THE WINTER OF DISCONTENT. 109 



unions (which was improving since Arch's time), but 

 were not challenged as to the accuracy of the rate of wages 

 stated, in spite of the publicity given in the columns of a 

 daily paper. Close on his heels too came the lecturers of 

 the English Land Restoration League, whose business it 

 was to find out rates of wages and other conditions, and as 

 we shall see their report confirmed that of Mr. Millin. 



It was no wonder that labourers who were accustomed to 

 horses left the land to become grooms ; that is to say, left 

 us. a week to earn 255. or 305. in a more agreeable manner; 

 and in this the young labourer was encouraged by his sweet- 

 heart, for we must bear in mind that it was she (cherchcz 

 la femme) who was more responsible for the depopulation 

 of the countryside than any Government. One who had 

 been a labourer put the case very pertinently when he wrote 

 to the Daily News ; 



" My sweetheart is too nice a girl to keep in a hovel on 

 los. a week, so I must seek a warmer clime, for English 

 charity is too cold for me to thrive on." And the laboi.r- 

 er's sweetheart would know from the experiences of her 

 own father that there was no prospect for her husband of 

 higher wages, however skilled he might become, and that 

 nearly every farm lane led eventually to the distant 

 workhouse. 



Mr. Anderson Graham said that " in the autumn of 1891 

 you could drive fifteen miles through Norfolk without passing 

 a tenanted farm ; and Mr. Millin describes the deserted 

 villages which lay between Wickford to Althorne and South- 

 minster a district that became familiar to me a few years 

 later as " A more dreary and depressing stretch of badly 

 farmed crops and land out of cultivation, dilapidated cot- 

 tages and deserted fields, it would be difficult to find." 

 And it was not only from parishes where the farms were 

 badly cultivated, cottages dilapidated, and the squire and 

 parson indifferent to social conditions that the young men 

 were streaming into the towns or the colonies. In a model 

 village, as that of St. Stisted in the same county, where the 

 squire took a pride in designing cottages and the rector was 

 a large-hearted and liberal-minded friend of the people, 



