GROWTH UNDER STORMY SKIES. 191 



The position of the labourer in 1912 was graphically 

 summed up by a Conservative, Mr. R. E. Prothero, who 

 has since been made President of the Board of Agriculture 

 and a Peer. 



" All the employing classes have moved on and upwards in 

 wealth, in education, in tastes, in habits, in their standard of 

 living. Except in education, the employed alone have stood 

 comparatively still. The sense of social inferiority which is thus 

 fostered has impressed the labourer with the feeling that he is not 

 regarded as a member of the community, but only as its helot. 

 It is from this point of view that he resents, in a half-humorous, 

 half-sullen fashion, the kindly efforts of well-meaning patrons to 

 do him good, the restrictions imposed on his occupation of his 

 cottage, as well as the paraphernalia of policemen, sanitary and 

 medical inspectors, school-attendance officers, who dragoon and 

 shepherd him into being sober, law-abiding, clean, healthy and 

 considerate of the future of his children. To his mind, it is all 

 part of the treatment meted out to a being who is regarded as 

 belonging to an inferior race." 1 



* * * * 



Mr. Lloyd George kept on making speeches, but the open- 

 ing of Parliament, 1913, shattered the rising hopes of the farm 

 workers. The King's Speech produced not a ray of light 

 in the homes of those who follow the plough. They knew 

 the Liberal Land Enquiry had been on foot for some time, and 

 when Parliament opened they fully expected a pronounce- 

 ment as to wages. Mr. Lloyd George had roused the whole 

 countryside into two opposing camps. Was it only political 

 window dressing after all. Was all this platform oratory 

 merely theatrical display, they began to ask one another. 



" They irritate the slumbering dominant Party without 

 strengthening the insurgent," wrote George Meredith in one 

 of his letters. These words might have been written of Mr. 

 Lloyd George. Indeed his public performances at this 

 period resembled the part of Harlequin in the great Land 

 Campaign Pantomime which was frequently put on for one 



In 1914, sixteen Credit Societies obtained advances from Joint Stock Banks, 

 the total amount advanced being 1,750 I The number of small holdings 

 provided by County Councils of which the holders were in actual posses- 

 sion on December 31, 1914, was only 13,085. The total quantity of land 

 acquired under the Act in England and Wales was less than i per cent, of 

 the whole cultivated area (Cd. 7851). 



1 English Farming : Past and Present. By R. E. Prothero. 



