVOLT 
 
 board and addressed the meeting. He spoke for 
 an hour amid breathless silence, and at the conclu- 
 sion of the speech a resolution was passed to form 
 a Union. Between two and three hundred men 
 joined there and then. The meeting was reported 
 in the Leamington Chronicle, and thus from the 
 first the movement became advertised in the Press. 
 A fortnight later another meeting was held under 
 the chestnut -tree, and the crowd was even larger 
 than before. The result was more accessions to 
 the Union. 
 
 Early in March the small committee which had 
 been appointed drew up the following letter, 
 which was served upon all the farmers in the 
 neighbourhood of Wellesbourne : — 
 
 " Sir, — ^We jointly and severally request your attention 
 to the following requirements — namely, 2s. 8d. per day 
 for our labour ; hours from six to five ; and to close at 
 three on Saturday ; and 46. an hour overtime. Hoping 
 you will give this your fair and honest consideration." 
 
 The farmers, however, treated the letter with silent 
 contempt. They imagined that the labourers would 
 soon repent their temerity. On the following 
 Saturday, when the men went for their money, they 
 found the farmers obdurate. So they decided to 
 come out on strike. Two hundred labourers struck 
 work. Some farmers came to terms, but the 
 majority of them refused to attempt a compromise 
 and resorted to coercive measures, in some cases 
 evicting the labourers and their families from their 
 homes. 
 
 39 
 
VILLAGE TRADE UNIONS 
 
 Farmers did not pause to discover whether the 
 labourer had any legitimate grievance. They could 
 only see red. As Mr. Jesse CoUings says, 
 
 " For these men — these hereditary bondsmen — to assume 
 the right to make terms, or to strike, created as much 
 astonishment and resentment in his (the farmer's^ mind 
 as if the horses on his farm had assumed the Uke." 
 
 When the farmers realized that the labourers 
 were not prepared to give in, they declared that if 
 the men would not bend, they should be broken. 
 Landowners as well as farmers victimized Union 
 men. One made his agent serve notices on all his 
 cottage tenants who belonged to the Union. 
 
 " In numerous cases," says Jesse Collings, '"labourers 
 had the brutal choice put before them either to give up 
 the Union or quit their employment, and be ejected from 
 their cottages. Respectable industrious men, who had 
 dwelt in cottages for many years and had paid their rents 
 regularly, were turned out at a week's notice for refusal 
 to leave the Union." 
 
 The Times (March 25, 1872) wrote : — 
 
 " The farmers are beginning to retaliate on the Union, 
 which they are determined to extinguish. As a body, 
 the farmers are resolutely opposed to the Union, which 
 they regard as a most dangerous confederation. Some 
 have already discharged all their labourers who have 
 joined the Union, and other Unionists are under notice 
 to leave." 
 
 Arch was denounced as a " paid agitator " and 
 an " apostle of arson." 
 
 At the Midland Farmers' Club the following 
 40 
 
THE REVOLT 
 
 resolution was carried against an amendment in 
 favour of arranging a conference between the repre- 
 sentatives of the landowners, the tenant farmers, 
 and the labourers {Birmingham Daily Gazette, 
 April 5, 1872) :— 
 
 " That this meeting desires by every legitimate means 
 to ameliorate the condition of the agricultural labourer, 
 but will by any and every means resist the interference 
 of designing political agitators, who seek, for their own 
 selfish purposes, to sow dissension between employer 
 and employed in the agricultural districts of the Midland 
 Counties." 
 
 The voting on this resolution was even, and it was 
 declared carried by the Chairman's casting vote. 
 This indicates that at least half the farmers were 
 prepared to act in a reasonable manner. Had the 
 Chairman's vote been cast the other way. History 
 might have taken a very different course. 
 
 The labourers, however, were firm, and public 
 sympathy was with them. Matthew Vincent, the 
 editor of the Leamington Chronicle, who from tlie 
 first was a warm supporter of the Union, adver- 
 tised the strike. When the news filtered through 
 to London, the Daily News sent down its famous 
 War Correspondent, Archibald Forbes. His articles 
 reached a wider public than that of the Leamington 
 paper, and the revolt of this handful of labourers 
 was watched by the whole nation. 
 
 In The Times (March 18, 1872), a week after the 
 commencement of the strike, it was stated that 
 
 " the strike among the agricultural labourers in South 
 Warwickshire is assuming a very serious aspect. . . 
 
 41 
 
VILLAGE TRADE UNIONS 
 
 Meanwhile the labourers receive a vast amount of popular 
 support, and every post brings letters of sympathy and 
 assistance from various parts of the country." 
 
 On Good Friday — six weeks after the commence- 
 ment of the strike — a great demonstration and 
 inaugural meeting was held at Leamington. The 
 labourers with their wives and children, headed by 
 their village drum and fife bands, marched into 
 Leamington singing : — 
 
 " The farm labourers of South Warwickshire, 
 Have not had a rise for many a year. 
 Although bread has often been dear. 
 But now they've found a Union." 
 
 The organizing Committee met during the after- 
 noon in order to draw up the rules and to appoint 
 the officers. The name given to the Union was 
 the Warwickshire Agricultural Labourers' Union. 
 Joseph Arch was elected organizing secretary, and 
 Henry Taylor, a carpenter, became secretary. At 
 the evening meeting, attended by " several thousand 
 labourers," the chair was taken by Auberon 
 Herbert, M.P., and he was supported by Sir Baldwin 
 Leighton, Mr. E. Jenkins, M.P., Dr. Langford of 
 Birmingham, and Mr. Jesse Collings. An anony- ' 
 mous donation of £ioo was received towards the 
 Union funds. Accompanying the cheque was a 
 message : " The right to form the Union must he 
 fought for to the death." The audience took up the 
 battle-cry, and shouted it in unison. 
 
 Appeals for funds were sent out to the Trade 
 Unions, to all members of ParUamerit, and others. 
 42 
 
THE REVOLT 
 
 In a few days cheques ranging from ^^50 to £100 
 began to flow in. Had it not been for this outside 
 help the Union would have collapsed. It would 
 have been impossible for men, many of whom were 
 in debt when the strike began, to have held out for 
 long against the coercion of the farmers and the 
 insidious charity of the squires and clergy. 
 
 Some idea of the rapid growth of the Union 
 may be gathered from the fact that in less than 
 three weeks after the Wellesbourne men went on 
 strike, sixty-four branches had been established, 
 with a membership of five thousand. 
 
 The success of the Warwickshire Union encour- 
 aged farm labourers in other parts of the country 
 to combine. Unions were formed in Kent, Glouces- 
 tershire, Dorset, Devon, Worcestershire, and Nor- 
 folk. Unionism spread like an epidemic. In the 
 Midlands an attempt was made to form the farm 
 labourers of Gloucestershire, Worcestershire, Here- 
 fordshire, and Shropshire into a Union of thirty 
 thousand members. 
 
 Joseph Arch and his helpers received messages 
 from all parts of the country asking them to start 
 Branch Unions. It was therefore necessary to 
 think out a scheme of organization for the whole 
 country. 
 
 43 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 THE NATIONAL 
 
 " For we cannot tarry here ; 
 We must march, my darlings, we must hear the brunt of 
 danger." 
 
 In 1868, at the meeting of the British Association 
 at Norwich, Canon Girdlestone stated that nothing 
 short of combination would effect any improve- 
 ment in the deplorable condition of the peasantry. 
 The time had now arrived for the reaHzation of 
 this idea on a National scale. In a letter, dated 
 April 27, 1872, the Warwickshire Committee invited 
 the numerous smaller Unions to join in the forma- 
 tion of a National Union. 
 
 On May 29th a congress met at Leamington 
 for this purpose. There were present eighty 
 representatives from twenty-six counties, all of 
 whom were bona-fide farm labourers. Mr. G. 
 Dixon, M.P. for Birmingham, presided, and among 
 the supporters on the platform were Mr. Jesse 
 Collings, Sir Baldwin Leighton, Mr. J. A. Langford, 
 Mr. Hodgson Pratt, and other influential persons. 
 Letters of sympathy were received from Professor 
 44 
 
THE NATIONAL 
 
 Fawcett, M.P., Lord Edward Fitzmaurice, M.P., 
 Canon Girdlestone, and others. 
 
 It was decided to form a National Union " in 
 each county or division of county, and that the 
 National Agricultural Labourers' Union shall con- 
 sist of representatives elected by such district 
 Unions." The Executive Committee was to consist 
 of twelve farm labourers, a chairman, and a secre- 
 tary, elected annually by congress. Joseph Arch 
 was elected chairman, and Henry Taylor secretary. 
 It was also decided to form a committee of " gentle- 
 men favourable to the principles of the National 
 Agricultural Labourers' Union." This committee 
 was invited to attend the weekly meetings of the 
 Executive, and to assist by consultation and advice, 
 but with no power to vote. Mr. J. E. M. Vincent, 
 editor of the Leamington Chronicle, was elected 
 treasurer. Messrs. Jesse Collings, E. Jenkins, A. 
 Arnold, and W. G. Ward were appointed trustees. 
 The entrance fee was fixed at 6d. and the contri- 
 bution at 2d. per week. 
 
 The Advisory Committee was composed of 
 sympathetic outsiders. There is no doubt that 
 this Advisory Committee had much to do with the 
 drafting of the general rules. The following state- 
 ment, signed by the Chairman, was circularized 
 with the rules, April 27th : — 
 
 " These rules are not regarded by the National Execu- 
 tive as exhaustive, but simply as fundamental. It is felt 
 that Districts and Branches should have perfect Hberty 
 to frame such laws for their own guidance as their own 
 special circumstances may suggest ; that liberty is freely 
 
 45 
 
VILLAGE TRADE UNIONS 
 
 accorded, and the National Executive hope it will be 
 exercised on the basis of the rules for Districts and 
 Branches, and in harmony with the General Rules of the 
 National. . . . Let courtesy, fairness and firmness char- 
 acterize all our demands. Act cautiously and advisedly, 
 that no act may have to be repented or repudiated. Do 
 not strike unless all other means fail you. Try all other 
 means ; try them with firmness and patience ; try them 
 in the enforcement of only just claims ; and if they all 
 fail then strike." 
 
 The immediate aim was declared to be "a fair 
 day's pay for a fair day's work," nine and a half 
 hours, exclusive of mealtimes, as a day's work, 
 and i6s. as a week's pay. 
 
 The general objects of the National Union were : 
 (i) " To improve the general condition of agricul- 
 tural labourers in the United Kingdom." (2) " To 
 encourage the formation of Branch and District 
 Unions." (3) " To promote co-operation and com- 
 munication between the Unions already in existence." 
 
 By this time there were several other Unions 
 not connected with the Warwickshire movement. 
 Some were in existence before the Warwickshire 
 Union ; others, inspired, no doubt, by Arch and 
 his followers, had been formed independently. 
 The " National," however, was not successful 
 in effecting the combination of all the Unions. 
 Several, notably the Lincolnshire Labourers' League, 
 stood aloof. 
 
 . The " National " Committee put on record the 
 following resolution : — 
 
 " The Committee beUeve in the justice and righteousness 
 of their cause, and have the firmest faith that Divine 
 blessing will rest upon it." 
 46 
 
THE NATIONAL 
 
 The Congress was marked by unbounded enthu- 
 siasm, and had all the characteristics of a religious 
 revival. This is largely explained by the fact 
 that many delegates were Methodist preachers. At 
 times the conference bore a strong resemblance to 
 a Methodist " love feast." In homely language, 
 these rough, unlettered men told of their sufferings, 
 their struggles, and their aspirations. The speeches 
 were punctuated with cries of " Amen," " Praise 
 Him," and other devout utterances. The gentle- 
 men on the platform were variously referred to 
 as " Honnered surs," " These yere worthy gents," 
 " These raalgenelmen," etc. The audience was alter- 
 nately moved to laughter and tears. One delegate 
 said : " Sir, this be a blessed day : this ere Union 
 be the Moses to lead us poor men up out o' Egypt " ; 
 and another delegate commenced his speech with 
 this explanation given in a confidential tone : 
 " Genelmen and b'luv'd Crissen friends, I's a man, 
 I is, hes goes about wi' a oss." Another informed 
 the assembly that " King Daavid sed as ow the 
 'usbanman as labourers must be the fust partaker 
 o' the fruit," adding, " and now he's mo'astly th' 
 last, and loike enuff gets none at all." Yet another, 
 descanting on the ways of Providence, remarked 
 that " Uttle things was often chus to du graat 
 ones, and when e sa' the poor labrin' man comin' 
 furrud in this ere movement, and a bringin' o' the 
 faarmers to terms, he were remoinded o' many 
 things in th' Scripters, more perticler o' th' ram's 
 horns that blew down the walls o' Jericho, and 
 frightened Pharaoh, King of Egypt." 
 
 47 
 
VILLAGE TRADti UNIONS 
 
 Professor Thorold Rogers paid a high compli- 
 ment to these peasant preachers. He wrote : — 
 
 " I do not believe that the mass of peasants could have 
 been moved at all had it not been for the organization 
 of the Primitive Methodists, a religious system which, 
 as far as I have seen its working, has done more good 
 with scanty means, and perhaps, in some persons' eyes, 
 with grotesque appliances for devotion, than any other 
 religious agency. I have often found that the whole 
 character of a country parish has been changed for the 
 better by the efforts of those rustic missionaries." 
 
 On the second day of the Congress various sub- 
 jects were discussed, which shows that the advisers 
 of the Union, the poHticians, were anxious that its 
 efforts should not be confined to the mere question 
 of hours and wages. Henry Taylor, the secretary, 
 spoke on Trade Unionism, Sir Baldwin Leighton, 
 Bart., on allotments and cow-pastures, Jesse Col- 
 lings on education for the agricultural labourer, 
 the Hon. and Rev. J. Wentworth Leigh on co-opera- 
 tive farming, and Mr. H. Brooks on the cultivation 
 of waste lands. At the end of the speech by Jesse 
 Collings the following resolution was passed : — 
 
 " That in the opinion of this meeting a national com- 
 pulsory system of education is absolutely necessary for 
 the advancement of the social position of the agricultural 
 labourer." 
 
 The support given to the Union by these gentle- 
 men is undoubted, but it is nevertheless clear that 
 many of them had pet schemes for reform which 
 they were anxious for the Union to foster. Arch 
 48 
 
THE NATIONAL 
 
 did not deny that these reforms might have a 
 beneficial effect on the labourers eventually, but he 
 said : "To raise the wages, shorten the hours, and 
 make a free man out of a land-tied slave, is my last, 
 and to that last I'll stick." 
 
 The success of the Union was beginning to have 
 an effect on the fanners. The formation of a 
 National Union convinced many of them that the 
 labourers were going to fight to a finish. The 
 Warwickshire farmers convened a special meeting 
 at Warwick. The Earl of Denbigh was present, 
 and advised the farmers to confer with the labourers 
 with a view to a settlement. At first their propo- 
 sition was that the labourers should send some 
 delegates to a conference. This was decUned by 
 the labourers. The Union was asked to appoint 
 three representatives to meet three landowners 
 and three farmers. The Union replied that — 
 
 " in view of the present incomplete state of the forniation 
 of the Agricultural Labourers' Union, this meeting is of 
 opinion that the proposal should be postponed for the 
 present." 
 
 It was clear that the farmers meant business, 
 for shortly afterwards they had another county 
 meeting. Finally they proposed that three repre- 
 sentatives of the Union should meet the Chairman 
 and two other members of the Chamber of Agricul- 
 ture. This offer was accepted by the men, and 
 Arch and two others were appointed to meet the 
 farmers' representatives. In a letter to the Union 
 the Chamber deprecated the farmers' resolution 
 
 D 49 
 
VILLAGE TRADE UNIONS 
 
 which had been placarded about the country, 
 threatening to evict all Union men. They also 
 advocated piece-work, and denounced the system 
 of payment in kind. 
 
 " This practice of paying wages in kind prevents a just 
 estimate of the value received by the labourer, induces 
 unreasonable demands on the part of the employer, affords 
 facilities for impositions by unscrupulous employers, 
 leads to improvident habits, and increases intemperance." 
 
 This spirit of reasonableness was a good sign, 
 and proved that the Union was making itself felt. 
 Some farmers had conceded the Union terms, but 
 the majority of them refused for some time to 
 give in. Many offered 15s., but the Union stood 
 out for the figure which had originally been fixed 
 as the minimum. The Union succeeded eventually 
 in obtaining the i6s., which represented an all-Tound 
 rise of 2s. a week in Warwickshire. 
 
 In all parts wages were rising by two or three 
 shillings a week.' Migration had a good deal to 
 do with this. Many of the men who had been 
 discharged had migrated to other localities. Some 
 went into the cotton mills, some on the railways, 
 and a few emigrated to New Zealand. 
 
 There was a shortage of agricultural labour in 
 the North, and men could obtain wages of £1 a 
 week with extras in counties like Northumberland. 
 The influence of the Union extended even into 
 Northumberland, for in The Times (April 6, 1872) 
 we read that at the annual hiring of farm hinds in 
 
 I See Appendix I. 
 SO 
 
THE NATIONAL 
 
 Northumberland " the farmers exhibited a disposi- 
 tion to give higher wages rather than reduce the 
 hours to a fixed scale ; the majority of the hinds, 
 however, stood out for a day's work of nine hours, 
 overtime at 6d. per hour, and a half-hohday every 
 fortnight ; Sundays to be paid for. Several of 
 the best hands were hired upon these terms with. 
 an advance of 2s. and 3s. per week wages. The 
 wages are about £x a week with privileges." 
 
 The labourers had good reason to congratulate 
 themselves on the strength of their Union. In less 
 than three months it had grown into a national 
 movement, with a membership of nearly 50,000, 
 and within a year the number of members exceeded 
 70,000. In June 1872 a weekly journal, entitled 
 The Labourers' Union Chronicle, was started, with 
 Mr. J. E. Matthew Vincent as its editor. Its full 
 title was The Labourers' Union Chronicle ; An 
 Independent Advocate of the British Toilers' Rights 
 to Free Land, Freedom from Priestcraft, and from 
 the Tyranny of Capital. Other papers were started 
 in Lincolnshire and Kent, but were purely local, 
 and ran only for a short time. Although the editor 
 of the Chronicle was the treasurer of the Union, 
 the paper had no official connection with the Union ; 
 it was " a private venture." It was used by the 
 Union for notices, reports of meetings, and propa- 
 ganda work, but its policy was not controlled by 
 the Union. Its sub-title proclaimed its poUcy to 
 be much wider in scope than the original aims 
 of the Union. In 1873 (June 7th), in a long 
 article, the Chronicle's aims were declared to be : 
 
 51 
 
VILLAGE TRADE UNIONS 
 
 (i) Higher Wages ; (2) The Franchise ; (3) Land 
 NationaUzation ; (4) Probate Duties on Land. 
 
 The Chronicle had a great influence on the move- 
 ment in its early stages, and did much to educate 
 the labourer in the political, economic, social, and 
 agricultural questions of the day. Many labourers 
 learnt to read in order to be able to read its pages. 
 In 1873 its circulation reached 35,000, and was 
 rising " more than a thousand a month." 
 
 " It is no uncommon thing," says Clayden, " to see 
 half a dozen labourers sitting under a hedge at their mid- 
 day meal listening to a seventh who is reading from its 
 pages." 
 
 52 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 OPPOSITION 
 
 " He going with me goes often with spare diet, poverty, 
 angry enemies, desertions." 
 
 It is hard to understand why this movement should 
 have been attacked with so much bitterness by 
 the very people who should have welcomed it as 
 a regenerating force, promoting both justice and 
 brotherhood. Had it been accompanied by crime, 
 lawlessness, and disorder, they might have been 
 excused for holding aloof, or even for hostiUty. 
 Even in that case, indeed, there should have been 
 men in England with enough enthusiasm to put 
 all the wisdom they possessed at the service of the 
 movement. The movement, however, was per- 
 fectly law-abiding : the agricultural labourer had 
 become articulate without the aid of fire or anarchy. 
 He saw in union and co-operation an instrument 
 which would make him free. He used this instru- 
 ment to protest against his servitude, and to rise 
 out of it. From the beginning the movement was 
 characterized by a Complete absence of the avenging 
 spirit. The labourer was wilUng to forget the^ 
 
 53 
 
VILLAGE TRADE UNIONS 
 
 centuries of wrong, even to forgive recent wrongs 
 in his desire for present justice and future oppor- 
 tunity. Clayden wrote in 1872 : — 
 
 " A singular moderation has characterized the move- 
 ment from the first. No instance of a vindictive spirit 
 has stained its history. Men have been again and again 
 turned out of home and work for no other cause than 
 identification with the Union. Justices of the Peace, 
 lay and clerical, have dealt out to them a merciless justice, 
 and in not a few cases even the very letter of the law, 
 as well as its spirit, has been nearly, if not quite, violated 
 at the bidding of a relentless detestation of the movement. 
 ... A thousand indignities have been heaped upon both 
 the Union and its disciples, but there has been no wilful 
 retaliation, no agrarian outrage, no loss brought home to 
 an employer's door." 
 
 There is no doubt that the influence of Joseph 
 Arch was responsible for the moderation with which 
 the movement voiced its claims. Mr. Jesse Collings 
 says that, in those days, "Arch's influence over 
 the men was unbounded, and they would have 
 gone in any direction he wished them to go." The 
 Rev. Attenborough, a Congregational minister, 
 who from the first publicly supported the move- 
 ment, said : "He (Arch) has but to urge vengeance, 
 and night after night flaring stacks wiU illume 
 the darkness, and the whole country will be laid 
 waste." Many more testimonials of a similar 
 nature could be quoted from the writings of public 
 men and the contemporary Press. 
 
 Yet, in spite of this, the bulk of the clergy and 
 cultured classes described Arch as an "apostle 
 of arson," a "paid agitator," and poured upon 
 51 
 
OPPOSITION 
 
 him and upon the Union all the bitterness which 
 could possibly emanate from intelligences poisoned 
 by prejudices. The Bishop of Gloucester (Dr. 
 EUicott) presided at a farmers' dinner, and, refer- 
 ring to the Unionists, reminded his Jiearers of an 
 old saying, " Don't nail their ears to the pump, and, 
 don't duck them in the horse-pond." He did not in 
 so many words advocate ducking in the horse-pond, 
 but the real meaning of his hint was not disguised 
 by the mere ambiguity of words. This unfortunate 
 speech must afterwards have caused the Bishop 
 much uneasiness. It received the publicity it 
 deserved. In the Spectator (September 6, 1873) 
 it was referred to in the following terms : " Dr. 
 EUicott whose five minutes' speech will within 
 five years turn the Bishops out of the House of 
 Lords." Here was a Bishop going out of his way 
 to besmirch his sacred office, while, on the other 
 hand, an avowed sceptic like Charles Bradlaugh 
 was pubHcly supporting the down-trodden labourers. 
 No one knew better than the country clergy the 
 intolerable conditions under which the agricultural 
 labourer had to live, yet, instead of aiding him in 
 his struggle, they, for the most part, sided with 
 the farmers and landowners, or remained indifferent. 
 
 " The country clergy of the day," says Mr. Jesse 
 Collings, " who knew so well the starving condition of 
 the labourers, unfortunately missed a great opportunity 
 of showing sympathy with them in their legitimate efforts 
 to help themselves. The great majority of the clergy 
 stood aloof from the movement altogether, but a large 
 number of them showed a bitter hostility to it." 
 
 55 
 
VILLAGE TRADE UNIONS 
 
 Rightly or wrongly, the labourers looked to the 
 Church for sympathy in their struggle for justice, 
 but they looked in vain. Well might Dr. Gore, 
 the Bishop of Oxford, ask in 1913, 
 
 " Why did not the Church gf England years ago appear 
 manifestly before the country, telling what it knew about 
 the housing conditions and the conditions of wages of 
 the agricultural labourers ? Why, when Mr. Arch was 
 in the field forty years ago, did not the Church stand 
 out and say : ' This is the nierest claim of justice ' ? " 
 
 One of his predecessors, speaking at the Church 
 Congress in 1873, while the attitude of the clergy 
 towards the Union was being discussed, reminded 
 the clergy that whilst refraining from interference 
 with the miserable wages, they should impress on 
 the labourers the necessity of leading virtuous 
 lives and attending the ordinances of reHgion ! 
 
 The position of the country clergymen was not 
 an easy one. Many of them, though kindly and 
 conscientious, were utterly unsuited to arbitrate 
 between employers and labourers, and, as Thorold 
 Rogers aptly puts it, 
 
 " When the former are farmers and the latter are hinds, 
 I generally found that the clergy put a personal inter- 
 pretation on the apostle's advice, and seek to live peaceably 
 with all men." 
 
 Most of them regarded the labourer's lot as part 
 of the permanent order of things, and caught at any 
 subterfuge, or any excuse, for resisting change. 
 " Setting class against class," " destroying the 
 good relations," were among their stock phrases. 
 56 
 
OPPOSITION 
 
 They never paused io enquire whether the " good " 
 were just relations. Discontent, however caused, 
 was mischievous. It upset the tranquil equanimity 
 of parochial patronage. As Goldwin Smith put 
 it in a speech before the Trade Union Congress at 
 Sheffield, 
 
 " He did not deny that the parish clergyman dispensed 
 a good deal of charity in the villages, but he argued that 
 the kindness is usually such as tends to keep a man con- 
 tented with a more or less wretched position, and not that 
 more enlightened and truer kindness which helps him 
 to help himself. . . . There is nothing which squires or 
 parsons as a whole have striven less to do than to make 
 the labourers permanently independent of their bounty." 
 
 Much evidence could be produced to show how 
 bitter was the hostility of many of the clergy. 
 The churchwarden at Clopton, in Suffolk, issued a 
 notice that " the society caUing itself the National 
 Agricultural Labourers' Union having ordered strikes 
 in a portion of the county of Suffolk, all members 
 of the same in this parish have notice to give up 
 their allotments, and will be struck off the list of 
 parochial and bread charities." In a parish in 
 Buckinghamshire two young women were turned 
 out of the choir because they spoke at labourers' 
 meetings ; in Suffolk the clergyman threatened to 
 turn an old woman out of her allotment if she 
 allowed her barn to be used for a meeting of the 
 labourers. The pages of the Chronicle abound with 
 cases as flagrant as the above. These were petty 
 acts of oppression which, but for the Chronicle, 
 would most likely have remained unrecorded. 
 
 57 
 
VILLAGE TRADE UNIONS 
 
 But one act of shameful persecution which 
 occurred at Chipping Norton immediately gained 
 the publicity it deserved. A small strike was in 
 progress at Ascott-under-Wychwood, in Oxford- 
 shire. One of the farmers procured two men 
 from a neighbouring village to come over and 
 act as " scabs." The wives of the men on strike 
 marched out to meet these two men, and 
 sought by pleading and then by ridicule to 
 deter them from taking the bread out of their 
 mouths. Some of the women carried sticks, but 
 the only blows struck were what Arch described as 
 " tongue blows." There might have been some 
 husthng. As a last resort the women invited the 
 two men to " come back to the village public- 
 house and have a drink." The men, however, were 
 not to be cajoled, and went to work for the farmer 
 under police protection. Yet the farmer prosecuted 
 the women for " intimidation," and seventeen of 
 them, some of them young wives with babies in 
 arms, were brought before the county magis- 
 trates. 
 
 The presiding magistrates were two clergymen. 
 The evidence showed that there had been no 
 physical violence, a fact to which the two " scab " 
 labourers testified. The Union representative was 
 present with a sum of money to pay the fine, if 
 such should be imposed. Imagine the astonish- 
 ment and consternation when the clerical magis- 
 trates after much consultation, found sixteen of 
 the women guilty, and sentenced seven to ten 
 days' and nine to seven days' hard labour ! 
 58 
 
OPPOSITION 
 
 The Union delegate said that, had he not been 
 present, violence would have been committed in 
 court. The people were infuriated. In the evening 
 a riot broke out, and was quelled with much diffi- 
 culty. The Press took up the matter, and unani- 
 mously condemned the sentences. The Times 
 declared that the action of the magistrates was 
 " extreiiiely harsh and singularly ill-advised. Such 
 a sentence staggered the poor women, and well it 
 might, for it staggered the whole country." Is it 
 any wonder that the labourers started to advocate 
 Disestablishment, and the abolition of the clerical 
 magistracy, when on the one hand as receivers of 
 tithes, the clergy, in the main, sided with the land- 
 owner, and on the other, as magistrates they dealt 
 out " left-handed justice " to the labourers ? 
 
 Much bitterness was caused by the Chipping 
 Norton case. This incident was an extreme in- 
 stance of the manner in which the clerical magistrates 
 up and down the country treated Union offenders. 
 Mr. Jesse CoUings, speaking at the second annual 
 conference, advised the labourers 
 
 " that if they were ever brought before the magistrates 
 they should try and choose the day, if they could, when 
 there was no clergyman on the bench. Although he 
 had lived all his life in the country, and had had many 
 opportunities for observing the administration of justice, 
 he had never known a lenient sentence, nor anything 
 short of the rigour of the law, come from a clergyman." 
 
 While the women were in prison an appeal was 
 issued to the public for subscriptions. Over eighty 
 
 59 
 
VILLAGE TRADE UNIONS 
 
 pounds were collected. On the day they wer6 set 
 free two brakes went to meet them, and headed by 
 a band, and accompanied by thousands of people, 
 the procession stopped at Ascott outside the house 
 of the prosecuting farmer. There Arch made a 
 present of five pounds to each of the women. 
 
 In spite of the flagrant injustice of the sentence 
 there were found some who organized a counter- 
 demonstration in support of the action of the 
 clerical magistrates. The Church Herald also lent 
 its columns to support the two clergymen. Thus, 
 in its issue of June ii, 1873, the following passage 
 occurs ; — 
 
 " It is clear to us that the two clerical magistrates who 
 acted so properly deserve the hearty thanks of all order- 
 loving people." 
 
 A huge meeting was held at Chipping Norton 
 the same evening, and nearly three thousand people 
 gathered round the wagon from which Arch spoke. 
 At the meeting resolutions were passed declaring 
 for (i) the extension of the franchise ; (2) the repeal 
 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act ; and (3) 
 the appointment of stipendiary magistrates. 
 
 In justice it should be recorded that there were 
 some noble exceptions among the clergy. Cardinal 
 Manning (then Archbishop) openly sided with the 
 men, and appeared on their platforms. The Bishop 
 of Manchester, Canon Girdlestone, Rev. Atten- 
 borough, and others not only sympathized with, 
 but helped the men. Others, less well known, 
 but no less brave, subscribed to the funds, took the 
 60 
 
OPPOSITION 
 
 chair or spoke at meetings, or lent the church 
 field for Union meetings. Such men were the salt 
 of the Enghsh clergy. 
 
 Moreover, among the landowners and farmers 
 there were those who, more enlightened than their 
 fellows, saw the justice of the labourers' claim, and 
 helped where they could. Some farmers, on their 
 own initiative, raised wagps, and some landowners 
 reproved the farmers on their estates for the way 
 they treated the labourers. But, in the main, both 
 landowner and farmer were bitterly opposed to 
 the Union, and did their utmost to stamp it out. 
 Landlords of the type of the Duke of Marlborough 
 assisted the farmers in every conceivable way in. 
 their endeavour to fight the Union. He it was who 
 said the movement had destroyed the mutual 
 feehngs of confidence and generosity which formerly 
 existed. 
 
 But did those mutual feehngs really exist ? As 
 Francis Heath pointed out, " there was in most 
 cases the confidence and frequently the cringing 
 dependence of the labourer, without the generosity 
 of the employer." Canon Girdlestone records some 
 instances of employers' generosity which occurred 
 before the Union was formed. The following 
 is one : A carter saved a valuable team of horses 
 which had taken fright. In doing so he fell, and 
 the wheels of the wagon crushed his ribs. For two 
 months he was confined to his bed. The farmer 
 never paid him a penny the whole time, nor 
 once went to see him. After the Union was started 
 there were scarcely any limits to which some farmers 
 
 61 
 
VILLAGE TRADE UNI ON S 
 
 would not go in order to show their intense hatred 
 of it. Turning the men out of their homes into 
 the roads was a common practice. In one village 
 the men asked their master for more wages, and 
 he promptly dismissed them. 
 
 In a vUlage in Berkshire an old paralysed man 
 was turned out of his home because his son had 
 joined the Union. The police were instructed by 
 the landlord to evict the whole family from the 
 cottage. They entered the cottage while the 
 family were at their midday meal, and commenced 
 to remove the furniture into the road, where it 
 remained for nearly a week. The old man, his son 
 and his wife and four children, were rendered home- 
 less. They had refused to go because they held 
 that as they paid their rent yearly they could not 
 be turned out at a week's notice. Eventually, 
 after the beds and furniture had been damaged by 
 a thunderstorm, they were allowed to re-enter 
 because the young man consented to withdraw 
 from the Union. 
 
 On another estate the men asked for a rise from 
 i2s. to 14s. a week. A meeting of farmers and 
 landowners took place, with Lord Barrington in 
 the chair. They decided to raise the wages by a 
 shilhng a week, and immediately sacked eight men, 
 who migrated to Wales and earned 3s. lod. a day. 
 The farmers then began to turn out of their cottages 
 the wives of the men who had been dismissed. 
 
 The Earl of Denbigh issued a letter to the tenants 
 of the cottages on his estate, insisting that all such 
 tenants should work for the farmers on the estate 
 62 
 
OPPOSITION 
 
 or leave. It was, perhaps, not an unreasonable 
 request, but in his letter he wrote of the " paid 
 agitator " who went about " deceiving the people 
 as to their highest interests, and by fomenting a 
 spirit of discontent, tried to dissever that bond of 
 union between class and class which had hitherto 
 been the bulwark of England's prosperity and 
 happiness." Such was the attitude of several of 
 the " good " landlords. They were not harsh ; in 
 the main they were kindly and considerate, but 
 they wrote and talked a good deal of unconscious 
 cant. 
 
 The bitterness of this period was not the work 
 of demagogues and paid agitators, but of the farmers, 
 clergy, and gentry. The simple fact was that 
 neither landowners nor clergy appreciated the real 
 significance of the movement, and the farmers 
 could hardly be expected to be endowed with 
 keener vision 
 
 68 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 COLLAPSE 
 
 " O baffled, balk'd, bent to the very earth." 
 
 Persecution and attempts at suppression ap- 
 peared at first to bind the men together in closer 
 unity. The Union seemed to be winning all along 
 the line. Set-backs here and there were regarded 
 only as temporary checks. Every new instance of 
 tyranny only served to stir up indignation among 
 the supporters of the Union. The men received 
 moral and financial support from the general 
 public. The industrial trade unions subscribed 
 generously to the Union funds. Not only were 
 grants made from the general funds, but every 
 week subscriptions rolled in from collections made 
 by the workers themselves in factories, mills, and 
 mines. A glance through the columns of the 
 Labourers' Union Chronicle reveals the spontaneity 
 with which other workers contributed towards 
 the farm labourers' fighting fund. In December 
 1872 a great meeting in support of the Union was 
 held in Exeter Hall. Among those who pubhcly 
 supported the Union on that occasion were Samuel 
 64 
 
COLLAPSE 
 
 Morley, Sir Charles Dilke, M.P., George Trevelyan, 
 Sir John Bennett, Mr. Mundella, M.P., Arch- 
 bishop Manning, T. Hughes, M.P. (author of 
 Tom Brown's Schooldays), and Charles Bradlaugh. 
 Samuel Morley gave £500, and many of the others 
 contributed handsomely at different times to the 
 funds of the Union, 
 
 At the second Annual Conference held May 21, 
 1873, at Leamington, Mr. George Dixon, M.P., 
 who presided, announced that 23 district unions, 
 with 982 branches embracing 24 counties, had 
 been estabUshed, with a total membership of 
 71,835. A year later there were 1,480 branches 
 with 86,214 members enrolled. These figures do 
 not represent the total number of men who had 
 joined the Union. The number of men who joined, 
 and for one reason or another allowed their member- 
 ship to lapse, far exceeded the number at any one 
 time on the Union's books. Some had fallen away 
 as a result of persecution and intimidation, or, as 
 the correspondent of the Daily Telegraph said, " grew 
 nervous, and withdrew their names." Others had 
 migrated to Northern farms, while mines, railways, 
 and factories continued to absorb large numbers. 
 
 From the first, even before the National was 
 formed, migration had been a method regularly 
 employed by the district unions. The men who 
 went to the towns were lost to the Union ; likewise 
 it must be assumed that most of those who migrated 
 to the better-paid farms in the Northern districts, 
 even if they continued to pay their subscriptions, 
 were no longer active members of the Union. How- 
 
 E 65 
 
VILLAGE TRADE UNIONS 
 
 ever, it soon became manifest that the North could 
 not absorb all the men for whom the Union desired 
 agricultural emplo3anent. 
 
 Within four months of the formation of the 
 National emigration became an important part of 
 its policy, and from that time onwards was " steadily 
 and regularly organized by the Union authorities." 
 The Chronicle consistently urged the labourers to 
 emigrate. During the latter part of 1873 and in 
 1874 it laid emphasis on emigration. Its leading 
 article, November 29, 1873, was headed "Labourers, 
 Away to New Zealand." It concluded a leading 
 article, January 17, 1874, with the exhortation 
 " Away then, farm labourers, to New Zealand, 
 AustraUa, and America ! that is the only chance 
 for you ! " Columns were devoted to glowing 
 letters from successful emigrants, and Arthur 
 Clayden wrote articles urging the men to seek 
 homes across the sea. The Executive of the Union 
 frequently issued instructions to the district secre- 
 taries urging them to encourage emigration. When 
 trouble occurred between farmers and men the 
 Union could only offer to emigrate the men. 
 
 Arthur Clayden in his pamphlet The English of 
 the Pacific, wrote : — 
 
 " In less than two years from the commencement of 
 he ' revolt of the field ' over 50,000 labourers were on 
 heir way to New Zealand, at a cost of more than a million 
 pounds sterling to the Colonial Government." 
 
 No doubt a great many of these emigrants were 
 Union men. It is not to be supposed that emigra- 
 66 
 
COLLAPSE 
 
 tion agents were active only among Union members ; 
 but they advertised regularly in the Chronicle. 
 Every week its readers could observe advertisements 
 such as the following : — 
 
 " Queensland. — If 30 wish to emigrate a free passage, 
 and, if necessary, railway fare, will be provided. Where 
 300 wish to emigrate to Queensland from one district 
 the Agent-General will lay on a special ship for their 
 accommodation . ' ' 
 
 Canadian emigration agents were also very active 
 among the labourers. The Executive of the Union 
 requested Arch to go over and view the country, 
 and to bring back a report as to the prospects of 
 those who emigrated. Arch was accompanied by 
 Mr. Arthur Ciayden — a member of the Consultative 
 Committee of the Union. Assurance was given that 
 the Canadian Government would see that the 
 emigrants were properly looked after. A working 
 arrangement was made between the Union and the 
 emigration agents, and thousands of its members 
 and their families were assisted to transfer their 
 labour to Canada. 
 
 The enormous amount of migration and emigra- 
 tion carried on through the Union may be gathered 
 from the fact that in the years 1873-4 over £6,000 
 was spent out of Union funds for these objects, 
 and this was only a very small proportion of the 
 total cost of transferring labour. 
 
 Speaking before the Agricultural Commission in 
 1881, Arch declared that during the first nine years 
 of its existence, 1872-1881, the Union had been 
 
 67 
 
VILLAGE TRADE UNIONS 
 
 responsible for the emigration of 700,000 persons. 
 If we take five as representing the average family, 
 it will be seen that at least 140,000 labourers left 
 England during those years. 140,000 would be a 
 conservative estimate, because a large proportion 
 of the 700,000 would be single men without families. 
 Joseph Arch at first was opposed to emigration. 
 As he says : "I only looked upon emigration as a 
 disagreeable necessity, not as a thing to be recom- 
 mended. I could not bear to see our best men 
 pouring out of the mother-country when I "knew 
 we wanted them badly. . . . The drones and the 
 aged were left to become a drag upon the Union 
 funds." The Union was obviously weakened by 
 the loss of so many of its best men, and many a 
 village suffered from the absence of its stalwarts 
 — the men who had kept ahve the spirit of revolt. 
 
 The combined effect of the Union's activities 
 resulted in a general rise of wages to the extent of 
 an average of 2s. to 3s. a week in most agricultural 
 districts. The Chronicle claimed that " since the 
 Union began wages had increased from i to 4 and 
 5s. a week." Migration and emigration reUeved 
 many districts of their surplus labour, and even in 
 districts where Union branches had not been formed, 
 owing no doubt to the wide pubMcity given to the 
 Union's activities, many farmers " with a kind of 
 instinct " raised the wages of the men. 
 
 Although the Union had succeeded in raising 
 wages, it had to exert all its energies in order to 
 maintain them. There is no doubt that the Union's 
 efforts lacked co-ordination and " generalship." The 
 68 
 
COLLAPSE 
 
 guerilla warfare that was carried on was not calcu- 
 lated to ensure anything more than temporary 
 success. The Union's warfare of this period may be 
 likened to a series of outpost engagements in which 
 the men at one place, and the farmers at another, 
 gained the advantage. In districts where the 
 surplus labour had not been absorbed, farmers 
 would resort to Ibcking-out their men. In many 
 districts farmers combined together to defeat the 
 men. Thus we read in the Chronicle, May lo, 
 1873 :— 
 
 " In Essex and Suffolk and elsewhere there is a tenant 
 farmers' League to destroy the combination of the 
 labourers, binding themselves to each other to refuse 
 employment to all labourers in Union, and not to give 
 more than 2s. for a 12-hour day. . . . 1,500 men are 
 locked out. . . . The funds of the Union are going out 
 ;^500 a week over the receipts to maintain these poor 
 locked-out labourers . ' ' 
 
 One method of strike-breaking adopted by the 
 farmers at one time was promptly prohibited after 
 representations had been made by the London 
 Trades Council. During the harvests of 1872, 
 when some of the men were on strike, the authorities 
 allowed the miUtary to assist in gathering the 
 harvest. As the resxilt of the protest by the London 
 Trades Council a fresh regulation was issued ex- 
 plicitly prohibiting such assistance from being given 
 by troops " in cases where strikes or disputes 
 between the farmers and their labourers exist." 
 
 In February 1874 the Union suffered a severe 
 shock. One of its Suffolk branches (Exning and 
 
 69 
 
VILLAGE TRADE UNIONS 
 
 Alderton) sent in a demand for a rise in wages from 
 13s. to 14s. a week, and the limitation of hours to 
 a maximum of 54 per week. The farmers replied 
 by locking out all the Union men. Other farmers 
 followed their example, without waiting for the 
 Union men to send in claims. The lock-out qiiickly 
 spread to other counties. In less than a month 
 lock-outs had taken place in five neighbouring 
 counties, and also in Hampshire, Warwickshire, 
 and Gloucestershire. By March 23rd 2,000 men 
 were locked out — oyer 8,000 were out by the begin- 
 ning of May. One authority estimated the total 
 number of labourers forced into idleness at 10,000. 
 A determined effort was made by the farmers to 
 stamp out the Union. 
 
 The Union once more appealed to the organized 
 trades and to the general public for funds ; the 
 men who were locked out in one district were sent 
 on a march through England, holding demonstra- 
 tions and collecting subscriptions. A special crusade 
 through the manufacturing cities of the North 
 brought, in over ;£3,ooo. In Manchester a great 
 demonstration took place, supported by the Bishop 
 (Dr. Eraser), when 300,000 people joined in a pro- 
 cession through the city, and the street collections, 
 " chiefly in pence," amounted to nearly £200. The 
 industrial workers reaUzed that low wages in the 
 covmtry had the effect of depressing urban condi- 
 tions, since numbers of poorly paid farm labourers 
 drifted into the towns and increased the competition 
 for work. 
 
 The strain on the Union funds was tremendous. 
 70 
 
COLLAPSE 
 
 Thousands of men were in receipt of lock-out pay, 
 and the cost of the migration of hundreds of them 
 to other districts was borne by the Union. Emigra- 
 tion and migration could not cope with the situa- 
 tion ; as fast as men were removed from the relief 
 lists, others came on, owing to fresh lock-outs. 
 Attempts at concihation generally failed. Only in 
 Lincolnshire was a settlement effected. The Lin- 
 colnshire Labour League agreed to withdraw certain 
 of its rules, and the farmers therefore recognized 
 the men's right to unite. 
 
 But the farmers in other parts refused to come to 
 terms. They felt that at last they had got the 
 upper hand. They were not at the moment resisting 
 claims for higher wages : they were simply conspiring 
 to break up the men's combination. The Bishop of 
 Manchester contributed an article to The Times 
 (April 1874) entitled " Are the farmers of England 
 going mad ? " To judge by the way in which they 
 were neglecting the cultivation of the land, they were 
 prepared to wreck the industry rather than abate 
 their hostihty to the Union, It is true that they 
 had recourse to labour-saving machinery, and could 
 limit their demand for labour by farming on a large 
 scale. They drew upon the casual and unemployed 
 labour of the towns and the Irish emigrants. In 
 some districts they managed to keep things going 
 by borrowing each other's men and employing 
 women and girls. But such devices could not 
 really make them independent of the skilled labour 
 of the men who were locked-out, rather they 
 emphasized the farmer's predicament. 
 
 71 
 
VILLAGE TRADE UNIONS 
 
 The collapse of the Union came in July 1874, 
 when it was announced that the, men who were 
 locked out could no longer be supported. The funds 
 were practically exhausted, and the Union had to 
 tell the men to find work where and how they 
 could. 
 
 It could not be said, however, that the farmers 
 had won. Hasbach tells us that " the struggle 
 ended without a decisive victory for either side. 
 The labourers had not been fully united, neither 
 had the farmers." 
 
 The enormous financial strain upon the Union 
 may be gathered from the fact that in the financial 
 year 1874-5 £21,365 had been paid out for strikes 
 alone. Of this sum £5,595 was raised by special 
 levies from the branches, and £12,613 from outside 
 contributions. The Union suffered a serious decline 
 in membership. During the following winter 112 
 branches ceased to exist, and the membership fell 
 by about 28,000. 
 
 The effect of the collapse was to shake the confi- 
 dence of the labourers. So long as the advance 
 in wages was maintained, most of the men were 
 confident that the Union could prevent them from 
 falling again to their old level. Suspicion began to 
 manifest itself in the ranks. 
 
 " It was easy," says Mr. Sidney Webb, " to drop into 
 the suspicious mind of the uneducated villager a fatal 
 doubt as to the real destination of the pennies which 
 he was sending away to the far-off central treasury. . . . 
 The clergjrman, the doctor, and the village publican were 
 always at hand to encourage distrust of the ' paid agitator.' " 
 72 
 
COLLAPSE 
 
 One of the unfortunate results of the lock-out 
 was disunity within the Union ranks. Many became 
 disheartened by the serious fall in membership, 
 and began to lose faith in the Union as a means of 
 improving the labourers' lot. Some argued that 
 the fvmds should not be wasted on strikes and 
 lock-outs, but should be utilized for the purchase 
 of land, which could then be let out to Union 
 members. An attempt was made to settle the 
 question. Professor Newman, of Oxford, presided 
 over a meeting which was composed of members 
 and deserters. Considerable feeling was displayed 
 at the meeting, and the confusion at the close was 
 so great that its will could not be ascertained. 
 
 A new Union called The National Farm Labourers' 
 Union was the result, having for its object the 
 acquisition of land, which was to be purchased out 
 of the weekly contributions and let out to members. 
 Arch and his followers looked upon the new venture 
 with scepticism, and opposed it with much bitter- 
 ness. The new Union accomplished Uttle beyond, 
 creating distmity. It managed in time to acquire 
 some land, but eventually the whole project was 
 abandoned. 
 
 Things were bad for the National, but the farmers 
 were also in great distress. The great agricultural 
 depression commenced in 1875. The rapid fall in 
 prices, together with foreign competition, made 
 farming unprofitable. Mr. R. E. Prothero writes 
 of this period : — 
 
 " For three years in succession, bleak springs and rainy 
 summers produced short cereal crops of inferior quality, 
 
 73 
 
VILLAGE TRADE UNIONS 
 
 mildew in wheat, mould in hops, blight in other crops, 
 disease in cattle, rot in sheep, throwing heavy lands into 
 foul conditions, deteriorating the finer grasses of pastures. 
 In 1875-6 the increasing volume of imports prevented 
 prices from rising to compensate deficiencies in the jdeld 
 of com." 
 
 Rents on the whole were high, as many of them 
 had been adjusted during the period when prices 
 were booming. In some cases they were reduced 
 or abatements were given, but as a rule this did not 
 happen fast enough. Many farmers were ruined, 
 while many more only held on by Hving on their 
 capital. This reduced the number of workers 
 engaged in agriculture, and those who remained 
 were bound to accept low wages. The depression 
 continued, and the Union could no longer keep up 
 its membership, which had fallen to 24,000 in 1878 
 and to 20,000 in 1879-80. Lock-outs occurred 
 every winter. Farmers did not wait for the men 
 to make demands : they locked them out, especially 
 if the men were in the Union. 
 
 Then came another spHt. Many of the members 
 were afraid the Union was rapidly going under 
 owing to bad management and extravagance. 
 Their remedy was to group the district branches 
 into Federal Unions in order to exercise greater 
 control over the local branches. Arch was much 
 opposed to the new scheme and spoke out bitterly 
 against " splitting the Union into sections." He 
 held that as the Union had been considerably 
 weakened by the loss of members, it could not 
 afford to dispense with a strong centralized organiza- 
 74 
 
COLLAPSE 
 
 tion. There is no doubt that the central body was 
 often out of touch with the branches. It was also 
 true that branches often took the initiative and 
 forced a strike almost before the central body knew 
 of the branch's existence. The labourer, so patient, 
 so long-suffering, once roused was difficult to 
 restrain. To dare to join a Union was itself an 
 heroic act, requiring an amount of courage undreamt 
 of by the town labourer. Having performed an 
 act so revolutionary, the labourer chafed at inaction. 
 Merely to belong to a Union and pay twopence a 
 week was too much like disillusionment. 
 
 In 1877 a Sick Benefit Society was introduced. 
 It was this, according to some critics, which -became 
 one of the chief causes of the ultimate collapse of 
 the Union. For many years there had existed in 
 the villages semi-charitable clubs, encouraged by 
 the landed gentry and farmers who contributed 
 towards their maintenance. Many of these clubs 
 were, as Arch says, " rotten to the core." Canon 
 Girdlestone had written {Spectator, September 1873) 
 of the " innumerable, bankrupt village clubs, patted 
 on the back by owners and occupiers of land and 
 by the publicans, where the poor man's small and 
 hard-earned savings are wasted in bands of music, 
 flags, and feasting." The labourers had been in 
 the habit of contributing to these clubs, and, not 
 unnaturally, they wanted them to come under the 
 control of the Union. 
 
 The Union Benefit Society took over many of 
 these district societies. They were taken over 
 irrespective of age or standard of health, provided 
 
 75 
 
VILLAGE TRADE UNIONS 
 
 they had funds amounting to f,i per member. As 
 an attempt to increase the membership of the 
 Union it was a failure, for the younger men were 
 not attracted, as the Union could not promise 
 them increased wages, and the older men remained 
 on mainly because of the Sick Benefit Society. 
 Thus the Union became burdened with members 
 who were continually drawing upon the fimds. 
 
 With the exception of a shght revival in Norfolk 
 and Suffolk during 1883, the Union gradually 
 declined, until, in 1889, it had only 4,254 members. 
 These members were scattered up and down the 
 Midland and Eastern counties, in what were virtu- 
 ally Sick and Funeral Clubs. Most of the smaller 
 Unions had disappeared altogether, though it was 
 said that the Kent and Sussex Union still had over 
 10,000 members. 
 
 After the collapse of the Union in 1874 its mem- 
 bers favoured political action as a means of raising 
 their status. It rapidly became a poUtical, rather 
 than a purely Trade Union. During the later 
 seventies and early eighties the activities of the 
 Union were directed more and more into poHtical 
 channels, and the franchise became its foremost 
 demand. When the vote was obtained in 1884 
 the Union continued to lose ground 
 
 " largely," as Arch says, " owing to the fact that an im- 
 portant part of the work was done (though by no means 
 all) : the men had the vote ; it was as if they had a wide 
 door set open before them, and they thought they could 
 get all they wanted by means of their representative in 
 Parliament." 
 76 
 
COLLAPSE 
 
 The grounds for these expectations were to be 
 found in the Radical Programme of the period, to 
 which many of the laboiu-ers' poUtical friends 
 subscribed. 
 
 The general wave of Trade Unionism which swept 
 over the country after the successful dock strike 
 roused the farm labourers to take action. The 
 Eastern counties took the lead. The Eastern 
 Counties Labour Federation was formed with its 
 centre in Ipswich (May 1890), and soon had 3,000 
 members in the surrounding villages. At the end 
 of 1892 the membership stood at 17,000, but many 
 were in arrears with their payments. About the 
 same time the Norfolk and Norwich Amalgamated 
 Union arose. The old National began to revive, 
 and between 1889 and 1890 increased its membership 
 from 2,454 to 14,000. In 1891 it had 12,000 
 members in Norfolk alone, and its great strength 
 at this period resided in the three counties of Norfolk, 
 Essex, and Suffolk. The old Kent and Sussex 
 Labourers' Union once more sprang into Ufe under 
 the name of the London and Counties Labour League, 
 and extended its branches throughout the South- 
 Eastern coimties. 
 
 The dockers had learnt one great lesson, which 
 was that the existence of a mass of low-paid labourers 
 in the country placed unskilled workers in the 
 towns at the mercy of their employers. One of 
 the reasons given for the dockers' success was that 
 it was harvest-time, a period during which employers 
 could not easily obtain black-leg labour from the 
 country. The dockers' delegates to the Trade 
 
 77 
 
VILLAGE TRADE UNIONS 
 
 Union Congress brought up the question of organ- 
 izing the farm labourers. This they followed up 
 by activity in the rural districts, and during 1890 
 delegates from the Dockers' Union were busy 
 among the farm labourers in Oxfordshire and 
 Lincolnshire. 
 
 The Land Restoration League was also very active 
 in many of the country districts about this period. 
 Its objects were (i) to educate the agricultural 
 labourers by means of lectures, leaflets, etc., in the 
 principles of land restoration ; (2) to promote their 
 organization for the bettering of their condition, 
 and especially with a view to poUtical action on 
 the land question ; and (3) to collect accurate 
 information as to the social condition of the villages 
 under landlordism. Propaganda was carried on 
 by means of speakers who travelled from place to 
 place in Red Vans, bearing upon them the inscrip- 
 tion : " Fair wages. The Land for all. Fair 
 Rents." As a result of the League meetings many 
 new Union branches were started and hundreds of 
 farm labourers were induced to join. In its annual 
 report the League states : — 
 
 " The difficulties in the way of organizing the labourers 
 are very great in some of the villages, especially where 
 the village belongs entirely to one man, or where the 
 labourers live in cottages owned by the farmers and are 
 liable to lose both home and employment at a week's 
 notice ; or where the breaking up of former organizations 
 has left the men dispirited and distrustful." 
 
 According to Hasbach, at the beginning of 1894 
 the following Agricultural Unions were in exist- 
 78 
 
COLLAPSE 
 
 ence : (i) The old National Agricultural Union 
 (Leamington) ; (2) the old but re-named London 
 and Counties Labour League (London) ; (3) The 
 Warwickshire Agricultural and General Labourers' 
 Union (Leamington) ; (4) The Wiltshire Agricul- 
 tural and General Labourers' Union (Devizes) ; 
 (5) The Berkshire Agricultural and General Workers' 
 Union (Reading) ; (6) The Hertfordshire Land and 
 Labour League (Hitchin) ; (7) The Eastern Counties 
 Labour Federation (Ipswich) ; (8) The Norfolk and 
 Norwich Afnalgamated Labourers' Union (Norwich) ; 
 (9) The Herefordshire Workers' Union (Kingsland). 
 By 1900, with one or two unimportant exceptions, 
 all these Unions ceased to exist. Those that 
 lingered on remained inactive and impotent. 
 
 In 1899 ^^^ Workers' Union, a Union started in 
 1898 for the purpose of organizing unskilled labour 
 of all kinds, commenced to work among farm 
 labourers. During that year over forty branches 
 were formed in Staffordshire, North Shropshire, 
 South Cheshire, and Norfolk, with a total member- 
 ship of nearly 2,000. No attempt was made to 
 organize farm labourers in other counties. The 
 Union claimed that it succeeded in raising wages 
 in some districts by is. to 3s. a week. This success, 
 however, was only temporary, for during the 
 general depression in Trade Unionism it lost prac- 
 tically all the members of the farm labourers' 
 section. 
 
 79 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 RESULTS 
 
 " A work remains^ the work of surpassing all they have 
 done." 
 
 Though the Unions did not succeed in permanently 
 improving the labourer's economic position, they 
 gave him a taste of power. He was no longer a 
 submissive, inarticulate beast of burden. His back 
 had been straightened ; he stood erect and took 
 his own measure. The Unions had given him 
 knowledge ; they had given him a voice. As Mr. 
 Jesse CoUings says : " The labourer had learnt to 
 look beyond his village ; he acquired new ideas, a 
 glimmer of independence, and above all, he 
 became capable of active discontent with his lot, 
 without which it was impossible to help him." 
 
 If it cannot be said that the Unions effected a 
 permanent rise in wages in many districts, it^^can 
 be said that in some districts wages never dropped 
 to their old level. One of the members of the 
 Richmond Commission (1881) said to Arch, " I am 
 paying fully 60 per cent, more for my labour 
 since you began this Union." 
 80 
 
RESULTS 
 
 " It was an undeniable fact," says Arch, " that in many- 
 parts of England, v/here wages had been kept up to twelve 
 and thirteen shillings a week, they would have run down 
 to nine and ten if it had not been for the Union." 
 
 It was undoubtedly true that, having regard to 
 the methods of cultivation, Agriculture was carry- 
 ing more men than it could efficiently employ. 
 Had the industry been properly organized it could 
 easily have absorbed all the surplus labour. The 
 State simply allowed matters to drift. Its poUcy 
 of laissez-faire amounted to sheer laziness. The 
 Unions came to the rescue, and by organizing, 
 migration, and emigration performed a national 
 service. 
 
 Co-operation with his feUows for common ends 
 awakened the labourer's intelligence. The Chronicle 
 gave him a taste for reading and widened his out- 
 look. A discerning contributor to the Congrega- 
 tionalist wrote, in 1876 : — 
 
 " The change which has taken place in the ordinary 
 conversation of the village is extremely remarkable, and 
 must be regarded as indicating an entire revolution in 
 thought and in manner of life." 
 
 Professor Thorold Rogers, speaking at a meeting 
 in Oxford in 1878, said that a squire who lived 
 near Oxford had told him that " he was extremely 
 thankful that the Labourers' Union had come into 
 the parish, where he owned every inch of land. 
 It had raised the men to a higher level, and in some 
 districts this Union . . . had been the cause of 
 the diminution of pauperism." 
 
 F 81 
 
VILLAGE TRADE UNIONS 
 
 In villages where formerly there had been prac- 
 tically no communal life, the Unions had succeeded 
 in drawing the labourers together in social inter- 
 course. Though membership was confined to men, 
 the men were actively supported by their wives and 
 daughters, who marched with them at the demon- 
 strations, officiated at the social gatherings, and 
 equalled the men in enthusiasm. One of the 
 delegates said that he knew a woman who had 
 threatened to tear off all the hair from her 
 husband's head if he did not join the Union ! 
 
 In districts where the men had migrated to the 
 North, the women attended the Union meetings in 
 place of their husbands. The Newbury Weekly 
 News, reporting a Union meeting, said : — 
 
 " Almost all the agricultural labourers of Redbum 
 appeared to be assembled with their sons, and some of 
 their wives, on Redbum Common on Thursday. A 
 delegate spoke. For three hours in a bitter cold wind, 
 they stood on the grass, and all, especially the women, 
 listened intently." 
 
 Certainly, the issue at stake affected women 
 quite as much as men. In fact, the women suffered 
 most of all. The mother was the first to feel the 
 pinch of starvation. In the distribution of the 
 scanty fare she was the last to be served, and 
 almost invariably hers was the smallest share. 
 She it was who had to spend most of her life in 
 the insanitary, damp, overcrowded, inconvenient 
 hovel. There she had to cook, mend, wash, iron, 
 tend the sick, bring up a large family, and wear 
 82 
 
RESULTS 
 
 herself out in the futile attempt to keep out of 
 debt. Her husband, it is true, had to work hard, 
 and suffer many hardships and indignities ; but 
 hers was the greater burden. A hard, open-air life 
 is infinitely preferable to continual drudgery in 
 an unhealthy dwelling. 
 
 The Union brought joy and hope to the women. 
 There were the brighter days — the gala days, 
 when the branch had its socials and demonstrations. 
 There they joined together in singing. The follow- 
 ing were great favourites in the early days : — 
 
 STAND LIKE THE BRAVE. 
 
 O workmen awake, for the strife is at hand ; 
 
 With right on your side, then, with hope firmly stemd ; 
 
 To meet your oppressors, go, fearlessly go, 
 
 And stand like the brave, with your face to the foe. 
 
 Stand like the brave, stand like the brave ; 
 
 Oh, stand like the brave, with your face to the foe. 
 
 Whatever's the danger, take heed and beware. 
 And turn not your back — for no armour is there ; 
 Seek righteous reward for your labour — ^then go 
 And stand like the brave, with your face to the foe. 
 
 The cause of each other with vigour defend. 
 
 Be honest and true, and fight to the end ; 
 
 Where duty may lead you go, fearlessly go. 
 
 And stand like the brave, with your face to the foe. 
 
 Let hope, then, still cheer us ; though long be the strife, 
 More comforts shall come to the workman's home life ; 
 More food for our children ; demand it, then go 
 And stand like the brave, with your face to the foe. 
 
 83 
 
VILLAGE TRADE UNIONS 
 
 Press on, never doubting redemption draws near — 
 Poor serfs shall arise from oppression and fear ; 
 Though great ones oppose you, they cannot o'erthrow 
 If you stand like the brave, with your face to the foe. 
 
 THE FINE OLD ENGLISH LABOURER. 
 
 Conie, lads, and listen to my song, a song of honest toil, 
 'Tis of the English labourer, the tiller of the soil ; 
 I'll tell you how he used to fare, and all the ills he bore. 
 Till he stood up in his manhood, resolved to bear no more. 
 This fine old English labourer, one of the present time. 
 
 He used to take whatever wage the farmer chose to pay. 
 And work as hard as any horse for eighteenpence a day ; 
 Or if he grumbled at the nine, and dared to ask for ten. 
 The angry farmer cursed and swore, and sacked him 
 there and then. 
 
 He used to tramp off to his work while town folk were abed, 
 With nothing in his belly but a slice or two of bread ; 
 He dined upon potatoes, and he never dreamed of meat, 
 Except a lump of bacon fat sometimes by way of treat. 
 
 He used to find it hard enough to give his children food. 
 But sent them to the village school as often as he could ; 
 But though he knew that school was good, they must 
 
 have bread and clothes. 
 So he had to send them to the fields to scare away the 
 
 crows. 
 
 He used to walk along the fields and see his landlord's 
 
 game 
 Devour his master's growing crops, and think it was a 
 
 shame ; 
 But if the keeper found on him a rabbit or a wire, 
 He got it hot when brought before the parson and the 
 
 squire. 
 84 
 
RESULTS 
 
 But now he's wide awake enough and doing all he caii ; 
 At last, for honest labour's rights, he's fighting like a man ; 
 Since squires and landlords will not help, to help himsell 
 
 he'll try, 
 And if he does not get fair wage, he'll know the reason 
 
 why. 
 
 They used to treat him as they liked in the evil days of 
 
 old. 
 They thought there was no power on earth to beat the 
 
 power of gold ; 
 They used to threaten what they'd do whenever work 
 
 was slack. 
 But now he laughs their threats to scorn with the Union 
 
 at his back. 
 
 This fine old English labourer, one of the present time. 
 
 Occasionally there were field days, when contin- 
 gents headed by bands arrived from all the neigh- 
 bouring districts. Such a gathering took place at 
 Yeovil in June 1873. Lord Edmund Fitzmaurice 
 presided over a large and enthusiastic meeting on 
 Lyneham Green, and letters endorsing the movement 
 were received from Samuel Morley, C. H. Spurgeon, 
 G. O. Trevelyan, and others. " Tents were erected, 
 refreshments, ginger-bread stalls were scattered 
 about. Aunt Sally and other sports were provided. 
 Dancing and kiss-in-the-ring were thoroughly 
 enjoyed." Thus, the regeneration of village Ufe 
 began with the Unions. They stirred the labourer, 
 and gave him a new outlook and new ideas, and 
 put spirit into him. 
 
 This spirit found expression in political activity. 
 After the lock-out of 1874 little was heard of strikes' 
 and lock-outs. The Union concentrated on ques- 
 
 85 
 
VILLAGE TRADE UNIONS 
 
 tions, such as the Parliamentary franchise for 
 agricultural labourers, changes in the land laws, 
 the democratization of local government, and the 
 disestablishment of the Church. These were wide 
 claims, and far exceeded the demands of the older 
 Trade Unions of the town artisans. In fact, the 
 Agricultural Labourers' Union was the first to enter 
 the poUtical arena. It was not until 1878 that the 
 other Unions definitely entered the poUtical field. 
 
 Almost from the first the franchise had been one 
 of the Union's chief demands. The Chronicle, a 
 week after the first anniversary of the meeting at 
 Leamington, placed this demand second in its 
 programme. At the Yeovil demonstration in June 
 1873 most of the men wore cards in their hats, 
 upon which the following was written : — 
 
 " The franchise for agricultural labourers. 15s. a 
 week all the year round and no surrender." 
 
 The Times, as early as June 1873, said : — 
 
 " We cannot think that the question before us is simply 
 one of labour and wages. It is rather the real and com- 
 plete elevation of the agricultural labourer to a higher 
 and larger share of our common, and perhaps we may 
 add, our Christian humanity. He is to be made more 
 independent, more self-governing, more rational, more a 
 social personage — ^in a word, more of a man. He is to 
 be made really a citizen of the great commonwealth, and 
 more worthy of the franchise which one day he is to have." 
 
 Mr. George Dixon, M.P., in July 1873 presented 
 to the House of Commons a petition in favour of 
 household franchise, signed by 82,000 farm labourers. 
 86 
 
RESULTS 
 
 All through the seventies the agitation for the 
 franchise was kept going. Arch says : " I was 
 bitterly disappointed when the Bill (George Treve- 
 lyan's) was defeated in 1875. . . . But of course we 
 only kept agitating more and more, and the fran- 
 chise was a front plank in the Union platform 
 from this time onwards." At the branch meetings 
 franchise songs frequently took the place of the 
 old Union favourites. The labourers sent petition 
 after petition to the House of Commons in favour 
 of household suffrage in the counties. Getting 
 signatures for these petitions kept the men busy, and 
 also helped to keep them united. Arch himself 
 presented a petition seventeen yards long, signed 
 by 80,000 farm labourers. The agitation did not 
 cease imtil the franchise was conceded in 1884. 
 
 It is not difficult to understand why the Unions 
 agitated for the disestabUshment of the Church of 
 England. The Church with its huge landed estates 
 was a part of the oppressive land system ; it had 
 representatives in every parish, who for the most 
 part were utterly hostile to the demands of the 
 labourers. It appeared to the latter that most of 
 the clergy were as anxious to preserve their tithes 
 as the landlord his rents. Most of them, too, 
 received their Uvings from members of the landlord 
 class. The squire, the farmer, and the clergyman 
 were to the labourer a sinister trinity of privilege, 
 oppression, and patronage, to which he owed 
 traditional homage. Rumour had it that the 
 parson's glebe, no less than the squire's demesne, 
 had been enlarged by the enclosure of the people's 
 
 87 
 
VILLAGE TRADE UNIONS 
 
 commons. The suspicion of generations expressed 
 itself at Union meetings, and the actual hostiUty 
 of so many clergymen confirmed this suspicion in 
 the minds of the labourers. A number of the 
 leaders of the Unions were Dissenters, and this to 
 some extent explains the vehemence with which 
 the Church was attacked. 
 
 The Chronicle from the beginning had, week by 
 week, bitterly assailed the Church. It was this 
 agitation which caused Canon Girdlestone to sever 
 his official connection with the Union. In an 
 article which he wrote to the Spectator (September 6, 
 1873), he wrote of the " dangerous turn the agita- 
 tion was taking," and denounced " their meddUng 
 with the resources of our clergy and any political 
 tinkering of theirs with the connection of Church 
 and State." He complained that the Union had 
 degenerated into a " mere pohtical engine for 
 bringing about a social revolution." 
 
 The maladministration of charitable trusts, which, 
 as Hasbach points out, " often consisted of land, 
 and were not seldom withdrawn by the trustees 
 from their original objects," caused the labourers 
 to agitate for a searching inquiry to be made. 
 
 " In many and many a village," says Arch, " the charity 
 land had been diverted from the purpose intended and 
 enclosed in the farms, and when a poor man wanted a 
 piece of land he had perhaps to pay the parson at the 
 rate of I'i or £i^ an acre for it." 
 
 The Game Laws, under which labourers had to 
 submit to the indignities of compulsory search on 
 88 
 
RESULTS 
 
 the highway, also came in for a great deal of bitter 
 criticism, and Arch spoke strongly upon the subject 
 when he appeared before the Select Committee 
 in 1873. 
 
 The housing question also was brought pronii- 
 nently to the front. Bitter were the complaints 
 against the " tied " cottage system. This system 
 was used as a weapon by the farmers for the purpose 
 of smashing the Union. In one district, at least, 
 where the farmers had given their men notice to 
 quit their cottages, they resolved to let them in 
 future on a weekly tenancy in order that any 
 Union man might easily be evicted. The Duke of 
 Marlborough in 1872 placed the cottages and allot- 
 ments on his estates in the hands of the farmers 
 in order, as he said, to keep the labourers in check. 
 In his evidence before the Richmond Commission, 
 Arch said : — 
 
 " I think if the farmer is going in for tenant right, 
 which of course I hold with, there should be legislation 
 to grant the labourers' cottage right. ... If a labourer 
 has a proper notice to quit, well and good ; but I call it 
 a monstrous injustice that he should be driven out of 
 his cottage on a week's notice." 
 
 These agitations irritated the landed class beyond 
 endurance, and to some extent account for the 
 unrelenting opposition to the labourers' right to 
 combine. Such agitations revealed a danger which 
 threatened the interests of the landed classes far 
 more than a mere rise in wages ; for the claims 
 which inspired them were revolutionary. They 
 
 89 
 
VILLAGE TRADE UNIONS 
 
 stood for the dethronement of territorial power, 
 because, without vassals, such power vanishes. 
 
 Some opposed the labourers because the move- 
 ment might lead to the dissolution of what they 
 regarded as benevolent despotism ; others, because 
 in their near-sighted, selfish way they could see 
 their privileges slipping away. Both attitudes are 
 represented to-day. Neither is right, because 
 both presuppose the necessity for a servUe class, 
 and derive their sanction from traditional 
 abuses. 
 
 The leaders of the Unions, much to their credit, 
 placed great emphasis on the need for education. 
 The Elementary Education Act of 1870 was in 
 force, and the Unions did much to see that its 
 provisions were carried out in the villages. At 
 their meetings they advocated the regular attend- 
 ance of the children at school, and tried to raise 
 the moral standard in the home. Even the labourers 
 themselves, many of them, did not regard the 
 education of their children as a priceless boon. 
 Rather they looked to the children to augment the 
 family income. Who can blame them when wages 
 were so low, and living so hard ? 
 
 The leaders of the Union had known to their 
 cost what ignorance meant. Arch, describing the 
 difficulties which confronted the Union, wrote : — 
 
 " They (the labourers) were obstinate, suspicious, and 
 stupid, because they were so ignorant ; their brains were 
 ill-nourished and so they were dull ; their uncultivated 
 minds were like dark lanterns with a rushlight inside ; 
 they did not know how to think anything out, and they 
 did not even know how to try." 
 90 
 
RESULTS 
 
 The Unions therefore made education one of their 
 foremost claims, and besides keeping a vigilant 
 eye upon the working of the Act of 1870, assisted 
 the labourers* friends in the passing of the Education 
 Bill of 1876. 
 
 The regular attendance of the children at school 
 meant to some families a loss of three or four 
 shillings a week, and this was a serious drawback. 
 To make up for the loss to the family income, the 
 Unions urged that the labourers should be given 
 plots of land to tiU. 
 
 There is no doubt that the Allotments Acts of 
 1882 and 1887, and the Small Holdings Acts of 
 1892 and 1894 were largely responses to the Union's 
 demand for access to land for the labourers. The 
 passing of the Parish Councils Act, and the Local 
 Government Act of 1894, the principles of which 
 had long been advocated by the Unions, synchro- 
 nized with the revival of Unionism among the 
 labourers. These enactments did not, nor can 
 they of themselves, emancipate the labourer. But 
 they have placed in his hands a powerful instrument 
 which, if rightly used, may, in the near future, 
 make rural democracy a possibiUty. 
 
 91 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 TWO LEADERS 
 
 " They live in brothers again ready to defy you." 
 
 No history of Agricultural Labourers' Unions, 
 however brief, would be complete without some 
 reference to the personalities connected with the 
 movement. Mention has been made of the many 
 men not of the working class who associated 
 themselves with the labourers' cause. But the 
 revolt of the labourers produced some remarkable 
 men from among the rank and file. It is not 
 possible to single out all the brave men who 
 devoted themselves loyally to the improvement 
 of their class. Their names are legion. In 
 their respective localities some of them are remem- 
 bered and honoured to this day. For instance, in 
 Somerset and Wiltshire the name of George 
 Mitchell (" One from the Plough ") is held in rever- 
 ence by the older labourers who remember his 
 boundless enthusiasm. He was a stonemason who 
 threw himself into the labourers' movement. George 
 Rix is a name that always wiU be associated with 
 the labourers' cause in Norfolk. Again, there is 
 92 
 
TWO LEADERS 
 
 Henry Taylor, the indefatigable general secretary 
 of the National. He, too, was not an agricultural 
 labourer, but a carpenter. But the name that 
 always will be associated with the most formidable 
 revolt of the labourer in the nineteenth century 
 wiU be that of Joseph Arch. 
 
 More than forty years have passed by since the 
 name of Joseph Arch first became a household 
 word in this country. To the present generation 
 his name is scarcely known. In many a rural 
 poor-house and pensioner's cottage the memory 
 of " Joey Arch " is still enshrined in the hearts of 
 those unhonoured but honourable men and women 
 who in their younger days were quickened by hopes 
 of a sunht future. To them the name of Arch 
 stands for that emancipation of which they caught 
 ghmpses, but which they never permanently 
 attained. 
 
 His active public life began in 1872, when he was 
 forty-six years of age, and closed when he was in 
 his 75th year, since when, until his death in 1919, 
 he lived in retirement. Bom in 1826 at Barford, 
 a village in Warwickshire, as a youth he gained 
 notoriety as one who could plough and sow as well 
 as any man in the village, and while stiU in his 
 teens became the " champion hedgecutter of Eng- 
 land." Master of his craft, he was not content to 
 stay at home. He travelled into many of the 
 neighbouring counties, and also in Wales, pljdng 
 his craft as hedgecutter and undertaking mowing 
 contracts. In this way he was able not only to 
 ^am more money, but also to broaden his mind. 
 
 93 
 
VILLAGE TRADE UNIONS 
 
 Contact with different classes of farmers and 
 labourers did much to free him from the narrow 
 prejudices which so often characterized the stay- 
 at-home. He saw much discontent among the 
 different classes of labourers with whom he mixed, 
 and he realized how amply it was justified. After 
 many wanderings. Arch returned to his native 
 village. Thus while still a young man, he had 
 made himself thoroughly acquainted with the 
 common lot of the agricultural labourer. One of 
 the thiogs which had impressed him while away 
 from home was the tremendous advantage pos- 
 sessed by a labourer who was secure in his dwelling. 
 The great bulwark of the Arch family was their 
 freehold cottage. 
 
 His father was an ordinary labourer who never 
 earned more than ten shillings a week. The family 
 was alwajre in a state of chronic poverty, but even 
 this could not tame the proud spirit of the mother. 
 She hated servitude more than poverty, and it 
 was this pride of spirit that she instilled into the 
 lad who was destined to become the future leader 
 of the oppressed labourers. " Ah, my boy, you 
 shall never, never do that. I will work these 
 fingers to the bone before you have to do it ! " she 
 exclaimed to her son, as the neighbours' children 
 went to the rectory for soup. She kept her word. 
 A woman like Mrs. Arch was bound to rebel against 
 the little hierarchy which dominated the village. 
 The brand of social inferiority distinguished tiie 
 labourers and their families from the tradesmen, 
 farmers, squires, and parsons, even in the House of 
 94, 
 
TWO LEADERS 
 
 God. In Barford Church the poor were allotted 
 their own places, and were not permitted to mingle 
 with their " superiors." The squire and other 
 magnates sat curtained off from the vulgar gaze, 
 while the rector's wife sat in a pew in the chancel, 
 and the poor women and girls walked up the church 
 and curtseyed to her before taking their seats. 
 Mrs. Arch defied the rector's wife in this as in other 
 matters. 
 
 Arch was obliged to leave school before he 
 reached the age of nine, having received less than 
 three years' regular tuition. But with the help 
 of his mother he was enabled to pick up what was 
 considered at the time to be a fair education. 
 Quite early in life he became associated with the 
 Dissenters, who used to hold meetings in a bam. 
 When quite a young man he joined the Methodists 
 and commenced to preach. He attained consider- 
 able notoriety in his own district, not only as a 
 deeply religious man, and an earnest and eloquent 
 preacher, but as a good and reliable laboiurer who 
 could tiun his hand to anything. However, in 
 spite of hard work, thrift, and sobriety, he was 
 unable to save money, and he found it extremely 
 difficult to maintain his wife and seven children 
 in decency and comfort. Thus, until he was 
 46 years of age, he continued to live the life 
 of an ordinary labourer. The time came when 
 he put aside spade and hook, and undertook the 
 task for which his life had been one long prepa- 
 ration. 
 
 From 1872 to 1885 he was closely associated with 
 
 95 
 
VILLAGE TRADE UNIONS 
 
 the movement which he did so much to foster. 
 Mr. Jesse Collings says : — 
 
 " He entered into the struggle with the single aim of 
 bettering the conditions of his fellow-labourers whose 
 sufferings he knew so well.^ He had passed through the 
 bitter experience himself, and had discharged special 
 family obhgations with a courage and independence 
 worthy of respect and admiration." 
 
 His antipathy towards the clergy of the Establish- 
 ment was perhaps too unrelenting, but taking into 
 account the treatment which he and his kind had 
 received at their hands, it was not altogether 
 inexplicable. His power over the labourers in the 
 early days of the movement was due to his earnest- 
 ness and personal integrity. The Newbury Weekly 
 News describing one of his meetings said : — 
 
 " Whether for good or for evil, he has probably a greater 
 influence over an outdoor assembly of labourers than 
 any other man in England. ... As long as the move- 
 ment has such a man for its champion, there is little doubt 
 of its vitality or even aggressiveness." 
 
 Clayden, who accompanied him on his Canadian 
 tour, says that Arch was pressed to speak at Boston, 
 and spoke for an hour before a large assembly. 
 " Wendell Phillips and General Butler, who had 
 come to patronise, were lost in admiration of the 
 perfect self-command and ease of expression dis- 
 played by the English farm-labourer." 
 
 His free use of Scriptural texts and analogies, 
 which was the result of his training as a local 
 preacher, laid him open to the charge of being a 
 96 
 
TWO LEADERS 
 
 " canting ranter." But such was not the case. 
 When, at Newbury, speaking in the open air, he 
 said, " The Mayor has denied us the Corn Exchange, 
 but our Heavenly Father has sent us a beautiful 
 nice, fine evening, and let us have this spacious 
 building," he sincerely beheved such to be a fact. 
 In reviewing his Ufe-work, he writes : — 
 
 " I know that it was the hand of the Lord of Hosts 
 which led me that day : that the Almighty Maker of 
 heaven and earth raised me up to do this particular thing ; 
 that in the counsel of His wisdom He singled me out, 
 and set me on my feet ia His sight, and breathed of the 
 breath of His Spirit into me, and sent me forth as a 
 messenger of the Lord God of Battles. So I girded up 
 my loins and went forth." 
 
 Perhaps it was this implicit faith in Divine 
 guidance which made it a little difficult for some 
 of his colleagues to work with him. He was an 
 orator, not an organizer, and was incHned to be 
 rather intolerant of ideas not fathered by himself. 
 He was not always able to beheve in the disinter- 
 estedness of those of his colleagues who did not 
 always see eye to eye with him in Union policy. 
 
 It is not an easy matter to estimate the influence 
 Arch had upon the life and outlook of the agri- 
 cultural labourer. He undertook a difficult task, 
 and in spite of much opposition and misrepresenta- 
 tion, succeeded in inducing the labourers to combine 
 for the purpose of improving their lot. Critics 
 have arisen to condemn not only his aims, but also 
 his methods. But taking into consideration the 
 times in which he worked, and the material he had 
 
 G 97 
 
VILLAGE TRADE UNIONS 
 
 to work upon, it cannot be said that his mission 
 was a failure. He did succeed in rousing the 
 labourers from their habitual indifference and 
 servitude. 
 
 In 1877 Arch was invited by two different Liberal 
 Associations, Southwark and Woodstock, to stand 
 as Liberal candidate. He refused both offers, as 
 he felt that the time was not ripe, and that he 
 could do better work outside Parliament. How- 
 ever, when in 1880 he was invited by the Wilton 
 Liberal Society to oppose the " independent " 
 member, he consented to stand and fight against 
 " Tory landlordism, war, bad trade, starvation, 
 and the ' cat.' " Feeling ran high at this period 
 over the use of the cat-o'-nine-tails in the Army, 
 and in his election campaign Arch strongly con- 
 demned its use. However, he failed to get returned. 
 
 Having obtained the vote, the labourers felt 
 they ought to have a representative in Parlia- 
 ment. Arch was invited by the working men of 
 North- West Norfolk to stand as their candidate 
 in the General Election which took place in 
 November 1885. He stood in the " Liberal and 
 labouring-class interest." In his election address 
 Arch said he would 
 
 " support the extension of Free Trade to all articles oi 
 food ; a measure for conferring local government by 
 boards upon county districts ; the complete reform of 
 the land laws ; compensation for improvements in the 
 soil ; total abolition of the law of distress ; power to 
 government or local boards to acquire land at reasonable 
 purchase value, and to re-let the same in allotments ; 
 98 
 
TWO LEADERS 
 
 disestablishmeait of the Church ; free, secular elementary 
 education ; Sunday closing of public-houses, except to 
 bona fide travellers ; abolition of perpetual pensions ; 
 substitution of arbitration for war ; and equal laws for 
 all parts of the United Kingdom." 
 
 This programme contained no direct reference 
 to the labourers or to Trade Unionism. It clearly 
 indicates the changed attitude of the labourers. 
 They were looking forward to " a complete reform 
 of the land laws as the means whereby they could 
 obtain better conditions." This agitation of the 
 labourers for land reform undoubtedly gave Mr, 
 Joseph Chamberlain, M.P., his cue for the Un- 
 authorized Programme. 
 
 After a very rough and rowdy campaign, Arch 
 was returned by a majority of 640. His election 
 expenses were paid for him by wealthy men — 
 presumably Liberals — and while in Parliament his 
 expenses were paid by the Union. In the House, 
 Arch wore similar clothes to those he wore when 
 addressing meetings of labourers — a rough tweed 
 suit and a billycock hat. In the following year 
 another election took place at the time of the Home 
 Rule split. This time Arch was beaten by 20 
 votes. 
 
 After 1885 Arch never seemed to get back into 
 his Union " stride." As a Member of Parliament 
 he had to be in London when the House was sitting, 
 and this prevented him from keeping in close touch 
 with the Union movement. When no longer a 
 Member of the House, he toured the constituencies 
 to support the Liberal Party, addressing meetings 
 
 99 
 
VILLAGE TRADE U N I O K S 
 
 on the land question. He had become a " star 
 turn " at such meetings, and was in great demand 
 at the period Chamberlain was attracting attention 
 by the Unauthorized Programme. After the enact- 
 ment of the Local Government Act (1888) Arch 
 became a member of the Worcestershire County 
 Council. 
 
 At the General Election of 1892 he again con- 
 tested North-West Norfolk in opposition to the 
 late member. Lord Henry Bentinck. This time 
 Arch secured a majority of over a thousand. The 
 labourers were dissatisfied with the Tory Allotments 
 Act of 1887, and declared that the Small Holdings 
 Acts were of Uttle, if any, use to them. They 
 wanted not only greater opportunities of getting 
 land, but also a larger voice in the control of local 
 affairs. Arch, outUning his policy at this period, 
 said : — 
 
 " After the Irish question is got out of the way we must 
 have Parish Councils. By conferring upon these councils 
 the control of the charities and the administration of the 
 Poor Law many of the abuses at present existing will 
 be disposed of. These Councils, too, must take over 
 the matters of rating and education in the villages. Then, 
 above all, they must have the power to compulsorily 
 acquire as much land for the labourer as he wants, at the 
 same rent as land is letting in the district. The labourers 
 must, moreover, have conceded to them the right to sell 
 their improvements if they choose." 
 
 Arch sat as Member for North-West Norfolk 
 until 1900, when he retired from pubhc Ufe. Several 
 of his political friends subscribed towards pro- 
 100 
 
TWO LEADERS 
 
 viding a small annuity, sufficient to place him 
 beyond the reach of want for the remainder of his 
 days. He sought retirement in the little cottage 
 which had been his home all through his varied 
 career. 
 
 Before and after he became a Member of Parlia- 
 ment he gave evidence before several Royal Com- 
 missions and Select Committees. In the House 
 he, on many occasions, championed the cause of the 
 labourer. His greatest work, however, was accom- 
 plished before he entered the House of Commons. 
 It must be admitted that his membership of 
 the House did not have a beneficial effect upon 
 his personal character. In the very nature of the 
 case, a man of Arch's class and training would 
 require a tremendous reserve of moral strength to 
 enable him to counteract the subtle tendencies 
 towards moral deterioration, which almost inevit- 
 ably accompany honour and success. In the 
 House he was a novelty, a picturesque figure with 
 a romantic history. Flattery, showered upon him 
 by people who wished to use him for their own 
 purposes, tended to spoU him. His very in- 
 genuousness prevented him from avoiding the 
 snare ; it laid him specially open to this form -of 
 weakness. 
 
 His humbler colleagues, who slaved away un- 
 noticed at the difficult task which Arch had all 
 but relinquished owing to his " Parliamentary 
 Duties," began to weary a Uttle of his vanity, 
 which led to further disimion. However, the 
 words which were penned by Professor Thorold 
 
 101 
 
VILLAGE TRADE UNIONS 
 
 Rogers may be quoted as the present writer's 
 opinion of Joseph Arch : — 
 
 " I believe he has done no little service to his own order, 
 but I conclude he has done more for the general interests 
 of labour, if only by showing how universal is the instinct 
 that workmen can better their condition only by joint 
 and united action." 
 
 Since the days when Joseph Arch was an active 
 force among farm labourers, no one has had a 
 better claim than George Edwards to speak and 
 act on their behalf. The mantle of Arch fell upon 
 the shoulders of one who had been his co-worker 
 during the strenuous battles of the seventies and 
 eighties. George Edwards was among those who 
 helped to gain the franchise for the farm labourer. 
 In the fight for Parish and District Councils, Educa- 
 tion, Allotments and Small Holdings, none were 
 more strenuous than he. For nearly fifty years 
 he has agitated for greater freedom, shorter hours, 
 and higher wages for the worst paid skilled worker 
 in the land. One of his deep-rooted convictions 
 is that, if the farm labourer's position is perma- 
 nently to be improved, they must co-operate, and 
 take united action. In short, they must copy the 
 farmers — and join a Union. 
 
 George Edwards belongs to what is termed the 
 " old school " of Trade Unionist^ and in some 
 respects he has carried on the Arch tradition. 
 Like Arch he is a keen fighter, and yet tempers his 
 pugnacity with a reasonable degree of moderation. 
 His quaUty as a fighter is only matched by his 
 102 
 
TWO LEADERS 
 
 ability as a conciliator. Like Joseph Arch, George 
 Edwards was a farm labourer, and the son of a 
 farm labourer. The whole of his life has been 
 spent among them. The story of his early Ufe 
 is a story of continual struggle against poverty. 
 Bad as are the conditions of the farm laboiurers 
 to-day, they were very much worse when George 
 Edwards was a boy. 
 
 He was bom in 1850 at Marsham, ten miles from 
 Norwich. His father was an ex-soldier who had 
 retiurned to the soil. There were seven children 
 to keep on a wage of eight shillings a week. The 
 mother had to work at handloom weaving in order 
 to supplement the family income. Had she not 
 done this, the family would have starved. 
 
 George Edwards never went to school in his 
 Ufe. At the age of six he was sent to work, and 
 followed the plough until he was ten years of age. 
 At a meeting of the Norfolk County Council in 
 1915, when protesting against farmers taking 
 advantage of the national crisis to rob farm labourers' 
 children of the maximum amount of education 
 they were entitled to under the Education Acts, 
 he recalled his early experiences, and said " he owed 
 his smaUness of stature to being dragged into the 
 fields when a boy of six years old ; to overwork 
 and bad living ; and he was anxious that the rising 
 generation should not be dragged into the field, 
 and back into the old system." 
 
 At the age of seventeen he became a member of 
 the Primitive Methodist Church, and was made a 
 local preacher when he was twenty-two, although 
 
 103 
 
VILLAGE TRADE UNIONS 
 
 at that time he could neither read nor write. His 
 wife, who had managed to pick up a little education, 
 taught him to read, and helped him to memorize 
 the first chapter of St, John and three h3anns for 
 the first service he ever conducted ! 
 
 When the Parish and District Councils were set 
 up, George Edwards was elected to represent his 
 parish on the District CoimcU. His wife was 
 elected for the neighbouring parish, and for ten 
 years they worked side by side on the same Council, 
 
 When in 1873 The National Agricultural Labourers' 
 Union extended its organization to Norfolk, he 
 became an active member, and helped to spread 
 the movement locally. When disunion arose, many 
 of the Norfolk farm labourers seceded from the 
 National and formed a new Union called the 
 Norfolk and Norwich Amalgamated Labourers' 
 Union. George Edwards was appointed General 
 Secretary. This Union survived all others, but 
 became defunct in 1896, 
 
 In 1906, after the General Election, there was a 
 great deal of victimization. The farm labourers 
 from all parts appealed to George Edwards to make 
 another attempt to organize them into a Union. 
 This Union was the forerunner of the present 
 Agricultural Labourers' and Rural Workers' Union. 
 
 In April 1912 his wife, who had been his help- 
 mate and companion for many years, passed away. 
 The Lancashire strike, coming shortly after tMs 
 sad event, imposed a great strain upon him, and 
 affected his health. At the conclusion of the strike, 
 when victory had been secured, he resigned his 
 104 
 
TWO LEADERS 
 
 position as General Secretary. On his retirement 
 he was dected Vice-President of the Union. 
 
 In 1914 he was made a Justice of the Peace for 
 his native coimty. He unsuccessfully contested 
 North- West Norfolk in the 1918 " Coupon " 
 Election. 
 
 Although no longer General Secretary of the 
 Union, he has by no means refrained from taking 
 an active part in its counsels. He represents the 
 labourers on the Central Wages Board, and it is 
 to be hoped that the farm labourers will be able 
 to benefit by his assistance for many years to come. 
 
 105 
 
TWENTIETH CENTURY 
 
CHAPTER I 
 THE BETRAYAL 
 
 " Your schemes, politics, fail, lines give way, substances 
 mock and elude me." 
 
 From the first the farm worker had realized that 
 complete emancipation would not be attained merely 
 by periodic adjustments of wages and hours. He 
 instinctively knew that the land question was at 
 the root of most of his troubles. He regarded 
 access to the land as a sure means of escape from 
 his low condition. What the Unions had failed 
 to gain the vote would soon accompUsh. What 
 ParUament had taken away Parliament could 
 restore. The common lands had been enclosed 
 at a time when the farm worker had no say in the 
 matter ; by means of the vote the dispossessed 
 farm worker hoped to regain his birthright. Since 
 1884 the farm worker has been courted and cajoled 
 by each of the great political parties. Liberal 
 and Tory programmes have been full of promises, 
 from the time of Mr. Chamberlain's Unauthorized 
 Programme down to Mr. Lloyd George's Land 
 Campaign. There have been Allotment Acts, Small 
 Holdings Acts and Housing Acts, but these have 
 
 109 
 
VILLAGE TRADE UNIONS 
 
 not really succeeded in effecting much improvement 
 in the lives of the great mass of farm workers. 
 
 On the whole allotments have been suppUed 
 in a very grudging, niggardly fashion. In most 
 villages in 1914 the number of allotments was 
 insufficient to meet the demand ; in some villages 
 there were none available. The Land Enquiry 
 Committee in 1913 estimated that about a third 
 of the villages in England and Wales were without 
 any allotments. This Committee came to the 
 conclusion that " there is a great unsatisfied demand 
 for allotments on the part of the labourer, amounting 
 in some parts of the country to a veritable land 
 hunger." 
 
 Often, owing to its distance from the village and 
 the poor quality of the soil, an allotment has been 
 a burden rather than a boon to the farm worker. 
 Far from improving his social outlook, it has often 
 meant only additional toil to a man whose hours 
 of labour were already too long, but whose scanty 
 wages compelled him to overwork himself in order 
 to eke out a bare subsistence. 
 
 The supply of small holdings also is fcir behind 
 the demand. Some coimties have succeeded in 
 satisfjdng the demands of a large number of appli- 
 cants, but in others practically none have been 
 provided, especially in those counties where wages 
 were low and where the farm worker was unable 
 to exert pressure by means of his Union. But, 
 even in the best counties, it has not been the farm 
 worker who has succeeded in getting a small holding ; 
 it has more often been tradesmen, such as the 
 110 
 
THE BETRAYAL 
 
 village blacksmith, carpenter, or publican, who 
 have been selected. The test as to whether an 
 applicant is suitable has too often been, not Is he 
 the most capable person, but Has he sufficient 
 capital ? There are thousands of farm workers 
 who possess the necessary skill, but those with 
 sufficient capital are very few indeed. This fact 
 was acknowledged by the Rt. Hon. W. Runciman 
 when he was President of the Board of Agriculture. 
 " There were," he said, " very few labourers among 
 the apphcants, because the low wages paid to agri- 
 cultural labourers did not enable them to lay by even 
 the small amount of capital required for a small 
 holding." Yet this legislation was passed, it was 
 said, mainly to help farm workers to a position of 
 greater independence ! Moreover, small holdings, 
 unless linked together by some form of co-operation, 
 are, generally speaking, uneconomical. Usually 
 they are higher rented, and consequently higher 
 rated, than neighbouring land tenanted by large 
 farmers, and unless the holding is exceedingly 
 well situated as regards markets and transport 
 facilities, these handicaps are too great to allow 
 the experiment to become a success. 
 
 The Housing Acts have failed lamentably to 
 grapple with the rural housing problem. Sir Henry 
 Rew, in his report to the Board of Agriculture 
 on the Decline in the Agriculture Population 1881- 
 1906, says : — ■ 
 
 " Among specific causes of discontent a deficiency of 
 adequate or satisfactory housing acconimodation is 
 reported froni about thirty counties." 
 
 Ill 
 
VILLAGE TRADE UNIONS 
 
 Under the Housing and Town Planning Act, 
 1909, valuable work has been done in the way of 
 inspection and enquiry, but practically no cottages 
 have been built, although a certain number " unfit 
 for human habitation" have been repaired. 
 
 The evidence as to the shortage of decent cottages 
 for farm workers is overwhelming. Even before 
 the war the lack of good cottages was a scandal 
 which called aloud for redress. The conclusions 
 regarding housing arrived at by the Land Enquiry 
 Committee set up by the Rt. Hon. Lloyd George 
 in 1912 have been challenged, but never really 
 confuted, and subsequent committees have endorsed 
 the findings of that famous Committee, which 
 were as follows : — 
 
 1. That there is an urgent need in every county for 
 more labourers' cottages, especially for cottages with 
 three bedrooms. 
 
 2. That the condition of many of the existing cottages 
 is most unsatisfactory, a considerable number being 
 entirely unfit for human habitation. 
 
 3. That there is a great deal of overcrowding, which 
 frequently makes it impossible to provide for the proper 
 separation of the sexes. 
 
 4. That the unsatisfactory housing conditions are 
 largely responsible for : 
 
 (a) A good deal of the rural depopulation, resulting 
 
 in a serious interference with the siipply of 
 
 labour. 
 (6) A serious loss of time among labourers who work 
 
 in one village and have to live in another, or 
 
 in a neighbouring town, 
 (c) A general lowering of the standard of life among 
 
 those who remain in the villages. 
 112 
 
THE BETRAYAL 
 
 (d) A serious interference with the independence of 
 
 the labourers. 
 («) Young couples desiring to marry being obliged 
 
 to leave the district or to live with their parents 
 
 or lodge with other families. 
 (/) The spread of diphtheria, scarlet fever, and other 
 
 diseases, and the prevalence of tuberculosis 
 
 and rheumatism. 
 {g) A considerable amount of immorality due to 
 
 overcrowding. 
 
 5. That large numbers of cottages unfit for human 
 habitation are not closed, owing to the lack of alternative 
 accommodation. For the same reason necessary repairs 
 cannot be demanded by the local authority or the tenant, 
 lest the landlord should close the cottage rather than 
 incur the expense of repairing it. 
 
 6. That taking into account both the existing scarcity, 
 and also the scarcity that would be created if the Housing 
 Acts were properly enforced, as far as can be estimated, 
 at -least 120,000 new cottages are required at the present 
 time in England and Wales. 
 
 The Tied Cottage is one of the rankling abuses 
 of village life. It undermines the worker's liberty 
 and saps his independence. A farm worker may 
 be perfectly law-abiding and yet be turned adrift 
 into the road, merely because he exercise — ^what 
 after all should be the elementary right of every 
 citizen — the right to vote for whom he pleases or 
 to combine with his fellows for legitimate social 
 and economic purposes. In the matter of tied 
 cottages. Parliament has done nothing. The whole 
 question is aggravated by the shortage of decent 
 alternative accommodation. As things are, even 
 though a labourer get another job in the same 
 village, he cannot take it because there are no 
 
 H 118 
 
VILLAGE TRADE UNIONS 
 
 other cottages available. The sting of the tied 
 cottage system woxild be removed if loss of job did 
 not mean loss of home, if there were alternative 
 homes in the same village. So long as there is a 
 dearth of cottages in rural parishes, the power 
 of the farmer and landowner to tj^annize will 
 remain, and so long, rightly or wrongly, will the 
 farm worker feel his dependence. 
 
 Since the farm worker gained the vote, pohtical 
 intimidation has been rife in the villages. In 
 1906 one pohtical party started a league with the 
 object of protecting the worker and exposing poli- 
 tical intimidation. UntU quite recently the walls 
 of the villages and country towns at election times 
 were covered with placards announcing that the 
 Ballot was secret ! One of the most difficult things 
 to eradicate from the farm worker's mind was that 
 the squire, farmer, and parson would know which 
 way he voted. The same with allotments and 
 small holdings. Many dared not apply for land 
 for fear of incmrring the displeasure of the farmers 
 or landowners. To apply for land in some villages 
 was to become a marked man. Even where the 
 fear was unfounded, the knowledge of what had 
 happened in other villages tended to paralyse 
 the farm worker and prevent him exercising his 
 legal rights. 
 
 The farm worker had good reason to remain 
 discontented with his lot. No matter which phase 
 of his Ufe was considered, the same lack of prospect 
 confronted him. In his report to the Board of 
 Agriculture on the Decline in the Agricultural 
 114 
 
THE BETRAYAL 
 
 Population of Great Britain, 1881-1906, Sir Henry 
 Rew wrote : — 
 
 " Many correspondents refer to the absence of an in- 
 centive to remain on the land, and of any reasonable 
 prospect of advancement in life. ... It is indeed impos- 
 sible not to recognize that the ordinary career of the 
 agricultural labourer offers little scope for ambition." 
 
 The Departmental Committee on the Employment 
 of Sailors and Soldiers on the Land, reporting in 
 1916, said : — 
 
 " One great drawback to the life of an agricultural 
 labourer is that, no matter how persevering and industrious 
 he may be, he has little prospect of obtaining a position 
 of independence." 
 
 The amount of earnings received by the farm 
 worker was always a matter for dispute. Unhke 
 the majority of town workers, he did not receive 
 all his earnings in the form of money. The " cash 
 wage " was usually supplemented by additional 
 pay for overtime, piece work and payments such 
 as harvest money. Then there were " allowances " 
 such as a free or an under-rented cottage, a strip 
 of potato land, firing, milk, beer and cider. Even 
 though the cash wage was the same, " allowances " 
 and extras varied from village to village and county 
 to county, but in a given parish these did not vary 
 much from year to year. For purposes of com- 
 parison the cash wage is the best standard to adopt. 
 It should be noted, however, that the tendency was 
 for farmers to reduce allowances and extra pay- 
 
 115 
 
VILLAGE TRADE UNIONS 
 
 ments, especially where higher wages had been 
 obtained. 
 
 The Committee which reported on Wages and 
 Conditions of Employment in Agriculture (Cd. 24, 
 1919) estimated that in 1914 the average cash wage 
 for ordinary farm workers was i6s. gd., an increase 
 of 2s. a week over the 1907 average. These figures, 
 however, only represent nominal wages. What 
 concerns the labourer most is not the amount of 
 his cash wages, but how much they wiU buy. This 
 is always the test to apply Nominal wages are 
 the amoimt of money received ; real wages repre- 
 sent the purchasing power of that money. 
 
 In the Report of the Committee appointed by the 
 Wages Board in 1918 (Cd. 76, 1919) there is a 
 section dealing with cost of Hving in which a table' 
 is given comparing estimated cost of Average 
 Dietary of Agricultural Labourers' Families {six 
 persons) in England, 1902 and 1912. In 1902 the 
 cost was 13s. 5^d. ; in 1912, 15s. io|d. — an in- 
 crease in cost of food alone of 2S. 5jd. a week. 
 Therefore the increased cost of food would more 
 than absorb the 2S. rise in wages which occurred 
 between 1907 and 1914. 
 
 Assuming that house-rent, clothing, and all the 
 other things that go to make up the cost of living 
 remained stationary, and making allowance for 
 the fact that many labourers do not purchase 
 all the food consumed by their families, it would 
 be difficult to prove that the real wages of farm 
 workers were greater in 1914 than 1907. 
 
 • See Appendix III. 
 116 
 
THE BETRAYAL 
 
 Mr. R. E. Prothero in 1912 wrote : " Speaking 
 generally, labourers in 1912 are better paid, more 
 regularly employed, better housed, better fed, 
 better clothed " than in 1884, the year the vote 
 was obtained. He admitted, however, that " most 
 men of the class are still poorly paid ; many are 
 precariously employed and poorly housed ;] among 
 aU, poverty is chronic, and, although destitution 
 is certainly rare, the dread of it is seldom absent." 
 The italics are ours. 
 
 A word of caution is necessary when speaking of 
 county averages, for when one comes to deal in 
 detail with particular parishes the wages are often 
 found to be below the average given for'the county. 
 Ample pubHshed evidence of this is in existence, 
 and may be found in detailed investigations into 
 individual family incomes such as are contained 
 in Miss Maud E. Davies' Life in an English Village 
 (Unwin, 1909), How the Labourer Lives, Rowntree 
 and Kendall (T. Nelson and Sons, 1913), and in 
 articles contributed by the present writer to the 
 Westminster Gazette (April 28 and August 2, 1915). 
 
 In the Annual Report (1912) of the Somersetshire 
 Society, an organization^ which collects funds for 
 apprenticing the children of poor parents in that 
 county, the following cases are cited : — 
 
 654. Father a farm labourer, earning 12s. per week. 
 
 Four cMldren, two dependent on the parents. 
 675. Father a farm labourer, earning 14s. per week ; 
 
 eight children, all dependent. 
 699. Father an agricultural labourer earning 12s. a week 
 
 and the mother does occasional charing, earning 
 
 4s. per week. Seven children, all dependent. 
 
 117 
 
VILLAGE TRADE UNIONS 
 
 707. Father a farm labourer earning 12s. per week. 
 Three children, one dependent. 
 7. Father an agricultural labourer earning 12s. per 
 week and the mother does occasional charing, 
 earning 4s. per week. Seven children, all 
 dependent. 
 
 The last official Board of Trade figures (1907) gave 
 14s. as the average cash wages of farm workers 
 in the county of Somersetshire. 
 
 Between 1871 and 1911 the total number of 
 farm workers in England and Wales decreased 
 considerably, as wiU be seen from the following 
 figures (Cd. 8506, 1917) : — 
 
 
 England and Wales. 
 
 Year. 
 
 Male Farm Employees.' 
 
 1871 
 
 935.143 
 
 1911 
 
 665,258 
 
 The causes of the dearth of skilled farm workers 
 were fairly obvious. Low wages, bad houses, 
 lack of independence, absence of outlook, and the 
 duU, wearying monotony of village life had caused 
 a steady stream of workers to flow into the towns 
 and cities and to the colonies. In spite of thirty 
 years of citizenship the farm worker's position had 
 not improved sufficiently to induce him to stay in 
 the village. It is not surprising that Sir Henry 
 Rew wrote in 1913 : — 
 
 " At the present time considerably more men could 
 find employment on the land than are now available. 
 There certainly appears to be a fairly general deficiency 
 of skilled farm hands." 
 
 ^ Including bailiffs and foremen. 
 118 
 
THE BETRAYAL 
 
 The shortage of skilled labour was a subject of 
 continual lament at farmers' meetings before the 
 war. The reason, in plain language, was simply 
 this : farmers generally were not prepared to pay 
 adequate wages for such labour. The lament was 
 loudest in 1912-13, a time when, according to 
 The Times (December 30, 1912), "To a man who 
 takes the trouble to learn and attend to his business 
 farming now offers every prospect of a good return 
 upon his capital." 
 
 The curious phenomenon in agricultural economics 
 is that wages do not, as a rule, respond to the ordinary 
 laws of supply and demand — at least when there 
 is a shortage of labour. We have seen how in 
 the thirties and seventies this law operated very 
 thoroughly ; there was too many farm workers seek- 
 ing work, consequently wages were driven to a point 
 well below subsistence level. In 1912, when the 
 demand for labour was very strong, there were farm 
 workers in most counties who were receiving less 
 than a living wage. This phenomenon is explained 
 by what is known as the " customary wage," which 
 operates mainly to keep wages down. A farmer 
 who had been accustomed to pay a certain wage 
 would sometimes starve his land of labour rather 
 than break with custom and pay higher wages. 
 Again, some farmers were afraid to create bad 
 feeling among their neighbours. A striking in- 
 stance of this appeared in the Eastern Daily Press 
 in 1912. One of the largest farmers in Norfolk 
 decided to pay his married farm workers the mag- 
 nificent wage of 17s. a week, and his single men 
 
 119 
 
VILLAGE TRADE UNIONS 
 
 15s. to 15s. 6d. a week, exclusive of extras for 
 harvests. This was announced in the paper on 
 January 8th. The next week (13th) a man signing 
 himself " Tenant Farmer " protested against this 
 violation of custom, and added that the generous 
 farmer " might have made it up to his labourers 
 in some other way, so that it would not make the 
 labourers so dissatisfied on adjoining estates and 
 farms." 
 
 Thus, even the progressive farmer was hindered 
 by his less imaginative neighbour. The axiom 
 that well-paid labour is the most econonaical, and 
 that a free, independent worker, properly housed, 
 is worth more to his employer than an iU-nourished, 
 badly housed, servile worker, will, when it is fully 
 appreciated by farmers generally, go a long way 
 towards raising the dignity of the Agricultural 
 industry. 
 
 120 
 
CHAPTER II 
 THE NEW UNIONS 
 
 " On and on the compact ranks." 
 
 Mr. George Edwards and a few political friends 
 of the farm workers decided in 1906 to make a 
 fresh attempt to organize them into a Union. In 
 July a conference was held at North Walsham, in 
 Norfolk, with this object in view. Among those 
 present were Mr. Richard Winfrey M.P., Mr. 
 George Nicholls, M.P., Mr. H. A. Day, and repre- 
 sentatives of the agricultural labourers from the 
 Eastern Counties. 
 
 A Union known as the Eastern Counties Agricul- 
 tural Labourers' and Small Holders' Union was 
 formed. Mr. George Nicholls, M.P., was appointed 
 president, Mr. W, V. Harris, vice-president, 
 Mr. Richard Winfrey, M.P., treasurer, and Mr. 
 George Edwards, general secretary. 
 
 The movement was confined to the Eastern 
 Counties. In less than three months about 50 
 branches were formed with a total membership 
 of 1,600. In February 1907 a conference of delegates 
 from the newly formed branches was convened, 
 
 121 
 
VILLAGE TRADE UNIONS 
 
 and the Union definitely launched. By 1910 4,000 
 members had been enrolled. In May 1910 a 
 strike took place among the farm workers in the 
 parish of St. Faith's, Norfolk. Contrary to the 
 rules of the Union, the local branch on its own 
 initiative decided to strike without waiting for 
 the sanction of the Executive. The Executive, 
 however, eventually decided to recognize the 
 strike, and commenced paying strike benefit. The 
 masters refused to come to terms, and the strike 
 continued until December. Up to that time it 
 had cost the Union no less than jfi,300. It was 
 felt by the majority of the Executive that the 
 strike should end. The strike collapsed in December, 
 the workers having failed to obtain any concessions 
 whatever. Some were reinstated, but, as the 
 farmers had imported a good deal of labour, many 
 of the men remained on the funds. This failure 
 caused considerable defections from the Union. 
 
 At the conference in 1911 a vote of censure, 
 carried by a large majority, was passed on the 
 Executive for closing the strike. This vote led 
 to the resignation of the president and the treasurer. 
 Councillor Walter Smith was elected president 
 in the place of Mr. George NichoUs, M.P., and 
 Mr. H. A. Day, treasurer, in place of Mr. Richard 
 Winfrey, M.P, 
 
 In response to appeals from other counties, 
 organizers were sent out at the end of 1911 with 
 the object of forming branches. From this time 
 the Union made steady progress, and by the end 
 of 1912 the membership once again reached 4,000. 
 122 
 
THE NEW UNIONS 
 
 A fresh conference was held in 1912 when the 
 rules and objects were revised and the name altered 
 to the National Agricultural Labourers' and Rural 
 Workers' Union. The objects were declared to 
 be:— 
 
 " To regulate the relations between employers and 
 employed. The means by which such objects are to be 
 obtained are as follows : — 
 
 (a) To improve the social and moral conditions of 
 its members. 
 
 (6) To establish central funds for the purpose of 
 securing a better distribution of the land, by assisting 
 to provide allotments, small holdings, improved 
 housing accommodation, and better conditions of 
 living. 
 
 (c) To secure proper legal advice when necessary 
 and to shield members from injustice. 
 
 id) To relieve members out of work through dis- 
 putes, strikes, or lock-outs, when sanctioned by the 
 Executive Committee or the General Council of the 
 Union. 
 
 («) To encourage intercommunication with Unions 
 in other parts of this country and other countries." 
 
 Membership was not confined to farm workers, 
 but as the name of the Union implies, to " Rural 
 Workers " also. 
 
 " Those persons shall be eligible who are Allotment 
 and Small Holders, Agricultural Labourers, Gardeners, 
 Navvies, Yardmen, Carters, Roadmen, Female Workers, 
 Carpenters, and Skilled Artisans, who from health, age, 
 distance of nearest branch or other sufficient reasons are 
 unable to join the recognized Unions of their respective 
 trades, and any other person agreed to by a Branch and 
 not vetoed by the General Council or the Executive 
 Committee." 
 
 123 
 
VILLAGE TRADE UNIONS 
 
 Women were for the first time admitted to member- 
 ship. The Union became affiliated to the Trade 
 Union Congress, and entitled to send two represen- 
 tatives each year to the annual congress. 
 
 In the autumn of 1912 a great deal of unrest 
 existed among farm workers in South-West Lanca- 
 shire. The increased cost of Uving and the in- 
 fectious example of nearly every other section of 
 workers throughout Lancashire, induced the farm 
 worker to seek assistance from his Union. 
 
 Organizers were therefore sent to the affected 
 area. The Union made splendid headway, and, 
 during the latter part of 1912 and the early part of 
 1913 it succeeded in forming nearly 30 branches 
 in the district with a membership of over 2,500 
 men. The demands put forward were : — 
 
 1. Saturday half-holiday, work to cease at i.o p.m. 
 
 2. Miniraum wage of 24s. a week. 
 
 3. 6d. an hour overtime ; and 
 
 4. Recognition of the Union. 
 
 One farmer, apparently without consulting his 
 neighbours, immediately dismissed all his hands, 
 eight in number, and gave them notice to quit 
 their cottages. Several farmers in the Down- 
 hoUand district acted in the same arbitrary manner. 
 These actions caused great resentment and indig- 
 nation among the labourers. The National Exe- 
 cutive endeavoui'ed in every way possible to avoid 
 a strike, as the organization was by no means 
 complete and there were practically no funds, 
 but the men were eager to fight as soon as the 
 124 
 
THE NEW UNIONS 
 
 demands were formulated. The farmers, however, 
 unanimously decided not to recognize the men's 
 Union, but intimated that they were not unwilling 
 to concede, between the busy seasons, a Saturday 
 half-hoUday. The majority of the farmers did 
 not want to come to terms with the men. The 
 chairman of the farmers' meeting said that " he 
 felt sure that if they were only a united force they 
 could ' squash ' the Union, and take the wind out 
 of the sails of Mr. Edwards, the Secretary " {Times, 
 May 24, 1913). All efforts to effect a peaceful 
 solution failed ; therefore, the leaders decided on 
 a strike. Between 1,500 and 2,000 farm workers 
 came out. 
 
 The strike commenced on June 20th, and lasted 
 about a fortnight. At the beginning of July 
 the Board of Trade intervened, but faUed to bring 
 about a settlement. The strike excited wide- 
 spread attention, and the Union's appeal for funds 
 met with a generous response from the public 
 generally, and especially from Trade Unionists 
 in other industries. Nearly £800 were subscribed 
 from outside som-ces. 
 
 The farm workers received much valuable help 
 from Trade Unionists in Liverpool, who thought 
 the demands of the Union were too modest. Among 
 Trade Union leaders who actively participated in 
 the movement were Messrs. J. A. Seddon {Chairman 
 Parliamentary Committee Trade Union Congress) ; 
 James Sexton {Dockers' Union) ; Joseph Cottar 
 {National Union of Ships' Stewards) ; and many 
 others. 
 
 125 
 
VILLAGE TRADE UNIONS 
 
 Not all the farmers were obstinate. Many 
 granted advances in wages and reduced hours 
 immediately. The King was about to commence 
 his Lancashire tour, and was to be the guest of 
 Lord Derby, upon whose estates the men had 
 " downed tools." An attempt was made by the 
 men to induce Lord Derby to bring about a settle- 
 ment. Lord Derby wrote to the Farmers' Union 
 to say that he would place his services at their 
 disposal if they so wished, and he also consented 
 to meet Mr. James Sexton and Mr. George Edwards 
 the Secretary of the Union. However, he did not 
 intervene in the dispute further than to promise 
 to see the men who were working on his own estates 
 and to discass the situation with them. As a 
 result of Lord Derby's terms the men on his estate 
 withdrew their notices unconditionally, and re- 
 turned to work. 
 
 During the strike peaceful picketing was carried 
 on with considerable success. Members of the 
 Union met the boats landing Irish labourers at 
 Liverpool, and in many cases succeeded in inducing 
 the immigrants to join the Union. Many Irish 
 labourers who arrived in the district, on finding 
 a strike in progress, passed on to Yorkshire. On 
 July 4th the Ormskirk Branch of the Railwaymen's 
 Union gave forty-eight hours' notice of refusal 
 to handle produce in the affected area. Before 
 the railway workers could actually carry out their 
 threat, the strike was ended by means of a sugges- 
 tion by the Superintendent of Police at Ormskirk. 
 
 The strike ended in a very satisfactory way 
 126 
 
THE NEW UNIONS 
 
 for the men, for, according to the official report 
 of the Union, 
 
 " This is the iirst time in the history of agricultural 
 labourers they have ever had a reduction of hours. Over- 
 time granted at sixpence per hour. This means during 
 busy seasons an increase of at least 4s. per week, as no 
 overtime has been paid for in the past. Further, since 
 the agitation commenced, a large number of farmers have 
 granted increases in wages from is. to 3s. per week." 
 
 During the Lancashire trouble a strike of 
 farm workers took place in Somerset, at East 
 Chinnock. The trouble was mainly due to the 
 action of one of the farmers who sacked two Union 
 men and imported men from another district 
 to take their places. Great resentment was caused 
 by the drafting of large numbers of poUce into 
 the affected parish. The pohce were used to protect 
 the farmer and the " blackleg " labour, and even 
 to escort them to church. However, in the end 
 the Union succeeded in coming to an agreement 
 with the employers, with the result that an advance 
 of 2s. per week for men and is. for lads was secured. 
 Other minor disputes took place in other counties 
 and districts, and, more or less, were settled on 
 advantageous terms to the men. 
 
 During 1913 the Agricultural Labourers' and 
 Rural Workers' Union gained nearly 8,000 new 
 members. Lancashire accounted for 2,000 of these, 
 and Norfolk for over 1,000. At the end of the 
 year there were 232 branches scattered throughout 
 26 counties in England and Wales, with a total 
 
 127 
 
VILLAGE TRADE UNIONS 
 
 membership of nearly 12,000. The Trade Union 
 Congress (1913) voted £500 to the Agricultural 
 Labourers' and Rural Workers' Union for organizing 
 purposes, ;£200 being advanced at the close of the 
 year. Mr. George Edwards, the general secretary, 
 " through iU-health and advancing years " resigned 
 his office after the close of the Lancashire strike. 
 Mr. R. B. Walker, his assistant, was elected to fill 
 the vacancy. 
 
 In February 1914 trouble arose between masters 
 and men in the village^ of Helions Biunpstead in 
 North Essex. A branch of the Union, with 41 
 members, had been formed in the village in October 
 1913. During the second week of its existence 
 the membership rose to 59, and by the end of 
 January had reached 82. At the outside there were 
 not more than 130 farm workers in the parish, 
 which meant that the Union was becoming what 
 farmers are apt to call " dangerous." Four far- 
 mers, after a meeting on market-day at HaverhiU, 
 decided to dismiss their men unless they left the 
 Union. Men living in cottages belonging to these 
 farmers received notice to quit. The farmers 
 said if the workers did not give up the Union they 
 and their families would be evicted. To their 
 astonishment the men refused to submit, and 
 walked off the farms declaring that they would not 
 go back without a 2s. rise. 
 
 On two occasions the men's representatives asked 
 the farmers to meet them in conference, but the 
 farmers refused. The trouble spread to neighbouring 
 villages, and in June, as a result of a ballot, all 
 128 
 
THE NEW UNIONS 
 
 the men voted in favour of a strike. Between 
 350 and 400 farm workers — 95 per cent, of those 
 employed in the parishes of Ashdon, HeUons 
 Bumpstead, Steeple Bumpstead, Sturmer, Ridgewell 
 and Birdbrook came out. Their chief demands 
 were : 
 
 Labourers, i6s. 
 
 Stockmen, i8s.-20S. 
 
 Horsemen, 20s. 
 
 Weekly half-holiday. 
 
 Holiday on Bank hoUdays, Christmas Day, and Good 
 Friday. 
 
 Overtime, 6d. per hour. 
 
 Harvest work, £% for four weeks and 5s. a day beyond 
 four weeks. 
 
 Tied cottages to be held on a three-months* tenancy. 
 
 The farmers were placed in an awkward position, 
 because the hay was ready for cutting. Some 
 farmers were obliged to sell their sheep and cows 
 owing to the shortage of labour. It was said that 
 rather than give way, the farmers were prepared 
 to lose the harvest. A London daily described 
 their attitude in the following lines : — 
 
 " Be danged to their impudent cheek — 
 
 They want sixteen shillings a week ! 
 
 But rather than pay 
 
 I'll waste all my hay 
 
 And thus my revenge on 'em wreak ! " 
 
 In March, the tenants of Lord Leicester's Holkham 
 estate, in Norfolk— a district not directly affected 
 by the strike — agreed to increase the wages of the 
 
 I 129 
 
VILLAGE TRADE UNIONS 
 
 farm workers by is. a week. This example was 
 quickly followed on Sir Ailwyn Fellowes' estate 
 at Honningham. The Nottingham Corporation, 
 who farmed nearly 2,000 acres at Stoke Bardolph 
 and Bulcote, decided to advance all wagoners' 
 and labom-ers' wages by is. a week from the first 
 week in April, bringing the wages of the former up 
 to 22s., and the latter to 19s. 6d. a week with free 
 cottages and gardens. 
 
 About the same time. His Majesty the King 
 gave all his farm workers on the Sandringham 
 estate an increase of is, a week and a weekly half- 
 holiday. The men on neighboiuring farms, and 
 particularly those employed by tenants of the 
 King, not imnaturally, sought some improvement 
 in their own conditions of emplojnment. The 
 men came out on strike, demanding " King's wages 
 and King's conditions." 
 
 The strike was quite spontaneous, and was begun 
 by the independent action of the workers, though 
 afterwards tixey received the support of the Union. 
 The moment chosen for the strike was, apparently, 
 not a good one from the farm worker's point of view. 
 Work on the fields was well advanced, and the 
 Farmers' Federation assisted the farmers by supply- 
 ing them with a sufl&cient number of workers for 
 their immediate needs. 
 
 The men's Executive decided not only to support 
 the men on strike, buf*to issue a demand to the 
 farmers in the North-West Norfolk area for an 
 immediate advance of from 14s. to i6s. a week 
 and a Saturday half-holiday. The President stated 
 130 
 
THE NEW UNIONS 
 
 that the Union was not out to " fight for the sake 
 of fighting." The men did not want to strike, 
 but only to better conditions. He indicated, 
 however, that the men were bent upon getting the 
 matter considered at once, and if the matter was 
 delayed " we should have a very great difficulty 
 in restraining them." 
 
 During the Norfolk trouble, the Union started 
 a weekly journal called the Labourer, partly to 
 record the progress of the strike and partly as a 
 national experiment. It was decided, after four 
 weekly issues, to continue it as a quarterly. 
 
 In April trouble arose on Lord Lilford's estate 
 near Thrapston, Northamptonshire. A Union had 
 been formed in the district during 1913 and 60 
 farm workers on the estate joined. The men 
 asked for a rise of is. a week and a weekly half- 
 holiday. They were told that unless they gave up 
 the Union they must leave their work. 
 
 An attempt was made by the local branch secre- 
 tary to settle the matter with Lord Lilford and 
 his agent, but the attempt was not successful. 
 Lord Lilford said that the question of wages — 15s. 
 a week — might be regarded as settled, but he could 
 not give any answer about the Saturday half- 
 hoUday which had been demanded. The difficulty 
 of the men was increased by the fact that practically 
 all of them lived in cottages owned by Lord Lilford 
 and therefore they were in danger of being turned 
 out. 
 
 Most of the men decided to remain at work, 
 but seven decided to sacrifice their jobs rather 
 
 181 
 
VILLAGE TRADE UNIONS 
 
 than leave the Union. These seven men were 
 dismissed, and failed to get fresh employment 
 anjnvhere upon the Lilford estate. 
 
 The action of Lord Lilford and his tenants was 
 condemned in the pubHc press and also by farmers 
 at the meeting of the Farmers' Union. 
 
 The Times, April 2i, 1914, said : — 
 
 " To turn good men ofi their land merely because they 
 choose to belong to a Union, as we understand that he 
 (Lord Lilford) has done, is to adopt an antiquated attitude 
 wholly out of touch with the current of thought and 
 feeling to-day. He is trjring to swim against the stream, 
 which is an exceedingly fooUsh proceeding. The men 
 have just as much right to belong to the Union if they 
 choose as he has to belong to the Carlton Club." 
 
 The Mark Lane Express (June 29, 1914), the 
 official organ of the National Farmers' Union, 
 contained the following : — 
 
 " We utterly fail to imderstand the attitude of the 
 farmers in these locaUties. We have heard a good deal 
 lately of the blessed word ' recognition.' Whatever it 
 may really mean, might we point out that one weak, 
 inefiective way of recognizing the labourers' effort to 
 combine is to attempt to kill it by coercive measures ? " 
 
 The dispute spread to many of the neighbouring 
 villages. Eventually the farmers at Raunds came 
 to terms with the men ; other villages followed 
 their example. The terms agreed to at Raunds 
 were the following : — 
 
 I . One shilling per week increase in wages for men ; 
 6d. per week for boys. 
 132 
 
THE NEW UNIONS 
 
 2. Sixpence per houi- overtime for men earning more than 
 i6s. -per week ; boys under i6, 2d. per hour overtime ; 
 boys over 16, 3d. per hour ; no beer. 
 
 3. Four o'clock stop on Saturdays. 
 
 4. Reinstatement of all men. 
 
 5. Withdrawal of all notices to quit cottages, and all 
 legal action, if any, arising out of the dispute. 
 
 6. Hours of harvest work as usual. 
 
 7. All men to work together amicably. 
 
 A general settlement was effected in July. It 
 is worth recording that the Union came to be 
 " recognized " even on the Lilford estate, but an 
 exception was made on the home farm. The seven 
 men who w^ere dismissed because they would not 
 give up the Union were not reinstated, but found 
 employment in the district. This fight was a 
 notable victory for the men. 
 
 In June 1914, the activities of the Union extended 
 over 26 counties in England and Wales. There 
 were 360 branches, with a total membership of 
 15,000. The Manchester Guardian (June 22nd) 
 stated that owing to the trouble in Norfolk, Essex, 
 and Northamptonshire, the membership was in- 
 creasing by not less than 600 a week. 
 
 Early in 1914 the branches of the Union in the 
 North- West Essex district formed themselves into 
 a Federation called the North-West Essex Federation. 
 This body was responsible for projecting the strike 
 in that area, although, after the strike had been 
 declared, the National Executive consented to 
 share the responsibility. About the same time 
 a movement was set on foot among the branches 
 in Lancashire for the purpose of forming a separate 
 
 133 
 
VILLAGE TRADE UNIONS 
 
 organization. It was felt that organization and 
 cohesion were difficult so long as activities were 
 directed from a distant centre. The new organiza- 
 tion was known as the Dairy Workers' and. Rural 
 Workers' Union. This difficulty was felt in other 
 areas. In Worcestershire a county committee 
 was formed, consisting of representatives from the 
 branches, for the purpose of assisting in the organiza- 
 tion and control of the branches within its area. 
 
 There was at this time only one other really 
 important Union engaged in organizing farm 
 workers — ^the Workers' Union. This Union was 
 formed originally for the purpose of organizing 
 the unskilled workmen in towns and urban districts. 
 
 It will be remembered that this Union in 1899-90 
 succeeded in organizing farm workers in several 
 counties, and that this branch of the work suffered 
 from the slump in Trade Unionism which occurred 
 in the early nineties. 
 
 It was in 1910 that the Workers' Union made a 
 fresh start in the rural districts. The Union com- 
 menced operations in Staffordshire, Shropshire, 
 Cheshire, and Suffolk. The new effort met with 
 immediate success, and in 1911 the organization 
 spread into other coimties. Some idea of the vigour 
 of this Union may be gathered from the fact that 
 between December 1912 and March 1914 nearly 
 90,000 men, including agricultural labourers, were 
 added to its membership. 
 
 The Union had headquarters in London. Coun- 
 cillor John Beard, of Birmingham, was President, 
 Mr. Tom Mann Vice-President, and Ml Chas. 
 134 
 
THE NEW UNIONS 
 
 Duncan, M.P., General Secretary. The " Farm 
 workers section " was entrusted to Mr. George 
 Dallas, one of the most capable of modern Trade 
 Union officials. 
 
 During 1914 a vigorous campaign was organized 
 in the Home Counties. For the agricultural 
 section of the work the Union possessed a van which 
 served the purpose of a lodging for the itinerant 
 organizers and a convenient platform for the 
 purpose of propaganda. The Union, although or- 
 ganized from London, worked on a county basis. 
 The branches within a county sent delegates to 
 a conference held at a convenient time and 
 place, usually the county town. This conference 
 framed the demands of the Union, taking into 
 consideration the special conditions prevailing in 
 the county. The schedule agreed upon by the 
 conference became the farm workers' charter for 
 the county, and was used as a basis for negotiations 
 with the farmer. 
 
 Each county schedule differed in some respects, 
 according to the peculiar customs of the county. 
 The Union recognized that a uniform demand would 
 defeat its own ends. In some cases where the 
 agricultural conditions were similar in adjoining 
 counties, one schedule served for the whole area ; 
 for instance, at a conference of delegates held at 
 Cirencester, February 28, 1914, a schedule of wages 
 and conditions was drawn up for Oxfordshire, 
 Gloucestershire, and Wiltshire. 
 
 The minimum demanded for ordinary farm workers 
 in these three counties was fixed at i8s. per week for 
 
 135 
 
VILLAGE TRADE UNIONS 
 
 a week of 54 hours in the summer, and 50 in the 
 winter, with a half-hoHday for Saturday and six- 
 pence an hour overtime. Different wages and hours 
 were fixed for wagoners, cowmen, and shepherds. 
 Arrangements were made for piece-work, hay and 
 com harvests, threshing days, road allowances 
 for wagoners, boy labour, perquisites, and the 
 tenure of cottages. The Union stipulated that the 
 perquisites for all classes of workmen were to 
 remain as usual, and " all workmen hving in cottages 
 to receive six months' notice to quit where tenancy 
 may be terminated by mutual consent." 
 
 This method of working on a county basis 
 not only gave a certain amount of local autonomy, 
 but also tended to differentiate between the de- 
 mands of different counties. 
 
 At the commencement of 1914 there were 600 
 branches of the Union with a membership of nearly 
 100,000 including farm workers, and during the 
 first half of 1914 the membership increased by 
 leaps and bounds. The funds at the disposal of 
 the Union and the average weekly income at that 
 time gteatly exceeded that of any other Union 
 working among agricultural workers. Conse- 
 quently it was held to be in a position of great 
 strength, because, in case of a strike or lock-out 
 among farm workers, all the Union members would 
 not be affected, and the weekly contributions would 
 pour in from workers in the towns and urban 
 districts. The Union claimed that the combina- 
 tion of the unskilled workers in towijs, and the 
 farm workers, tended to check the use of farm 
 136 
 
THE NEW UNIONS 
 
 workers during industrial disputes and the use 
 of unskilled labour in agricultural disputes. 
 
 This method of caUing conferences in each area 
 for the discussion of wages and conditions generally, 
 usually led to a reasonable and practicable pro- 
 gramme. It is interesting to note that this method 
 in many respects very closely anticipated the Wages 
 Boards which were set up by the Government in 
 1917. A circular convening a conference in Here- 
 fordshire in 1914 contained the following excellent 
 advice : — 
 
 " In drawing up a progranime it will be well to bear 
 in mind that it must be reasonable, so as, first, to lead 
 the employers to discuss it ; and in the second place, 
 so as to convince the general public that it ought to be 
 conceded at once ; and further, that it should Tse of such 
 a nature as to secure the greatest enthusiasm and unity 
 amongst the workers themselves." 
 
 In Yorkshire, where one of the demands had 
 been an all-round wage of 24s. a week, after the 
 programme had been in operation for a year, it 
 was decided at a conference in 1914 to modify 
 the demand to one of 22s. a week, " and thereby 
 avoid any friction with the farmers, who think 
 24s. excessive." The conference was confident 
 that this increase would shortly be conceded. 
 
 These methods were conciliatory in character, 
 and were meeting with the success they deserved. 
 The Union continued to make rapid progress, 
 and when the war came in August 1914, it could 
 boast of the solid support of thousands of farm 
 workers, and a record of steriing work on behalf 
 
 137 
 
VILLAGE TRADE UNIONS 
 
 of the worker, who, to use the words of the author 
 of a Pilgrimage of British Farming was " much 
 worse paid than his fellows in any other industry." 
 
 In 1914 a Union known as the National Amal- 
 gamated Union of Labourers commenced operations 
 in Kent, and in June a strike was proclaimed. 
 The war diverted attention from agricultural 
 distress. A truce was declared, and the men in 
 all areas returned to work without pressing their 
 claims to higher wages. 
 
 What The Times said in 1914 (March 6th) was 
 true in August : — 
 
 "As a class, however, the agricultural labourers of 
 the country are an unorganized body, incapable of con- 
 certed action in a national strike movement, for compara- 
 tively few of them are enrolled on the books of a Trade 
 Union." 
 
 138 
 
CHAPTER III 
 THE TRUCE 
 
 " Liberty, let others despair of you — / never despair of 
 you." 
 
 The war overshadowed all domestic problems, 
 but even before the Mons Retreat farmers' grumbles 
 were heard on the " home front." Enhstment, and 
 attractions of better pay in alternative employment 
 tended to accentuate the shortage of skilled labour 
 on farms. What did the farmer do ? Did he 
 raise wages ? No ; he commenced to clamour for 
 the workers' children to be released from school. 
 The Government of the day allowed the children 
 to be taken, and this concession had the effect 
 of encouraging farmers to hope that its legahza- 
 tion in the spring would tide them over their diffi- 
 culties and enable them to avoid paying higher 
 wages to those men who remained. 
 
 Early in 1915 Farmers' Unions commenced an 
 active campaign for the premature release of 
 children of school age. Farm workers were leaving 
 the farms to take up industrial pursuits. They 
 would have been retained if farmers had offered 
 
 139 
 
VILLAGE TRADE UNIONS 
 
 higher wages. The remedy in the farmers' mind 
 was not higher wages, but more children. Accord- 
 ing to the Board of Education the wages paid to 
 children varied " below a maximum of 7s. a week." 
 The President of the Board of Education, in reply 
 to a deputation, said (February 11, 1915) " it was 
 rather a curious fact that where wages had been 
 highest there had been shown no tendency on 
 the part of farmers to demand the help of 
 children, but where cheap labour was required the 
 children were withdrawn." Mr. R. E. Prothero, 
 M.P., speaking in the House of Commons (February 
 25, 1915) said : " Whatever the farmer thought 
 twenty years ago, he is now in favour of education." 
 Had he looked up the reports of farmers' meetings 
 he would not have made such a statement. At 
 the annual meeting of the Devon Farmers' Union 
 one member thought that " a cause of the shortage 
 of farm labour was that children were educated 
 above their position " {Mark Lane Express, February 
 
 I, 1915). 
 
 A farmer, speaking at the annual meeting of 
 the North Berkshire Branch of the National Farmers' 
 Union, said "this was not the time to talk about 
 keeping boys at school and over-educating them — 
 that had been done too long — ^but it was the time 
 for agriculturists to press their demands " [Mark 
 Lane Express, February 8th). 
 
 A well-known Westerdale farmer, speaking at 
 the annual dinner of the Castleton Farmers' Pro- 
 tection Association, said " Boys were being over- 
 educated " and " to prohibit the employment 
 140 
 
THE TRUCE 
 
 of scholars on the land was taking away from 
 farmers the supply of labour at its source " {York- 
 shire Herald, March 8th). 
 
 At a meeting of the Darlington, Durham, and 
 North Riding Chamber of Agriculture, February 
 5, 1915, one farmer said " the longer they [the 
 children] went to school the less inclined they would 
 be to work." The Chairman was reported to 
 have said : "If they keep the boys or girls at 
 school tiU the age of foiirteen, nine out of ten 
 would say they would not go to manual work ; 
 they would say they were educated and wanted to 
 earn a hving with their brains and not with their 
 hands " {Yorkshire Daily Post, February 16, 1915). 
 
 There were many farm workers who welcomed 
 the opportunity of adding to the family income 
 by means of the early employment of their children. 
 But, on the other hand, those who objected were 
 not always able to keep their children at school. 
 The tied cottage system, in some instances, made 
 resistance impossible. A wdtness at the Caversham 
 Petty Sessions said that her boy had been employed 
 by " order " of the squire. 
 
 There were a few enlightened farmers who did 
 not share the prevalent views on child education. 
 For instance, at a meeting of the Liverpool and 
 District Farmers' Club a farmer said " It was very 
 necessary that boys should be properly educated ; 
 for an educated labourer was of better value than 
 an uneducated one." It will be noted t^at this 
 opinion came from a district where farm workers 
 received a relatively high wage. 
 
 141 
 
VILLAGE TRADE UNIONS 
 
 Did farmers seriously try to get adult labour ? 
 The Board of Agricidture made arrangements 
 with Labour Exchanges in order to assist the 
 farmers in obtaining labour from the towns. 
 But a great many farmers would not use the Ex- 
 changes. They complained that they could not 
 get skilled labour by these means ; yet they 
 did not mind taking cheap, unskilled child 
 labour ! 
 
 The Secretary of the North Herefordshire Farmers' 
 Union said " The Chairman of the Bromyard Branch 
 recently had a conversation with the manager of 
 the Worcester Exchange, who told him that he 
 had plenty of English laboiurers who were willing 
 to work in the country, but not at the present 
 rate of wages" {Hereford Times, February 27, 
 
 1915)- 
 
 Even the Morning Post, while condoning the 
 use of child labour, said : " The farmer has come to 
 depend too much on cheap and casual labour, 
 casual because it is cheap and cheap because it 
 is casual " (March 6, 1915). 
 
 Among those who took up the cause of the children 
 was the Workers' National Committee, which body, 
 after investigation, arrived at the following con- 
 clusions : — 
 
 " We are of opinion that until substantial advances 
 in wages have been offered no proposal to substitute 
 either child or female labour should be considered. 
 
 " We therefore support the Agricultural Labourers* 
 Union in their demand for better wages before any other 
 source of supply is considered." 
 142 
 
THE TRUCE 
 
 The Bishop of Oxford, in a letter published in 
 The Times of March 5th, wrote : — 
 
 " To meet the shortage by withdrawing boys pre- 
 maturely from school on a large scale is a disastrously 
 reactionary measure, which it will be hard to reverse." 
 
 Canon Scott Holland contributed a vigorous 
 article in The Commonwealth. 
 
 " There is no class," he wrote, " more terribly in danger 
 of missing its heritage than the agricultural labourers' 
 boys. There is no class more ready to skimp their hold 
 upon it than the farmers. There are half a dozen ways 
 out of the difficulties in which the agricultural labourer 
 is placed. A decent wage would bring men in out of 
 the trades that are suffering by the war." 
 
 A correspondent to Country Life summed up the 
 farmers' attitude when he sneered about " putting 
 a relatively fine edge on very ordinary iron." Farm 
 workers' children were regarded as " very ordinary 
 iron." A Shropshire branch of the Union wrote : — 
 
 " We poor labourers have as much respect for our 
 children as the farmer, of whose sons there are some going 
 to school in Shropshire at 14, 15, 16, 17, and not called 
 on to do the least little job because they are farmers' 
 sons, and yet they are asking for ours without the parents' 
 consent." 
 
 " The fine edge " was quite the correct thing for 
 farmers' children : they were something better 
 than " ordinary iron." Farmers' objection to the 
 " fine edge " on the "-ordinary iron " is that it 
 would be difficult to temper it in order to stand the 
 
 143 
 
VILLAGE TRADE UNIONS 
 
 blunting process so necessary for producing what 
 they conceive as the right kind of farm worker. 
 
 However, the farmers had their way. The 
 Government of the day responded to the meanest 
 agitation of modern times by legaJizing the release 
 of school-children between the age of 12 and 14 
 years. The French Government, on the other 
 hand, issued to the local educational authorities 
 in that country a circular containing the fpllowing 
 passage : — 
 
 " The existing laws on the attendance of boys at school 
 must be maintained this year with more strictness than 
 ever. ... It would be disgraceful to see children robbed 
 of their education as if the military service of their fathers 
 had left them only the choice between beggary and pre- 
 mature wage-labour." 
 
 As to wages, in cases which the present writer 
 investigated in April 1915, he found instances in 
 Cambridgeshire, Wiltshire, and Worcestershire where 
 the increase in total earnings since August 1914 
 was only a shiUing a week ! Instances from ten 
 counties revealed the fact that the highest war 
 increase had been 2s. a week. Yet cost of Uving 
 had already risen by 20 per cent., which would 
 require a rise of 3s. on a 15s. wage to enable the 
 labourer to live on a pre-war scale. 
 
 " At Thetford County Court the judge said that in 
 some cases in Norwich that catae before him the agri- 
 cultural labourers only received threepence per hour. 
 That did not seem to be a wage upon which a man could 
 very well keep a family " {Richmond Herald, February 27, 
 1915)- 
 144 
 
THE TRUCE 
 
 There was a great deal of unrest among farm 
 workers at this time, and rumours of strikes came 
 from Norfolk, Herefordshire, "and Yorkshire. In 
 Norfolk a serious strike was threatened. A 
 thousand members of the National Agricultural 
 Labourers' and Rural Workers' Union gave notice 
 that they would cease work on March 13th 
 unless the Farmers' Federation consented to meet 
 the Union representatives, and to grant a 
 considerable increase in wages. The Farmers' 
 Federation met all the overtures of the Union with 
 a stubborn determination to concede nothing, 
 although many farmers admitted that, owing to 
 the increased price of food, the workers' claims 
 were not unreasonable. 
 
 Towards the end of February things looked 
 about as black as they could be. The General 
 Secretary of the Union stated on February 2^ : 
 " At the moment I can see nothing but open rupture 
 staring us in the face." It was generally agreed 
 that a ruptiure would have been a calamity at such 
 a juncture of the national history, because the 
 cessation of farm work would have hindered the 
 production of food over a considerable area of 
 cultivation. At the eleventh hour a settlement 
 was arranged, and a compromise effected. Five 
 of the largest farmers in Norfolk agreed to meet 
 five representatives of the Union, in order, if 
 possible, to arrive at an amicable agreement. 
 The resiilt was a friendly settlement, and the 
 strike was averted. 
 
 The farmers at the conference pledged the Union 
 K 145 
 
VILLAGE TRADE UNIONS 
 
 representatives to raise the farm workers' wages 
 to i8s. a week. This represented an advance of 
 3s. a week on pre-war wages. The, other fanners 
 of Norfolk were asked to fall into line with the 
 decision of the conference. With a few exceptions, 
 most of the farmers remained loyal to this arrange- 
 ment. Thus the farm workers won a " bloodless 
 victory." 
 
 But some of the farmers in the Swanton Morley 
 district failed to abide by the decision, and it was 
 not imtil fifty or sixty men had been on strike 
 for nearly a fortnight that they agreed to pay 
 the i8s. ' ' 
 
 In reviewing this period it appears almost in- 
 credible that English farmers, who were supposed 
 to be an intensely patriotic class of men, should 
 have resisted the farm workers' claim for better 
 trtatment at a time when the national interest 
 required that unity should prevail among all classes 
 at home. No reasonable person would maintain 
 that the farm workers' demands were excessive, 
 especially when it is remembered that farmers 
 were doing exceedingly well. They were getting 
 higher prices for their produce ; for instance, 
 as early as February 1915 the average price of 
 British wheat was 60s. a quarter, or nearly double 
 the average price obtained in February 1914 ; 
 the price of oats had risen during the same period 
 by over 50 per cent, and barley by nearly 25 per 
 cent. Cost of Uving had risen by 20 cent., yet 
 the farmers were unwilhng to advance wages, 
 and the farm workers had to resort to a strike 
 146 
 
THE TRUCE 
 
 before the farmers would concede a rise of 3s. 
 a week on a wage of 15s. 
 
 As time went on, farmers' difficulties with regard 
 to the supply of skilled labour, instead of getting 
 better, grew worse. The farmer's predicament 
 only emphasized his dependence upon the skilled 
 farm worker. The nation, too, began to realize 
 that Agriculture was the backbone of national 
 weU-being, and that the industry itself depended 
 almost entirely upon the skilled labour of the 
 unobtrusive, long-suffering, sweated farm worker. 
 
 The authorities, who at first had shown Uttle 
 discrimination in calling up the men under the 
 Derby scheme, eventually decided to " star " 
 certain special classes of workers. " Starred " 
 men were not to be called up imless the re- 
 cruiting officer could prove that such men had 
 been improperly or unnecessarily " starred." 
 
 But farm workers continued to migrate to 
 better paid employment. For instance, they 
 were taken on at Gretna for excavation work. 
 The inference was that the " imskilled navvy 
 labour " was being pedd higher wages than the 
 indispensable farm worker. The obvious thing 
 to do was to offer farm workers inducements 
 to stay on the farms. But this did not present 
 itself to the Cumberland farmers as the right 
 way out of the difficulty. They preferred 
 to send resolutions to Whitehall imploring the 
 Government to prevent farm workers from leaving 
 the farms. 
 Lord Selbome, the Minister of Agriculture, 
 
 147 
 
VILLAGE TRADE UNIONS 
 
 replied that " if a skilled farm hand, who is on the 
 starred Hst leaves his employment on a farm in 
 order to work at another trade, the arrangement 
 by which he is exempted from being recruited for 
 the army will no longer apply." 
 
 This decision was perfectly sound from the 
 point of view of national interest, but it was grossly 
 unfair not to stipulate that farmers should pay 
 higher wages to men who were stated to be indis- 
 pensable to the nation. It placed fanners in a 
 privileged position as compared with other em- 
 ployers of labour; it prevented the worker from 
 getting a market value for the only commodity 
 he had to sell, namely, his labour. The farmer 
 was allowed to get full market value for all his 
 commodities ; but that, of course, was only proper : 
 to have interfered with the farmers' market would 
 have violated the sacred law of supply and demand. 
 
 However, the " starring " of the workers did not 
 improve matters very much. Recourse was had 
 to the emplo3mient of soldiers on the land. There 
 was a good deal of hesitancy at first on the part 
 of farmers to employ soldiers. Certainly, unless 
 special care was exercised in the selection of the 
 men detailed off to work on the land, soldier labour, 
 as such, was not Ukely to be " skilled " labour. 
 Any given platoon would contain clerks, piatio- 
 tuners, dockers, watchmakers, etc., but very few 
 who had worked on the land at any time, and fewer 
 still who had acquired a degree of skill in what 
 after all is a very skilled emplo3mient. But 
 by the use of soldier labour a new principle was 
 148 
 
THE TRUCE 
 
 introduced into agriculture, namely, definite wages 
 and hours. The farmer resented this very much ; 
 but the authorities very rightly insisted on a de- 
 finite wage being paid for a fixed niunber of hours. 
 In many districts this wage was higher than that 
 paid to the skilled farm workers, and the hours of 
 labour shorter. This was awkward for the farmers, 
 who perhaps would not have raised such an outcry 
 against soldier labour had it been as cheap as 
 ordinary farm labour. 
 
 After mishandling the problem for a long time, 
 the military authorities showed greatej: discern- 
 ment in the selection of soldiers sent to work 
 on the land. On the whole, during the latter part 
 of 1917, soldier labour improved greatly in quaUty. 
 Farmers were able to " carry on," and greatly to 
 increase the area of cultivation, by means of soldiers, 
 prisoners of war, the Women's National Land 
 Service Corps, and the part-time labour of village 
 women. The last was far the most important 
 of the sources of emergency labour. 
 
 The need for a greater production of food was 
 brought home with special force to the Govern- 
 ment by the deadly effects of the enemy submarine 
 campaign in the early part of 1917. To combat 
 the submarine menace it was of the utmost impor- 
 tance that every inch of farm land should be made 
 to produce to its fullest capacity, and also that 
 new areas of land should be brought under cultiva- 
 tion. The Government appealed to the farmers 
 to do their utmost to produce more food. Here 
 was a chance for farmers to attain a high level 
 
 149 
 
VILLAGE TRADE UNIONS 
 
 of patriotism, an opportunity of consolidating the 
 " home front." They were asked to risk, not their 
 lives, but their capital. Were they willing to 
 accept the risk ? Yes — at a price ! That price 
 was to be definite and statutory, not a mere 
 promise : it was to be guaranteed, and fixed 
 by Act of Parliament. 
 
 The farmers were in a strong position, a position 
 as strong as that held by thousands of civilians in 
 August 1914, who might have consented to risk 
 their lives in the defence of the nation only at a 
 price, a price much higher than a shilling a day ! 
 In fairness to farmers it should be recorded that 
 they were only imitating the industrial capitalists 
 who undertook to supply ships and other munitions 
 of war, all of whom exacted their " pound of 
 flesh." 
 
 The " bond " is known as the Corn Production 
 Act, 1917. Part I, Section 2, Clause i of the Act 
 reads :— 
 
 The following minimum prices shall be fixed for the 
 wheat and oats of the following years: — 
 
 
 Wheat. 
 
 Oats. 
 
 Crop for Year. 
 
 Price per Quarter. 
 
 Price per Quartet, 
 
 1917 
 
 60s. 
 
 38s. 6d. 
 
 1918) 
 1919 ( 
 
 55s. 
 
 32s. 
 
 1920 1 
 
 
 
 1921 I . . 
 
 45s. 
 
 24s. 
 
 1922 ) 
 
 
 
 The difference between average market price and 
 the minimum price stated in the Act is paid to 
 150 
 
THE TRUCE 
 
 the farmer each year out of taxes. The average 
 price of wheat or oats is to be reckoned as " the 
 average price for the seven months from the first 
 day of September in that year ascertained by adding 
 together the weekly averages of the weeks included 
 in those seven months, and dividing the total 
 by the number of weeks." 
 
 Part III of the Act deals with the restriction of 
 Agricultural Rents. The rent payable must " not 
 exceed such rent as could have been obtained if 
 Part I of the Act had not been in force." Until 
 Part I of the Act comes into operation, Part III 
 cannot be apphed. As the average prices for corn 
 have maintained a level much higher than the 
 minima stated in the Act, there has been no occasion 
 for farmers to apply for the bounty, or for landowners 
 to be restricted in the raising of agricultural 
 rents. Even should Part I of the Act be appHed, 
 the provision as to the restriction of rents is of 
 doubtful value. Farms have recently been sold 
 at enormously enhanced prices, and it will be 
 difficult to make Part III of the Act apply to the 
 future rents of such farms. 
 
 In Part IV of the Act the Board of Agriculture 
 reserves power to enforce proper cultivation. If 
 the Board are of opinion 
 
 (a) that any land is not being cultivated according to 
 the rules of good husbandry ; or 
 
 (b) that for the purpose of increasing in the national 
 interest the production of food the mode of cultivating 
 any land or the use to which any land is being put should 
 be changed, 
 
 151 
 
VILLAGE TRADE UNIONS 
 
 they may require the occupier to " cultivate the 
 land in accordance with such directions as the 
 Board may give for securing that the cultivation 
 shall be according to the rules of good husbandry 
 or for securing the necessary change in the mode 
 of cultivating or in the use of the land " or may 
 " enter on and take possession of the land." 
 
 Not the least important part of this very remark- 
 able Act is Part II, whiph provides for a minimum 
 rate of agricultural wages. Unlike the farmers, 
 the farm workers were unable to bring organized 
 pressure to bear upon the Government. The 
 farm workers did not say to the Government, 
 " We refuse to cultivate the soil unless we get 
 our price." The minimum wage of 25s. a week 
 provided for in the Act did not, in fact, constitute 
 a bare living wage, having regard to the increase 
 in the cost of Uving. Moreover, farmers were in 
 a position to be able to pay a much higher wage 
 than the minimum stated in the Act. The average 
 price of wheat, barley, and oats (June 1917 to May 
 1918) was 73s. 3d., 61S. 4d., and 49s. lod. a quarter 
 respectively. In 1913-14 the average price per 
 quarter was ; wheat 31s. gd., barley 26s. 7d., and 
 oats i8s. 8d. 
 
 In the Report of the Committee which inquired 
 into the Financial Results of the Occupation of Agri- 
 cultural Land (Cd. 76, 1919) there is an analysis 
 of the income and expenditure on twenty-six 
 farms for the five years ended 1917-18. After 
 pajdng all outgoings, including increased cost of 
 feeding stuffs, implements, labour, etc., the profit 
 152 
 
THE TRUCE 
 
 per acre had increased by over 350 per cent. 
 Wages during the same period, on the same farms, 
 had increased by only 56 per cent, per acre. 
 
 Mr. Wilson Fox estimated in 1902 that the 
 average weekly value of food consumed by farm 
 workers' families, comprising two adults and four 
 children, was 13s. 6|d. The same amount of 
 food cost 15s. gfd. in 1912, and in the period March- 
 June 1918 no less than 28s. ii^d. was required to 
 purchase similar articles of food in the same quanti- 
 ties.^ This estimate provided for food only, and 
 did not include rent, firing, light, clothes, insurance, 
 beer, tobacco, amusements or newspapers. The 
 Government of the day, which was in a position 
 to command the facts, while providing for a liberal 
 dole for farmers, inserted the beggarly sum of 
 25s. a week as the minimum rate of wages for farm 
 workers. 
 
 Fortimately the Act did not fix maximum 
 rates of wages, although the Committee which 
 reported on Wages and Conditions of Employment 
 in Agriculture (Cd. 24) stated that in the first part 
 of 1918 there was a " tendency among farmers 
 to regard the minimum as the maximum also, 
 and to pay the same rate of wages to all men." 
 
 From the farm workers' point of view the most 
 valuable part of the Act is Part II Section 5, which 
 provides for the establishment of an Agricultural 
 Wages Board. Under the Act the Wages Board 
 is empowered to fix minimum rates for time work, 
 piece work, or both — " any such minimflh rates 
 I See Appendix No. III. 
 
 153 
 
VILLAGE TRADE UNIONS 
 
 may be fixed so as to apply universally to workmen 
 employed in agriculture, or to any special class 
 of workmen in agriculture, or to any special 
 area, or to any special class in a special area, 
 subject in each case to any exceptions which 
 may be made by the Agricultural Wages Board 
 for employment of any special character, and so 
 as to vary according as the emplojonent is for a 
 day, week, month, or other period, or according to 
 the number of working hours or the conditions 
 of the employment, or so as to provide for a 
 differential rate in the case of overtime." The 
 Act also states that less than the minimum 
 rates can be fixed in the case of a man who is 
 " affected by any mental or other infirmity or 
 physical injury which renders him incapable of 
 earning that mimimum rate." 
 
 In fixing the minimum rates for able-bodied 
 men the Wages Board is to secure, " so far as 
 practicable," that the wages are " adequate to 
 promote efficiency and to enable a man in an 
 ordinary case to maintain himself and his family 
 in accordance with such standard of comfort as 
 may be reasonable in relation to the nature of his 
 occupation." 
 
 Further, it is part of the duty of the Wages 
 Board to define the value of " benefits or advan- 
 tages." In future the minimum wage must be 
 reckoned in cash, and deductions from the cash 
 minimum on account, of part pa3nnents in kind 
 can only be made in the case of certain specified 
 " benefits and advantages," the quantity and 
 154 
 
THE TRUCE 
 
 quality of which have to be clearly defined. Some 
 of these benefits have been defined by the Agri- 
 cultural Wages Board (A.W. 311), and a basis 
 of valuation fixed. For these specified allow- 
 ances declaration can be made. Other allowances 
 must be regarded merely as gifts. This wiU clear 
 up what has always been a matter for controversy 
 in agriculture. Henceforth both farmer and worker 
 will know exactly what wages are to be paid. 
 
 The constitution and proceedings of the Agri- 
 cultural Wages Board are outlined in the first 
 schedule of the Act, and are determined by Regula- 
 tions of the Board of Agriculture and Fisheries, 
 dated November 8, 1917, and subsequent orders. 
 
 The Wages Board consists of 39 persons, 32 
 of whom are representatives, the rest being ap- 
 pointed by the Board of Agriculture. Of the 
 appointed members, one at least is a woman. 
 The Chairman and Deputy-Chairman are appointed 
 by the Board of Agriculture from among the members 
 of the Wages Board. 
 
 The farmers and farm workers are each entitled 
 to send sixteen representatives. Of these, eight are 
 official representatives of the various farmers' 
 organizations, and eight are official representatives 
 of the farm workers' Unions. The remaining 
 eight representatives of each side are selected by 
 the Board of Agriculture from names submitted 
 by bodies of farmers and bodies of farm workers 
 respectively. In the regulations both the farmers 
 and farm workers' Unions are definitely recognized. 
 
 With commendable despatch the Wages Board 
 
 155 
 
VILLAGE TRADE UNIONS 
 
 set about a diflRcult and onerous task" in a broad- 
 minded and businesslike manner. It proceeded 
 at once, in co-operation with the Board of Agricul- 
 ture, to set up District Wages Committees cover- 
 ing every county in England and Wales. With 
 one or two exceptions in England the " district " 
 is the county area. In Wales counties were grouped 
 to form the " Districts." These District Wages 
 Committees consist of an equal number of repre- 
 sentatives of employers and workmen and a number 
 (not exceeding a quarter of the whole number of 
 representatives) of impartial persons appointed by 
 the Board of Agriculture. The District Wages 
 Committees recommend to the Central Wages Board 
 the minimum rates appUcable to their districts. 
 The first order under the Act came into operation 
 in Norfolk on May 20, 1918. 
 
 Minimum rates were fixed for each county in 
 England and Wales both for male and female 
 workers according to age groups. In addition 
 to fixing the minimum rates of wages, the maximum 
 number of hours to be worked for the minimum 
 rate was also given, and the rate per hour for all 
 overtime. These rates, as pubhshed, become 
 law, and any employer paying less than the mini- 
 mum rates to any but an exempted worker is 
 liable to a fine not exceeding ,£20. 
 
 By March 1919 no county rate was less than 
 30S. a week for a male farm worker of 21 years 
 and over. The rates for ordinary farm workers 
 ranged from 30s. to 36s. 6d. (exclusive of overtime),' 
 
 ' See Appendix No II, 
 156 
 
THE TRUCE 
 
 while for special classes such as horsemen, cowmen, 
 head carters, shepherds, etc., the rates ranged 
 from 34s. to 43s. a week, not reckoning overtime. 
 Owing to representations made by the farm workers' 
 Unions, the Wages Board conceded a further 
 rise. The new rates came into force on May 19, 
 1919, and provided for a minimum wage of 36s. 6d. 
 per week for a six-day week of 54 hours, to be 
 reduced to 50 hours in October. This minimum 
 appMed to all classes of able-bodied male workers 
 over 21 years of age. 
 
 Thus by setting up a Wages Board the Corn 
 Production Act has encompassed a revolution in 
 Agriculture, the effects of which are only just 
 beginning to be felt. Some of its immediate 
 effects will be considered in the next chapter. 
 
 157 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE AWAKENING 
 
 "All the past we leave behind, 
 
 We debouch upon a newer mightier world, varied world. 
 Fresh and strong the world we seize, world of labour and 
 the march." 
 
 In the preceding chapters an attempt has been 
 made to follow the historical development of village 
 Trade Unions, to describe the conditions which 
 called them into being, and to indicate the main 
 reasons why they failed permanently to improve 
 the status of the farm worker. This general survey 
 has brought out at least one salient f eatiire, a charac- 
 teristic of all farm workers' efforts at combination 
 — instability. 
 
 Between 1912 and 1914 there appeared to be 
 a steady progression in organization, which led 
 many to hope that at last the farm workers were 
 going to buUd up a really effective and stable 
 organization. The war intervened and crushed 
 those hopes to the ground. But to close students 
 of agricultural Trade Unions there appeared to 
 be very Httle ground for optimism. The new 
 158 
 
THE AWAKENING 
 
 Unions resembled the old in almost every particular. 
 There was no new factor in the situation. The 
 farm worker was still as difficult to organize. True, 
 he was if anything better educated, and politically 
 more sophisticated. But the old vicious circle 
 still remained : wages were low because the farm 
 worker remained unorganized, and he remained 
 unorganized because he could not afford to keep 
 up the weekly contributions to a Union. Again, 
 the opportunities for social intercourse in the 
 villages had not improved to any appreciable 
 extent ; the farm worker, in the main, still remained 
 an isolated worker, rarely meeting his fellows in 
 association. The hopes inspired by the introduc- 
 tion of Parish Councils, and the extension of the 
 franchise in Local Government, were proved by 
 experience to be illusory. Mr. Prothero could 
 write, quite truthfully, in 1912 that " the sense 
 of social inferiority has, impressed the labourer 
 with the feeling that he is not regarded as a member 
 of the community, but only as its helot." 
 
 Mr. George Edwards said in 1912 : " Forty 
 years' experience has convinced me that the 
 labourers cannot get a living wage by Trade- 
 Unioij effort alone. The difficulties of organiza- 
 tion are so great that we cannot get an organization 
 strong enough to enforce it." What was the ex- 
 planation ? Why was it that the Unions seemed 
 to rise on a wave of enthusiasm and then to 
 descend sharply into a trough of depression ? The 
 explanation is to be found in one word — fear. 
 
 The difficulty with all farm workers' Unions 
 
 159 
 
VILLAGE TRADE UNIONS 
 
 has been to keep them steady. The farm worker 
 is not easily roused ; he is slow to move ; but 
 when he moves, he wants something to happen 
 quickly. Most of the strikes were started by local 
 branches on their own initiative, and these ill- 
 considered acts have on several occasions brought 
 the Unions near to ruin. What was at the root of 
 this instability ? Fear. The farm worker was 
 haunted by the fear of the farmer and the land- 
 owner. Merely to join a Union was regarded by 
 his superiors as a crime. He knew the farmer 
 would not tolerate a Unionist in his employ, that 
 the squire would mark him down as a suspicious 
 person, and that the parson would most likely 
 side with the squire and farmer. 
 
 These were the real and permanent influences 
 in village hfe. The Unions, perhaps, had gained 
 a footing in the village years ago, and had vanished, 
 leaving the farm worker to his own fate. Perhaps 
 he, or his fellows, had been turned out of their 
 cottages for association with the Union in earHer 
 days. Town-dweUers can hardly appreciate the 
 amount of personal courage required to oppose 
 the settled ideas with count for so much in village 
 life. Courage is akin to fear. The farm worker 
 having dared so much, quickly became a victim 
 of fear. He knew the farmers would retaliate 
 soon enough ; so he acted on the philosophy that 
 " Thrice armed is he who gets his blow in first." 
 The time chosen was often the wrong time, with 
 the result that the strike proved, in the long run, 
 to be ineffective. 
 160 
 
THE AWAKENING 
 
 At present the farm workers are in high spirits. 
 They are joining their Unions at the rate of thousands 
 a month. Dozens of new branches are being started 
 every week. It is not uncommon for the majority 
 of farm workers in a village to join the Union at 
 the first visit of the organizer. In villages where 
 Unionism has never before gained a footing are to 
 be found some of the strongest branches. The 
 farm workers have thrown fear to the winds. What 
 is the explanation ? 
 
 There can be no doubt that the organization 
 of the Agricultural Wages Board and District 
 Committees is directly responsible for this boom. 
 Mr. R. B. Walker, tbie General Secretary of the 
 National Agricultural Labourers and Rural Workers' 
 Union, in an interview acknowledged this. He 
 said : — 
 
 "It is true to say the Com Production Act has un- 
 doubtedly provided an incentive to the labourer to organize, 
 whereby through his Union he would be able to secure 
 the benefits that the Act, or orders made under the Act, 
 might give him." 
 
 Mr. George Dallas, of the Workers' Union, said : — 
 
 " The need for representation on the bodies for fixing 
 wages made- organization essential. The representatives 
 come back and report to their branches, and the branches 
 see that the representatives are in possession of all the 
 facts. Men join the Union in order to be represented 
 and because they are beginning to see the fruits of organi- 
 zation." 
 
 One of the arguments advanced by the Land 
 Enquiry Committee, which reported in 1913 in 
 
 L 161 
 
VILLAGE TRADE UNIONS 
 
 favour of a Wages Board, was " the representation 
 of farmers and labourers on such a Board would 
 lead to better organization on both sides." This 
 was a prophecy which experience of the Trades 
 Boards had justified. The direct outcome of the 
 estabUshment of an Agricultural Wages Board 
 has been a wonderful growth in Unionism. 
 
 Numbers of farmers, to whom Unionism was 
 anathema; have come to look upon the organization 
 of the farm workers as a necessary factor. There 
 are, of course, exceptions, but on the whole the 
 large majority are beginning to recognize that 
 union is essential for both sides. The fanner is 
 a member of a powerful Union. In addition to 
 the Farmers' Union there are Chambers of Agri- 
 culture and Farmers' Clubs, which also serve 
 farmers' interests. The farmer has realized the 
 advantages to be secured through combination, 
 and he cannot very well deny the worker the right 
 also to be represented by an organization. 
 
 The two chief workmen's organizations are the 
 National Agricultural Labourers' and Rural Workers' 
 Union and the Workers' Union, which latter orga- 
 nization has incorporated two other rural unions, 
 which also included town workers in their ranks, 
 namely. The National Amalgamated Union and the 
 Dairy Workers' and Rural Workers' Union. There 
 are one or two other Unions at work in England, 
 but their membership is insignificant. These two 
 large Unions have each a membership much larger 
 than the combined membership of any previous 
 farm workers' Unions. 
 162 
 
THE AWAKENING 
 
 The National Agricultural and Rural Workers' 
 Union has branches in every county in England 
 and Wales and a membership (July 1919) of con- 
 siderably more than 100,000 distributed over 
 more than 2,000 branches. New branches are 
 being formed every week, and the membership 
 is rapidly increasing. 
 
 The Workers' Union also has branches in every 
 county and has enrolled over 100,000 farm workers 
 in its ranks ; its general membership is over 600,000, 
 and is still growing. This Union, embracing as 
 it does all kinds of workers, has an income of 
 £7,000 a week and a financial reserve of £300,000. 
 Farm workers are also to be found within the 
 ranks of the Dockers' Union, The Union of Muni- 
 cipal Employees, The National Union of Gasworkers, 
 and even in the Union of Co-operative Employees. 
 At present, July 1919, nearly 250,000 farm workers 
 are paying into a Union. If this rate of pro- 
 gress is maintained for another year, the farm 
 worker will be one of the most closely organized 
 wage-earners in the United Kingdom. 
 
 Part II Section 5 of the Corn Production Act 
 may well be described as the farm workers' charter. 
 It is not so much the setting up of a minimum wage 
 as the creation of Wages Boards that has stimu- 
 lated Unionism. For the first time in history the 
 farm worker has been invited to state his case 
 through his accredited representatives. There is 
 no doubt that the insertion in the Act of a paltry 
 25s. minimum drove thousands into Unions who 
 might not have joined had a really adequate mini- 
 
 168 
 
VILLAGE TRADE UNIONS 
 
 mum been provided. However, the recognition 
 of the legal right to a minimum rate of wages and 
 the establishment of representative bodies for the 
 purpose of determining the rates for the various 
 counties gave the farm worker his chance. He 
 has risen nobly to the opportunity. 
 
 The Representative Committees have opened 
 up an entirely new chapter. The Unions are 
 frankly recognized, and farm workers and farmers 
 have to be represented in equal proportions. Jack 
 is as good as his master. Unlike representation 
 on Parish, District and County Councils, the worker 
 has as good a chance of stating his case as the 
 farmer. He has become reaUy articulate. Ob- 
 servers tell of the wonderful change that has come 
 over farm workers since they have been members 
 of the District Committees. At first they seemed 
 afraid to speak, were diffident and reserved. A 
 few meetings produced remarkable changes. The 
 farm worker proved himself to be as skilful in nego- 
 tiation as the farmers. Both farmer and workmen 
 have benefited by the opportunity of coming face 
 to face with each other in conference. 
 
 What grounds are there for hoping that the new 
 Unionism will prove more stable than the old? 
 The answer is to be found in the Corn Production 
 Act. The Wages Board and District Committees 
 wUl act as stabilizers. The farm workers have 
 realized the importance of organized representation 
 on such bodies ; by means of their organizations 
 they have been able to exert considerable influence 
 on the decisions arrived at by the Wages Board. 
 164 
 
THE AWAKENING 
 
 Centrally the Unions have been instrumental in 
 raising minimum rates from 25s. a week to 36s. 6d. 
 for a working week of 50 hours, while locally 
 in many instances rates much higher than 
 the rates scheduled for the districts have been 
 obtained. 
 
 Unlike the old Union agreements with farmers, 
 the new rates cannot be evaded with impunity. 
 The farmer who attempts to pay less than the 
 scheduled rates without a special permit from the 
 Wages Board, commits a punishable offence. 
 
 In addition to higher rates, many other benefits 
 have been secured. These are successes which the 
 farm worker will not quickly forget. Much more 
 remains to be accomplished, and it is only by 
 organization that further progress can be attained. 
 
 The farm worker is fully conscious of the fact 
 that the Wages Board will not bring him the 
 fuU emancipation which has to come. He is 
 looking forward to the time when he will be able 
 to take his share in the control of the industry in 
 which he is such an important partner. Already 
 he is demanding that a full inquiry shall be made 
 into the organization and management of the in- 
 dustry. The example of the Coal Commission has 
 not escaped the notice of the farm worker. He knows 
 (none better) that a reorganized Agriculture can 
 be made to serve the interest of the whole community 
 without dooming him always to remain a mere 
 wage-earner. At his conferences the farm worker 
 is calling upon the nation to reform its land laws 
 in the interests of agriculture. 
 
 165 
 
VILLAGE TRADE UNIONS 
 
 At a Workers' Union conference held at Oxford 
 in June 1919 it was aiifirmed that it was " essential 
 to the well-being of the wholQ country " that a 
 reform be effected in the present system of Land 
 Ownership. 
 
 At a National Conference of the Agricultural 
 Labourers' and. Rural Workers' Union (April, 
 J919), delegates from every county in England 
 and Wales recorded their opinion that " no adequate 
 solution of the ntral problem is possible so .long 
 as the land is privately owned." 
 
 The farm worker no longer feels that in joining 
 a Union he becomes a member of an unlawful 
 body. He can attend his branch meeting in broad 
 daylight, and need no longer stand in the shadow 
 at an open-air meeting at night. Before very long 
 it wiU be as uncommon to find a non-Unionist 
 as it was to find a Unionist five years ago. There 
 will be no return to the bad old days. The Unions 
 have come to stay. The farm worker now regards 
 himself as a member of the community, not its 
 helot. Only those in touch with the present 
 movement can really conceive the mighty awaken- 
 ing that has taken place. 
 
 Those who have returned from the war have 
 learnt much during their absence from the 
 villages. These men are determined not to en- 
 dure the old order of things. They remember 
 the value placed upon them by the politicians 
 in their speeches. They know that the politicians 
 blurted out the truth when the nation was in 
 danger. 
 166 
 
THE AWAKENING 
 
 The farm workers are quite as much awake as 
 the farmers ; they know the farmers' case as well 
 as their own. It is no use for farmers to bury their 
 heads in the sand ; they must face the problem, 
 and do a bit of thinking. The farm worker is not 
 going to be ignored, or to be put off with half 
 measures. He is in earnest. He knows what he 
 wants, and means to get it. Not only in the 
 industrial field, but in the political field the power 
 of the organized farm workers will be felt. The 
 rural divisions are going to provide a surprise for 
 the poUticians when the elections come along. 
 Aheady this influence has been felt in the District 
 Council elections. Nor are the farm workers 
 ignorant of the important part that the County 
 Councils are going to play in the administration 
 of the country. Pohtically the farm worker is 
 wide awake. In Union he has found his 
 strength. 
 
 To move among the farm workers, to attend 
 their meetings, conferences, branch meetings, and 
 demonstrations is to come into direct contact with 
 a force such as has never before been felt in the 
 villages. One feels that its potency is derived 
 from its sanity : it is virile and intelligent. One 
 doesn't tremble before it ; it is not violent or 
 explosive, but steady and persistent. The farm 
 worker is awake and articulate, his eyes are opened, 
 and he is talking about the things that concern 
 him most, the things he understands best — the 
 facts concerning his industry, and the conditions 
 under which he has to live. 
 
 167 
 
VILLAGE TRADE UNIONS 
 
 The lines of George Loveless, the pioneer of 
 Village Trade Unions, voice the aspirations of the 
 modem farm workers : — 
 
 By reason, union, justice, law. 
 We claim the birthright of our sires, 
 We raise the watchword Jiberty 
 We will, we will, we will be free ! 
 
 168 
 
NOTE ON AUTHORITIES 
 
 The best and most reliable authority on the farm 
 worker in the nineteenth century is Dr. W. Hasbach. 
 His book A History of the English Agricultural 
 Labourer (1906) is a classical example of thorough- 
 ness, and also contains full references to the sources 
 of information, which have been invaluable to the 
 present writer. Miss O. Jocelyh Dunlop's book 
 The Farm Labourer. The History of a Modern 
 Problem, brings the history down to 1912. 
 
 References to the first Union and to the revolt 
 of the Seventies are to be found in Sidney Webb's 
 History of Trade Unionism, and a graphic account 
 of the conditions of the farm worker in the Thirties 
 and Forties is contained in Frederick Engels' 
 Condition of the Working Classes in 1844. The 
 following works (all out of print) deal fully with 
 the movement in the Seventies and Eighties : 
 Joseph Arch : the story of his life told by himself ; 
 The English Peasantry, and The ' Romance ' of 
 Peasant Life in the West of England, (1872) by 
 F. G. Heath ; The Revolt of the Field, by Arthur 
 Clayden ; and Land Reform, by the Right Hon. 
 Jesse Collings. Several sympathetic references to 
 
 169 
 
VILLAGE TRADE UNIONS 
 
 the Unions are made by Professor Thorold Rogers 
 in Six Centuries of Work and Wages. British 
 Farming Past and Present, by Mr. R. E. Prothero 
 (Lord Ernie), should be consulted in order to get 
 an all-round view of the question. In addition, 
 there are the reports of innumerable Royal Com- 
 missions, Select Committees, Poor Law Com- 
 missioners, etc. 
 
 170 
 
APPENDIX 
 
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 173 
 
VILLAGE TRADE UNIONS 
 
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 174 
 
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 176 
 
APPENDIX 
 
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INDEX 
 
 Allotments, 91, no, 114 
 
 Allowances, 115 
 
 Arch, Joseph, 26, 37, 38, 40, 
 42. 43. 45. 46. 54. 60, 67, 
 68, 74, 80, 81, 88, 89, 90, 
 93-102, 103 
 
 Arch, Mrs., 94, 95 
 
 Arson, 12, 13 
 
 Attenborough, Rev., 54, 60 
 
 Barford, 37, 93 
 Beard, Councillor J., 134 
 Bentinck, Lord Henry, 100 
 Birdbrook, 129 
 Bradlaugh, Charles, 55, 65 
 British Association, 44 
 Bulwer, Edward, 17, 20 
 
 Chamberlain, Joseph, 99, 100, 
 
 109 
 Children, Employment of, 25, 
 
 26, 27, 139-144 
 Chipping Norton, 58, 59, 60 
 Chronicle, Leamington, 39, 41, 
 
 45 
 Chronicle, The Labourers' 
 
 Union, 51, 52, 57, 64, 66, 
 
 67, 69, 81, 86, 88 
 Clayden, Arthur, 52, 54, 66, 
 
 67 
 Clergy, Attitude of, 34, 54-61 
 Clubs, Village, 75, 76 
 
 Coal Commission, 165 
 Cobbett, William, 19 
 Collings, Jesse, 22, 40, 42, 44, 
 
 45. 48, 54. 55. 59, 80. 
 
 96 
 Com Prices, 146, 152 
 Corn Production Act, 150-157, 
 
 163, 164 
 Cost of Living, 116, 146, 
 
 153 
 Criminal Law Amendment Act, 
 
 60 
 Cultivation, Power to enforce, 
 
 151. 152 
 
 Dairy Workers' and Rural 
 
 Workers' Union, 134, 162 
 Dallas, George, 135, 161 
 Day, H. A., 121, 122 
 Depopulation, 115, 118, 119 
 Depression, Agricultural, 73, 
 
 74 
 Derby, Lord, 126 
 Disestablishment, 59, 86, 87, 
 
 88, 96 
 Dockers' Union, 77, 78, 163 
 Dorchester Labourers, 11-21 
 Duncan, Charles, M.P., 135 
 
 Eastern Counties Agricultural 
 Labourers' and Small 
 Holders' Union, 121, 122 
 
 181 
 
VILLAGE TRADE UNIONS 
 
 Eastern Counties Labour 
 
 Federation, 77 
 Education, 27, 90, 91, 103, 
 
 139-144 
 Edwards, George, 28, 102-105, 
 
 121, 125, 126, 128, 159 
 ElUcott, Dr., 55 
 Emigration, 36, 50, 66, 67, 68, 
 
 71. 81 
 Engels, Fredk., 13, 23, 24 
 
 Farmers' Federation, 130, 145 
 Fellowes, Sir Alwyn, 130 
 Fitzmaurice, Lord Edward, 
 
 M.P., 45, 85 
 Franchise, 60, 76, 86, 87 
 Eraser, Bishop, 29, 70, 71 
 
 Game, 28, 88 
 
 Gang System, 25, 26, 27 
 
 George, Rt. Hon. Lloyd, 109, 
 
 112 
 
 Girdlestone, Canon, 25, 30, 33, 
 34. 35. 44. 45. 60, 61, 75, 88 
 
 Gloucester, Bishop of, 55 
 
 Gore, Dr., see Oxford 
 
 Grand National Consolidated 
 Trades Union, 15 
 
 Halberton, 33, 34, 35 
 Harris, W. V., 121 
 Hasbach, 21, 72, 88 
 Heath, Francis, 30, 33, 38, 61 
 Helions Bumpstead, 128, 129 
 HollcUid, Canon Scott, 143 
 Housing, 29, 30, 89, 111-114 
 
 Intimidation, 57, 62, 114, 124, 
 125, 127, 128 
 
 Kent and Sussex Union, 36, 
 
 76. 77 
 182 
 
 Land Enquiry Committee, no, 
 
 112, 113, 161 
 Land Restoration League, 78 
 Leamington Conference, 27, 
 
 28, 31 
 Leicester, Lord, 129 
 Lilford, Lord, 131-133 
 Lincolnshire Labourers'League, 
 
 37. 46, 71 
 London and Counties Labour 
 
 League, 77 
 London Dorchester Committee, 
 
 20, 21 
 Loveless^ George, 13, 14, 16, 
 
 19, 21, 168 
 Lytton, Lord, see Bulwer 
 
 Manchester, Bishop of, see 
 
 Fraser 
 Mann, Tom, 134 
 Manning, Cardinal, 60, 65 
 Marlborough, Duke of, 38, 61, 
 
 89 
 Melbourne, Lord, 18, 20 
 Migration, 35, 36, 37, 50, 65, 
 
 67, 68, 71, 81 
 Military, Use of, in strikes, 69 
 Minimum Wage, 152, 153, 154, 
 
 156, 157 
 Mitchell, George, 92 
 Morley, Samuel, 65, 85 
 
 NationalAgricultuialLabourers* 
 and Rural Workers' Union, 
 123-134, 14s, 162, 163, 166 
 
 National Amalgamated Union 
 of Labourers, 138, 162 
 
 National Farm Labourers' 
 Union, 73 
 
 Newman, Professor, 73 
 
 Nicholls, George, M.P., 121, 
 
 122 
 
INDEX 
 
 Norfolk and Norwich Amalga- 
 mated Union, 77, 104 
 North- West Essex Federation, 
 
 133 
 
 Nottingham Corporation, 130 
 
 O'Connell, Daniel, 17, 19 
 Oxford, Bishop of, 56, 143 
 
 Parish Councils, 91, 100, 102, 
 
 104, 159, 164 
 Hcketing, 126 
 Prothero, R. E., 73, 117, 140, 
 
 159 
 
 Red Vans, 78 
 
 Rents, Resteiction of, 151 
 
 Rew, Sir Henry, in, 115, 
 
 118 
 Richmond Commission, 80, 89 
 Rix, George, 92 
 Rogers, Professor Thorold, 34, 
 
 48, 56, 81, 102 
 Runciman, Rt. Hon. W., in 
 
 Sandringham Estate, 130 
 Seddon, J. A., 125 
 Selborne, Lord, 147 
 Sexton, James, 125, 126 
 Schedules, County, 135-137 
 Sick Benefit Society, 75, 76 
 Small Holdings, 91, no, in, 
 
 114 
 Smith, Coundllor Walter, 122 
 Soldiers, Employment of, 148, 
 
 149 
 
 Somersetshire Society, 117, 118 
 Spurgeon, C. H., 85 
 "Starred" Workers, 147, 148 
 "Swing," 13, 23 
 
 Taylor, Henry, 42, 45, 48, 93 
 Tied Cottage, 89, 113, 114 
 Trevelyan, George, 65, 85, 87 
 Trusts, Charitable, 88, 89 
 
 Vincent, Matthew, 41, 45, 51 
 
 Wages, 24, 25, 33, 35, 37, 50, 51, 
 
 62, 69, 70, 79, 80, II 5-1 20, 
 
 127, 129, 130, 131, 133, 142, 
 
 144, 149 
 
 Wages Boards, 153-157, 162, 
 
 164, 165 
 Wages, Customary, ng, 120 
 Wakefield, E. G., M.P., 13 
 Walker, R. B., 127, 161 
 Walpole, Sir Spencer, 16 
 Warwickshire Agricultural 
 Labourers' Union, 42, 43, 
 
 44 
 Webb, Sidney, 16, 72 
 Wellesboume, 37, 38, 39, 43 
 Winfrey, Richard, M.P., 121, 
 
 122 
 Women, Employment of, 25, 
 
 26, 149 
 Women, Enthusiasm of, 82, 83 
 Workers' National Committee, 
 
 142 
 Workers' Union, 79, 134-138, 
 
 162, 163, 166 
 
 Printed in Great Britain hy 
 
 UNWIN BROTHERS, LIMITED, THE GRESHAM PRESS, WOKING AND LONDON 
 
Selections from Messrs. George 
 Allen ^ Unwinds List for 1 9 1 9 
 
 The Making of Humanity 
 
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 development of the various povsrer-elements and thought-elements of 
 present civilization is traced through history. 
 
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 and deficient feeding is discussed, and the lines on which these defects 
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