THE FARMER SWINGS HIS SCYTHE. 63 



haymaking, time as the reaper and the elevator now being 

 bought in larger numbers by the farmers, broke it at harvest 

 time. 



I have questioned a number of men who can remember 

 these early years of Arch's Union, and their replies throw 

 much light upon the difficulties which beset any kind of 

 labour organisation in those days. Mr. James Reynolds, 

 J.P., of Lambourn, Berks, writes : 



" In 1874, when I was seventeen, I did some booking for a 

 branch of the N.A.L.U. at Wherwell, Hants. J. Arch, R. Ball 

 and others visited the villages and the men responded readily 

 to their call, and joined the Union. But they were met with 

 opposition from every quarter. The Squire, the land agent, the 

 farmer, and often the parson, showed hostility from the first. 

 A great difficulty presented itself in obtaining rooms to meet in, 

 as all schools were in the hands of the Church. So meetings were 

 chiefly held and the contributions paid in little Methodist chapels. 

 It was not possible to maintain oversight and remedy grievances 

 which soon cropped up between master and man, and the clerical 

 staff of the N.A.L.U. became quite unable to cope with the work. 

 Men's wages then were los. per week ; women's 8d. or gd. per 

 day. I worked on two farms when a big lad for 33. and 33. 6d. 

 per week. Mowing machines and self-binders had not then 

 appeared, and on farms where now three men and a boy are 

 employed, there would be seven or eight men and two or three 

 boys. I have watched the depopulation of villages and the 

 migration of all who wanted to make headway for the last forty 

 years." 



A Dorset labourer from the village of Beaminster, writing 

 of this time, tells me that his grandfather, who had to live 

 on 75. a week with his wife and five children, could neither 

 read nor write : 



" But I've heard father say he would get a newspaper and go 

 to the village pub and pretend to be reading, but was actually 

 reciting all sorts of nonsense from his own head, and some one 

 would say : ' You've got the up end down,' when he would make 

 answer : ' A good scholar can read anyhow.' 



" My father could not remember his mother. She died when 

 he was young, being the youngest of the five. He remembers 

 waking up one morning and finding his dad dead by his side when 

 he was eight years of age. Then he had to start work as dairy 

 boy or go into the worldiouse, and he worked from daylight to 

 dark, and after that he married at the age of eighteen, when he 



