During the greater part of the French War, the full consequences of the change were to some extent concealed. It was a period of distress; but employment was brisk. The poorest soils were brought into cultiva tion for food. All available labour was used and paid for at enhanced rates. Calculations of wages in the 18th and 19th centuries are, at best, approximations. Yet it is evident that between 1790 and 1813 a substantial rise took place. It may not be possible to accept the statements of Arthur Young and of Tooke as absolutely reliable for all parts of the country. But they are in agreement that, between those dates, agricultural wages had about doubled.' Meanwhile the prices of provisions approximately trebled. Bread was so scarce that, if universal famine was to be avoided, rigid economy was needed. High prices were effective weapons against waste, and the Government dared not lay them aside by subsidising the loaf. But they supplemented wages out of the rates by allowances both of money and of bread. By this assistance, by the rise in wages, and by the sustained demand for agricultural labour, the effects of enclosures were temporarily obscured. It was the ebb in the tide of activity that revealed the full results.

·

The years 1814-36 were the blackest period in the history of the agricultural worker. The depth of misery into which he then fell is the measure of the advance that he has subsequently made. Distress was universal. The war was over; but 'Peace and Plenty' proved a ghastly mockery. Large tracts of arable land fell out of cultivation; considerable areas were even untenanted. Less and less labour was required. Wages fell to prewar levels; but even at the lowered rates, work was hard to find and harder still to keep. Unemployment was not confined to the land. The reduction to a peace footing of the Army and Navy and of the store commissariat and transport departments threw thousands of men out of employment. Industries which the war had stimulated to unnatural activity, languished. The introduction of machinery into manufacturing processes displaced crowds of manual workers. Over-production glutted the impoverished markets of the export trade, and checked the revival and expansion of industry. Everywhere there was a fierce struggle for work and wages.

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Into this strange swirl of competition agricultural labourers were plunged, when once the shelter of the selfsufficing village was disturbed. The effect of the rural changes was now brought home with tremendous force. The sale of their labour on the land had become the labourers' only means of livelihood. The domestic handicrafts which supplemented their earnings had been swept into manufacturing centres, where they supplied wages to thousands of artisans. The land which provided their food and fuel, and fed their live-stock, was turned into a factory of bread and meat for the towns. All that they had formerly produced for themselves, they now had to buy. They felt the full pressure of prices, and the lower their wages, the keener the pinch. The evil consequences of the short-sighted humanity, which, during the war, had levelled the barriers of the poorlaw, completed their ruin. Wages had been supplemented by allowances, paid out of the rates, and proportioned to the size of a man's family and the price of the quartern loaf. If wages fell below the subsistence level, the deficiency was made good by the ratepayer. Bound, if necessary, to defray the whole cost of the able-bodied poor, the parish gladly accepted from an employer any weekly payment, however small, which partially relieved the charge on the rates. Thus a mass of temporary labour, subsidised, and therefore cheap, was created and made available for the cultivation of the land. To many of the men pauper-dependence was a thing to be resented as a disgrace and a curse. But however anxious they might be to support themselves by permanent work, and so preserve their independence, they were powerless. They were undersold by the rate-subvented labour. To others, the security of subsistence, the light labour, the opportunities for idleness, made a pauper's life attractive. The demoralisation spread far and wide. It overran the South; it extended to the Midlands; it crept towards the North. Had the abuses of pauperism lasted a few years longer, a generation might have Sprung up which knew no other existence, and were strangers to the fine traditions and sturdy independence of their forefathers. From that danger the country was saved, partly by the self-respecting pride of men of the older stamp, partly by the wiser administration of the

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law which prevailed in many districts, partly by legislative reform, and partly by the reviving prosperity of the industry. Before 1836 the progressive deterioration had been arrested. It had touched bottom. Out of the depths the upward climb began.

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The advance was neither even nor rapid. culture underwent many vicissitudes of fortune, and, as a consequence, the progress of agricultural workers suffered more than one set-back. But, as compared with 1814-36, their advance has been continuous; they have never looked back. For years the odds were against them. Isolated from one another in remote country districts, commanding no capital beyond their labour, living in chronic poverty, generally in debt to the village tradesmen, dependent on their employers for both home and wages, agricultural labourers were far less capable of protecting themselves than were the artisans in the towns. Immobile, uneducated, voteless, and therefore without political influence, they found it difficult to combine and, without combination, impossible to bargain. In the agricultural prosperity of the sixties and the early seventies, they had in some districts to some extent shared. If statistics of wages can be at all relied upon, their average earnings in 1872 had nearly doubled as compared with 1820. But in the South and West the excess of the demand for employment over the supply told against them heavily.

The year 1872 stands out as a land-mark in the record of progress. One winter evening (Feb. 7) nearly a thousand men gathered at Wellesbourne in Warwickshire to listen to one, of themselves, known for miles round as a skilled hedge-cutter and a local preacher. The speaker was Joseph Arch. It was a dark night, and lanterns, swung from bean poles, shed a feeble light on the scene. Mounted on a pig-stool, set under a chestnut tree, Arch looked down on a sea of upturned faces, over which flickered the uncertain gleams of the swaying lanterns. In his mind, steeped in the imagery and phraseology of the Bible, he likened his audience to the children of Israel, with the darkness all about them... waiting for some one to lead them out of the land of Egypt.' The outcome of the meeting was the

decision to form a union. The men demanded 28. 8d. a day; hours 6 to 5, except on Saturday, when they were to be 6 to 3; and 4d. an hour overtime. Little notice seems to have been taken of their demand, and in March they struck. Public sympathy with their action was aroused; Archibald Forbes, fresh from his triumphs in the Franco-Prussian War, pleaded their cause in the press; considerable sums were subscribed for their support. After three months, they won a partial victory. Wages were advanced-in some cases to the 16s. which had been demanded.

At the height of its prosperity the Union mustered 70,000 members. From being purely economic, it became largely political in its scope. Many sympathisers were alienated by fear of its ultimate objects. During the great lock-out of 1874, which lasted eighteen weeks in the Eastern Counties, this loss of public support contributed to the ultimate defeat of the National Union. It never recovered the blow, and dwindled into insignificance. It had not altogether failed. It won the vote for the agricultural worker; it obtained some slight advance in wages; it demonstrated the possibility of combination on a large scale; it relieved the congestion of agricultural labour by emigrating, between 1873 and 1881, some 700,000 persons.* But, during the twenty years of agricultural depression with which the 19th century closed, no expansion of the movement could possibly be expected. As prices dropped, wages fell. Land passed out of cultivation. Thousands of men were only kept in employment by the kindly feeling of employers, who were themselves tottering on the verge of bankruptcy. From 1896 onwards, the tide was turning and the industry beginning to revive. Wages crept upwards, following the gradual rise of prices. In 1914 the weekly earnings of adult male labourers in England, not being men in charge of animals, may have approximately averaged 20s. But in many counties the rates were far lower. An Oxfordshire labourer, in receipt of 15s. 3d., or less, found but hungry comfort in an average.

For months before August 1914 and the outbreak of

The figures were given by Arch in his evidence before the Royal Commission in 1881 (Parl. Papers, 1882, vol. xiv, p. 51).

war, the agitation for an advance in wages, shorter hours, and a half-holiday was gathering strength. A minimum wage, and the machinery to enforce it, began to be discussed by politicians. In a large number of counties strikes were threatening. Trade Unions promised support to their agricultural brethren. Agri. culture had the unenviable reputation of a sweated industry, underpaid and undermanned. With the declaration of war it became evident that, when every pound of food was of value, the risk of prolonged dis turbance of labour conditions was not to be lightly faced. It was at first hoped that the demand for labour would enable workers to obtain substantial advances proportioned to rising prices. On this ground the Milner Committee of 1915 decided not to recommend a minimum wage. Fifteen months later, the Selborne Committee of 1916-17 advocated minimum wages and a Wages Board. Still the Government hesitated, But the policy of stimulating production necessitated the immediate t establishment of machinery to deal with wages. The Corn Production Act of 1917 created Wages Boards and fixed as a starting-point the minimum wage of 258. a week, which was offered to National Service Volunteers. In fairness to agricultural workers, no other course seemed possible. The Government was making every effort to increase labour on the land, and every additional

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or woman weakened the worker's position ind bargaining and in profiting by the demand for his skill. From the point of view of the agricultural worker, soldier companies, village women, the Women's Land Army, old-age pensioners, schoolboys from the public schools, National Service Volunteers, interned aliens, German prisoners, though the wages were paid by farmers, were State-assisted 'blacklegs.' Nor was the introduction of this mass of subsidised labour the only handicap which the State, in the campaign of food production, imposed on agricultural labourers in their freedom of bargaining for a rise in wages. Many of the men were exempted from military service as being indispensable on particular farms. Every one of these exempted workers knew that, in the event of his dismissal, he would at once become liable for military service. If Wages Boards and minimum wages were,