238 ENGLISH AGRICULTURAL LABOURER 



Canon Scott Holland in The Commonwealth said : 



" There is no class more terribly in danger of missing its 

 heritage than the agricultural labourer's boys. There is no 

 class more ready to skimp their hold upon it than the farmers. 

 There are a dozen ways out of the difficulties in which the agri- 

 cultural labourer is placed. A decent wage would bring men in 

 out of the trades that are suffering by the war." 



But it was a decent wage which the farmers as a class 

 still refused to pay. 



Mr. W. Bartlett made a strong protest against the employ- 

 ment of children of twelve years of age. 



"It is said they will be ' only employed in light work with 

 horses.' I have bitter memories of a personal experience of 

 what work on farms meant to a child of twelve, and have seen 

 others, younger and less happily placed, leading these quiet 

 horses, stumbling up and down with weary feet over the rough 

 clods of a ploughed field, poorly clad and not always well fed, 

 their hands, feet, and ears covered with chilblains, shivering 

 in the bleak wind of a March day, their eyes blinded with the tears 

 they vainly strive to repress, a picture of suffering and child 

 misery." x 



Lieut.-Col. Pedder suggested that the farmers were 

 desiring a return of the Crimean days " when much of their 

 work was done by women at 6d. and gd. a day and the men 

 who got 95. a week were lucky." 2 



Nor . did resolutions at County Education Committees 

 pass without opposition. In the Salop County Court Mr. 

 William Latham, a miners' representative, made a spirited 

 protest. 



" He spoke as one who had been under that foul system of 

 boy labour on the farm. Soon after he was ten years of age he 

 was at work on a farm with a whip in his hand thirteen hours 

 for 6d. (cries of ' Order,' ' Order '), and the farmer at night too 

 drunk to pay him. (Loud cries of ' Order ' and ' Chair.') Could 

 they wonder that he was on his feet, protesting ? He was there 

 to protect the lads of the agricultural workers, 90 per cent, of 

 whom, owing to the tied-cottage anomaly and the Registration 



1 Daily Chronicle, February 23, 1915. 



2 In February, 1916, a case was mentioned before the Somerset Educa- 

 tion Committee of a farmer who was offering a boy of twelve years of age 

 id. an hour, with no pay for Sunday work. Daily News, February 27, 

 1916. 



