"BUT FOR THE LAND" 73 



strike for better conditions, but never once 

 did they lose the look of essential order, as if 

 indeed they knew that, being the worst-served 

 creatures in the Christian world, they were the 

 chief guardians of the inherent dignity of man. 

 ... If they themselves were but the poorest, 

 humblest, least-learned women in the land, for 

 all that, it seemed to me that in those tattered, 

 wistful figures, so still, so trustful, I was 

 looking on such beauty that I had never 

 beheld. All the elaborated glory of things 

 made, the perfected dreams of aesthetes, the 

 embroideries of romance seemed as nothing 

 beside this sudden vision of the wild goodness 

 native in human hearts." 



So wrote Mr. John Galsworthy on 6th 

 March 1911 in reference to the women 

 chainmakers at Cradley Heath on strike for 

 a higher standard of life at this sweated 

 industry. 



So Mr. John Galsworthy might have 

 written to-day, and impressed upon our 

 consciousness an even more pathetic picture 

 of the conditions at Eelbroughton, Fairfield, 

 and Catshill, lying only a few miles away from 

 Cradley Heath, but for one thing which has 

 saved the people from a life of degradation. 



