THE AFTERMATH OF THISTLES. 77 



Farmers knew, too, that the threat of a labour-saving ma- 

 chine could still strike fear to the heart of the labourer. " The 

 farmers have used machinery as a sort of weapon over the 

 backs of the labourers," said Joseph Arch before the Royal 

 Commission. " I heard of a certain farmer who boasted 

 for years at a market ordinary that he bought a reaping 

 machine, but he never used it, and he said that it paid him 

 a good percentage, keeping it in the coachhouse to frighten 

 the labourers with." 



The pinch of poverty was increased, too, by the falling off 

 in family earnings. It was chiefly through the action of the 

 trade unions that the degrading gang system of employing 

 married women, young girls and boys on field work under 

 a ganger who exploited their labour and had no regard for 

 their morals, had largely disappeared. The Education Act 

 of 1870 had also cut inroads into the earning capacities of 

 families. Married women were seen less in the fields, and 

 the new schools absorbed the children. It was common 

 practice however for boys to work in gangs, and they did not 

 appear to have a very happy life of it. A man who was a 

 member of Arch's Union, and is now living at Maylands, 

 Essex, tells me of the experience he had when he was nine 

 years of age at Chelmondiston on the Orwell, which fortun- 

 ately had its humorous side. Working one day with nine 

 other boys under the charge of a foreman aged sixteen, at 

 singling mangolds, this juvenile gang was made aware of 

 the farmer watching them at work from behind a hedge by 

 hearing him roar out to the ganger : 



" Get me two ash sticks about a yard long. I shall be 

 back in a minute." 



The bigger boys at once held a council of war and decided 

 to put up a fight. But the farmer brought along with him 

 heavy artillery in the form of a large retriever dog. 

 Surrender to the inevitable was imminent, but not until 

 the biggest boy had got a piece of the root of a tree placed 

 inside the seat of his trousers. He was the first boy to 

 receive the thrashing, and whilst the ash stick descended 

 upon the root the others burst out laughing. The laughter 

 incensed the farmer so' much that he thrashed every one of 

 the boys in turn 



