64 ENGLISH AGRICULTURAL LABOURER. 



became a carter at ros. a week. There were nine of us to live 

 on that besides father and mother. Poor dad had to tramp four 

 miles every day to work, seven days a week, besides being on the 

 tramp all day with the horses, without half enough to eat and 

 sometimes wet through before he got to work. They must 

 have been made of cast-iron in those days. He did this for 

 fourteen years and reared us all up, and only once in those 

 fourteen years did he ask for parish relief when he was home 

 with a quinsey for a fortnight. He got a little allowed to him 

 from the parish, but after he started work again the Chairman of 

 the Board of Guardians, who was a gentleman, rode to hounds, 

 etc., ro_de up to the farm and asked if dad could not pay back the 

 money at so much a week because his wages had risen to us. a 

 week at that time, with not one of us earning a penny. When 

 the farmer heard what he had come for, he followed him off the 

 farm cursing him all the time, asking him if that was what he 

 paid Poor Rates for, for him to keep hunters to ride about. . . . 

 I've had some of It. It makes my blood boil as I write this." 



Mr. Pink, of Boro Green, Kent, tells me that he remembers 

 the Kent and Sussex Labourers' Union, which according 

 to Simmons' evidence before the Royal Commission of 1881 

 had a membership of 14,000. x He states that when the 

 Union was started the wages in Sussex and Kent were los. 

 to I2S., which low wages the Union raised to 155. The 

 Union had the advantage of a paper called The Kent Mes- 

 senger, which Simmons edited. The farmers in the Isle of 

 Sheppy answered the Union demand with a lock-out. 

 Mr. Pink writes : 



" I told the farmers at a meeting we had with them that if 

 they did not pay the 153. I was instructed to take away one 

 hundred of their best men on Monday morning. The farmers 

 shouted ' Rot ! ' and ' Go to hell with your humbug.' I told 

 them I would take single tickets but not to that isolated place 

 they spoke of, but to respectable and different railways, where 

 the men would earn i8s. to 205. per week, and I would soon 

 remove their furniture so that the farmers could have the empty 

 houses, and that this would not be an empty boast. 



" On Monday morning I took tickets for 105 for the places 

 where the men were wanted, and their furniture soon followed, 

 and many a family have often thanked me for the move I gave 

 them. 



1 He needlessly apologises for what he calls his " scribble and bad 

 spelling ; for I am self-taught on the Downs whilst scaring crows and 

 minding sheep." 



