THE WINTER OF DISCONTENT. 141 



there was little or no organised attempt to capture the 

 Parish Councils. Wheat was down to 265. a quarter, and 

 there seemed no prospect of getting a rise in wages. If 

 they could not get land and so work out their own salvation 

 there seemed little hope for them. The workhouse loomed 

 larger than ever in their eyes. There was no Old Age 

 Pension, and those beaten in the struggle for existence 

 received the parochial dole of a shilling or two a week with 

 half a stone of flour. 



It is a great effort for an agricultural labourer to pen a 

 letter to a local paper, especially to exhibit his poverty, 

 but one Daniel Hull, of To) leshunt- Knights told his story 

 in 1897 in a letter sent to the Essex County Council. He 

 was eighty-five years of age, of which number of years he 

 had put in eighty at work, and had now to " fall back on 

 one loaf and 2s. a week." 



Immediately the picture rises to one's eyes of Richard 

 Jefferies' labourer, John Brown. " If in front of him could 

 be piled up all the work he has done in his life what a huge 

 pyramid it would make ; and then if beside him could be 

 placed the product and award to himself, he could hold it 

 in his clenched hand like a nut, so that nobody could 

 see it." i 



Rural trade unionism was now at its lowest ebb since 1872. 

 The National Agricultural Labourers' Union had practic- 

 ally ceased to exist in every one of its ramifications. But 

 a new union entered the field, and as its history has become 

 a most remarkable one it is interesting to record its early 

 days, however insignificant its doings might have appeared 

 to the nation at that time. 



I have said that in the beginning years of the 'nineties 

 the stimulus of trade union organisation amongst agricul- 

 tural labourers was artificial. It derived from the towns, 

 and the rapidly formed country unions had but a meteoric 

 career. 



Now in May 1898 a new urban union came into being 



1 Lord Rothschild's Committee (1898) reported that two-thirds of the 

 people over sixty-five needed " aid. " The aged poor, numbering about three- 

 quarters of a million, who needed aid to keep alive, had to wait for another 

 ten years before the Old Age Pensions Act was passed. 



..,* 



