60 ENGLISH AGRICULTURAL LABOURER. 



labourers, headed by self-constituted leaders, walked about in 

 procession through the country towns, wearing the blue ribbon 

 which was the badge of the Union, and was to the farmer as the 

 red rag to the bull, and singing about the land, honestly believing 

 that they were coming into possession of it. 



" I remember my main difficulty with the farmers was in per- 

 suading them that the most politic course was to allow the other 

 side to have a monopoly of the strong language ; they did so want 

 to pour out their souls in response. . . . The Union struck at the 

 old relationship, in which there was give and take on both sides, 

 between masters and men, and a great deal of bad feeling was 

 engendered. The fuller effects of this were manifest when, a 

 little later on, the great depression in agriculture set in, and 

 both sides felt the pinch of bad times." 



The labourers felt that on their side was all the giving, 

 and on the farmers' all the taking. 



As a method of undermining loyalty to the Union, farmers 

 in the Bury St. Edmunds district began to raise the wages 

 of all non-unionists from 135. to 145. 



In certain districts there was a cry amongst the labourers 

 for "a stone of flour. a day," or its equivalent, that is 

 2s. 6d. or 2s. gd., but this does not seem to have been an 

 official union demand. " To base wages upon a sliding 

 scale, rising and falling according to the current price of 

 corn, is old-fashioned nonsense," said a Sussex farmer. 

 And he was right. I mention this because I find the pro- 

 position that wages should be paid according to the current 

 price of corn constantly cropping up in after years, especially 

 in the eastern counties. 



The opposition of the farmers was not based on any 

 economic reasons. Their opposition was to the labourers' 

 right to combine, or, as the farmers chose to put it, to 

 " being dictated to by foreigners," that is to say by an execu- 

 tive sitting at Leamington, Lincoln, or London. This was 

 distinctly shown by the replies to Mr. S. Morley, M.P., 

 and Mr. Dixon, M.P., who tried to bring about a conciliation. 



The Duke of Rutland, who owned between 9,000 and 

 10,000 acres in the parishes of Wood-Ditton and Chevley, 

 wrote a circular letter to the labourers on the estate with 

 a view to conciliating them. He addressed them as " My 

 Friends," but his letter contained the following statement : 



