54 ENGLISH AGRICULTURAL LABOURER. 



It will be noticed that the number of hours is left blank. 



Their wages were still 125. a week, the same as they were 

 six months previously. They appear to have taken no strike 

 action after their first notice. Apparently they had waited 

 patiently for some softening of the farmer's heart. This 

 circular was put before the committee of the Newmarket 

 Agricultural Association by the employers who had received 

 it. As it bore no signature they made that the excuse for 

 ignoring it. A resolution, however, was passed at a full 

 meeting of the Association to raise wages to 135. on March 

 15, 1873. The Exning men accepted this increase and 

 went on working as usual, and in spite of the farmers' 

 repudiation of the Union, attributed the shilling rise to the 

 action of their Union. 



But the farmers of the Essex and Suffolk Association 

 on April 17, 1873, at Sudbury, openly declared war upon the 

 Union. They passed the following resolutions : 



" That the members of the Association pledge themselves not 

 to pay more than 2s. a day of twelve hours, including breakfast 

 and dinner for day work. That in the opinion of this meeting 

 the members r of the Association should resist the interference of 

 the National Labourers' Union by discharging the men in their 

 employ belonging to the said Union, after giving them a week's 

 notice of withdrawal." 



The farmers appealed to the great landowners to help 

 them to stop in its infancy a movement which would " lead 

 to confiscation of property, tearing down all rights except 

 the might of the masses." And they immediately insti- 

 tuted a lock-out which threw a thousand men out of work. 

 The farmers won their first battle against organised agri- 

 cultural labour. The farmers and their families worked 

 harder than they had ever worked in their lives before, 

 and it was not difficult in those days to get the casual unem- 

 ployed labour of the towns into the country districts, 

 especially when they were fetched, housed and fed. 



The funds of the Union in its infancy were severely 

 strained. Many of the labourers migrated or emigrated 

 and suffered much hardship. It is remarkable that so many 

 who had been kept in such a low state of vitality should 



