128 ENGLISH AGRICULTURAL LABOURER. 



of a conveyance ; and the loss of a day's work would in 

 many cases mean the loss of regular employment. 



The most reactionary administrative body was, and is 

 still, the Rural District Council, and unfortunately, it is the 

 body which was, and still is, largely responsible for the 

 building of cottages, the reform most needed in rural Eng- 

 land. Unfortunately too, for the nation and for the labour- 

 ing classes in particular, gentlemen sit on this body who are 

 either interested in cottage property as builders, or as the 

 landlords of farm-tied cottages, and a Rural District Council 

 could nearly always be depended upon to veto a Parish 

 Council resolution that the Housing of the Working Classes 

 Act of 1890 should be put into force. 



I remember taking part in an election as a candidate 

 for a Parish Council in 1897. No labourer had sat on 

 this Parish Council since its establishment in 1894, 

 and though not an agricultural labourer myself, I was 

 asked by labourers to fight their battles for them, 

 especially with a view to winning for the parish some 

 very much-needed cottages. One ruling family of farmers, 

 who owned most of the farms as well as the tied cottages, 

 many of which were defective in sanitation and in 

 water supply, had hitherto controlled the Parish Council. 

 So effective was the control of this family over the parish 

 that not only did it possess the power to say who should or 

 should not work in the parish as far as agricultural land 

 was concerned, but who should live on that land. As it 

 also controlled the small waterworks, the mill, the butcher's 

 shop, and the bakehouse, it amounted to most of the parish- 

 ioners having to depend upon the goodwill of this ruling 

 family for work, cottages, water, meat and bread ! 



After a fierce contest I managed to get elected with 

 a progressive doctor who had acted as chairman. The 

 patriarch who supplied the brains for this family of farmers 

 was vice-chairman of the Rural District Council, and at 

 the first meeting of the Parish Council the sons and nephews 

 who were elected proposed that the patriarch should be 

 chairman in place of the doctor. Thereupon the doctor 

 left the Council, never to return to it ; and I was left facing 



