70 ENGLISH AGRICULTURAL LABOURER. 



autocratic, and not the man to pour oil upon troubled 

 waters. From a membership of over 80,000 in 1874 

 the National Union sank to a membership of 15,000 

 in 1881, and to 4,254 in 1889. Suspicion was rife as to the 

 mal-administration of funds ; and disheartened by the 

 calumnies heaped upon his name it was not unnatural that 

 Joseph Arch should seek consolation in the ranks of a 

 political party which welcomed him and used him to the 

 utmost. Amongst those who paraded Joseph Arch in the 

 early 'eighties was the late Joseph Chamberlain, and Glad- 

 stone found the labourers' champion an asset to his party 

 in passing the Franchise Act of 1884, which at last granted 

 the agricultural labourer the right to vote. Henceforth 

 the labourer became the shuttlecock of the contending 

 battledores of Liberal and Conservative politicians in all 

 rural districts. 



It is amazing when we realise the illiteracy of the 

 farm worker at that date, that the Union achieved any 

 success at all as an organisation. So rapid was the enrol- 

 ment of members in its first two years that they soon out- 

 paced the staffing capacities of the Union. The knowledge 

 of how difficult it was forty years after to get farm workers 

 with sufficient education or courage to act as branch secre- 

 taries makes one wonder how the Union managed to induce 

 men to act as secretaries only two years after the Education 

 Act of 1870. 



It should be remembered that at this time the prevalent 

 feeling towards education in rural districts was still very much 

 like that expressed by Doyle in 1843, when he said : " The 

 word education must in most cases be taken to mean really 

 little more than a certain amount of physical deteriora- 

 tion, incurred by wasting time in crowded and unwholesome 

 rooms." 1 



A child above the age of ten who had reached the Fourth 

 Standard prescribed by the code of 1876, could be freed 

 by a certificate from the Government inspector from 

 further attendance. Moreover, children who could satisfy 



1 Report of the Special Assistant Commissioners to the Commission on the 

 Employment of Women and Children in Agriculture of 1843, Vol. XII. 



