THE WINTER OF DISCONTENT. 129 



my foes alone. The exit of the doctor brought about an 

 embarrassing silence. After a pause some one proposed 

 that the son of the patriarch should be sent round for his 

 father to ask him to take the chair. Again we sat in silence, 

 until the son returned with the announcement that " Dad 

 says he has taken off his boots." Another embarrassing 

 silence, broken, I am afraid, by a chuckle from me. " Go 

 back and tell him it's very purtickler," said one of the 

 bolder members of the ruling family. Again the son 

 departed, and eventually brought back the patriarch who 

 took the chair with the refreshing statement that " he had 

 never read the Parish Councils Act, and never meant to." 



At the second meeting I proposed that we should request 

 the Rural District Council to put into operation the Hous- 

 ing of the Working Classes Act. No one argued against it, 

 and it was passed, though I noticed a significant sly twinkle 

 in the patriarch's eye. When my resolution was read 

 before the Rural District Council the patriarch coolly pro- 

 posed that it should lie on the table. And it has been 

 lying there, or in the archives of that Rural District Council, 

 ever since that day ! 



In spite of the publicity given to the deplorable condition 

 of cottage property in nearly every county visited by the 

 Red Vans, little was done to build new cottages save by 

 the best of the landowners. These Red Van Reports 

 give us lurid glimpses into the kind of homes occupied by 

 labourers and their families. 



A labourer graphically describes the cottage he lived 

 in in a Suffolk village, by the remark, " You may shut the 

 doors and windows close enough, but you can't keep the 

 cat out." The rich sporting landowner, who cared as little 

 for cottage rents as he did for farm rents, was a bad example 

 of the English landowner. 1 



" We met a labourer," writes a lecturer of the Red Van, " pull- 

 ing down a cottage in which he formerly lived for years. Accord- 

 ing to his account he had been evicted and the ground cleared 

 for the better preservation of game on the adjoining land, and he 

 had also been sacked by the farmer for joining the Union and 



1 Amongst the Agricultural Labourers, 1891. 

 VOL. II. K 



