58 ENGLISH AGRICULTURAL LABOURER. 



of yet crushing defeat amongst the men. The farmers had not 

 succeeded in stamping out the union as they had hoped to 

 do. " The weak-kneed among them gave up their tickets, 

 but by far the larger number held on, and including Nationals 

 and Federals, six or even seven thousand union labourers 

 were left in Suffolk when the lock-out was ended." 1 



There is no doubt that the farmers by locking out 10,000 

 men in 1874 delivered a blow against English agriculture 

 from which it has really never recovered. The land 

 was denuded by migration and emigration of thousands 

 of its most virile workers. Arch returned from Canada in 

 November, 1873, where he had made excellent arrange- 

 ments for the emigration of thousands of labourers each of 

 whom would have a log hut, with five acres of cleared land 

 and seed for the sowing, from the Canadian Government. 

 Arch admitted himself that English agriculture suffered 

 a decline as a result of his own emigration schemes, and that 

 by emigrating young men he was striking a blow at his own 

 organisation. 



The farmers did not play a noble part in this struggle. 

 They tried to make the lock-out universal by carrying the 

 industrial war into Bedfordshire, Huntingdonshire, and 

 Norfolk and by getting the County Association of Farmers 

 to declare a general lock-out ; but these Associations 

 would not be lured by the blandishments of the Essex, 

 Suffolk, and Cambridgeshire farmers. The landowners 

 behaved on the whole better than the clergy, who, as a 

 class, sided with the farmers. Probably their partisanship 

 was due to their social and political timidity, for neither 

 on economic nor on humanitarian grounds had the farmers 

 a sound case. They were making money whilst the labour- 

 ers were faring badly. There was no indication of an agri- 

 cultural depression and they were securing the economic 

 advantage of improved machinery and an increased number 

 of fertilisers. 



It was the gospel of fear which knit together landlord, 

 farmer, and parson ; the fear which was reflected in the 

 mind of Dickens' Sir Leicester Dedlock. The " flood 



1 The Agricultural Lock-out, 1874, by F. Clifford. 



