LABOUR AWAKENING IN RURAL ENGLAND.
[CoriaturucaTan.]
rr HERE are many hopeful signs in rural England to-day, and not the least of these is the amazing rapidity with which the agricultural labourer is joining Trade Unions. It is extra- ordinary, because the younger and more virile manhood have left to exchange the plough for the rifle, leaving behind them in our villages only the old and middle-aged, who have known either by hearsay, or by bitter personal experience, the penalty of joining any Union of agricultural labourers. One might have thought, too, with the guaranteeing of a minimum wage of 25s. by the Corn Production Act, that the agricultural labourer, so shy of Trade Unionism, would have rested content to let the official machinery adjust any differ- ences between him and his master: But happily the rural labourer has suddenly awakened to the value of combination and the need of selecting his own spokesman from his own ranks. Those who have attended Trade Union meetings in the country will have discovered that there are two reasons why labourers have decided to organize. One is the feeling that as the farmers have a Union their masters possess a powerful weapon to make breaches in the Act, and it is up to them.,–the labourers—to see that they are equipped with a weapon as powerful as that of the farmers. A stronger reason, perhaps, which has led them to corn- ;Alm has been the knowledge that the 25s. is the minimum and not he maximum wage, and that District Wages Boards have powers-to
increase their wages to any sum they choose subject to the sanction of the Central Board. They are aware, too, that the District Wages Board decides whether a man is " able-bodied " or not ; assesses the value of farm-tied cottages and of all " allowances," including board and lodging, and settles the prices for piece-work ; and so it is to their interest to select capable men to represent them on these Boards ; and selection necessarily means organization.
Of course it is doubtful if any save very few agricultural labourers would have known this important provision of the Corn Production Act, were it not for the activities of Unions, such as the National Union of Agricultural Labourers and the Workers' Union, which are making special appeals to rural workers. It is doubtful if there is one man in every village, or even group of villages, who under- stands the various Land Cultivation Orders or the Corn Production Act, so little do our Government attempt to make the laws of the land known to the common people. It is due to the activities of the Workers' Union that the " feudal" strongholds of Southern England have been stormed and taken. Trade Unionism has established a strong branch within the walls of Windsor Castle. It has drawn a cordon of Trade Unionists round Arundel Castle, and made many a sleepy hollow of Sussex ring with the voice of Labour " agitators."
If it be possible, then, to form Trade Unions in places such as these, it is possible to form them anywhere in Southern England, which has been so long the despair of all Trade Union organizers. Yet we are aware that the spirit of feudalism is not quite dead in rural England. Sussex and Berkshire, which have been notoriously backward counties, have never sunk so low in vitality as Oxford and Wiltshire. On certain estates in each of these counties, before the men made up their minds to become Trade Unionists, they asked for the blessing of their feudal chiefs ! In both instances it was immediately given. In one the Duke of Marlborough was asked for his approval, and as he once committed himself to the amazing statement that the agricultural labourer produced £250 worth of food in the year, he could hardly, even if he had wished to do so, have held back his sanction to the labourer's attempt to fix his wage at a minimum of £65 a year, or to raise it a little higher.
The war, the formation of a Coalition Government, and the passing of the Corn Production Act will be responsible not only for vast economic changes effected by Trade Union organization, but also for changing the political complexion of rural areas. Country folk who have been robbed of the education and the opportunity to follow the bewildering complexities of political changes are quite confused as to whether the Coalition Government is a Liberal or a Tory Government, or one which embraces both these Parties. ,What they do know is that Mr. Lloyd George is the Prime Minister; that he was once a Land Campaigner and hated by the class that now applauds him; but beyond the personality of Mr. Lloyd George, it is doubtful whether the majority of countrymen could mention by name any other Cabinet Minister, or if they did happen to know a name, whether they would be able to tell you now if he is a Conservative or a LiberaL
What they believe is that the Government since the beginning of the war have continually been found wanting, and that Ministries composed of leading Conservatives and Liberals have muddled the affairs of the country. They have a strong distrust of the Govern- ment, feeling that they have from the beginning dealt easily with " profiteers," if not entirely siding with them. The Tory labourer of the South is no longer the Tory labourer. He hardly knows what to call himself, but as he joins his Trade Union it is more than likely he will turn a complete somersault and become an out-and-out Labour man. As he becomes a Trade Unionist, the old country prejudice against Trade Unions as being urban organizations which foment strikes, disturb the country, and increase the price of coal and food, will die a natural death. The chances are that the country- side will become either definitely Labour, or else will return a Party to power which will resemble something like Disraeli's Young England Party of landlords and labourers welded together against the profiteering, farming, dealing, milling class.
Sir Charles Bathurst, a member of the landowning class himself, once made the remarkable statement to a Trade Union organizer that the landlords of England believed in giving the agrioultural labourers higher wages, and would have done so before but for the opposition of the farming class. Temporarily, the landlords gain no benefit from the Corn Production Act, and it is possible that they may form a powerful political Party appealing to the suffrages of labourers and constitute themselves the champions of agri- oultural labour in Parliament. Though this is possible, if the Trade Union organizers are active enough, they will not fail to seize their unique opportunity to see that our most important class of workers is no longer destitute of representation in the House of
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