268 ENGLISH AGRICULTURAL LABOURER 



cows and look after two ponies and then be ready to start working 

 with labourers. However I had to go home to hold it and pro- 

 tect my parents when sixteen years of age, and got the magnifi- 

 cent offer of 95. od. per week and keep myself. When nineteen 

 my father passed away, and I had to look after a widowed mother 

 and young sister on a man's full wage of 125. per week, pay rent 

 to an idle landlord, bow to the parson and go to church each 

 Sunday and sing in the choir that famous Doxology, ' Praise 

 God from whom all blessings flow,' a mockery to me all the time, 

 and only my love for my mother made me bear it. 



" However events were shaping my future. The old employer 

 retired from active management of the farm, got a bailiff to do 

 it and, like many workers when put in authority proved to be 

 a greater tyrant than his real employer. For my daring to 

 exchange with an old man and do his heavy job whilst he did 

 my light one I got into trouble, and on hearing the bailiff tell this 

 old man that it was time he WAS EITHER DEAD OR IN THE WORK- 

 HOUSE, Host my temper and knocked him down, and for that I 

 got instantly dismissed from my work, followed by having to 

 leave my native place and take my mother and sister to new 

 fields of labour. I vowed then, and I have kept it, I would never 

 again work for a farmer until I had made the lot of the 

 agricultural labourer much better. 



" From being an agricultural labourer, I became a gentleman's 

 coachman, and whilst I had a thorough gentleman for a master, 

 the old spirit of revolt against being a slave to others' bidding 

 possessed me, and when he left the district I parted company 

 with him. In the meantime I managed to scrape a home to- 

 gether and get married and went into a mechanic's shop as a 

 labourer. 



" I was for ten years the only member of the ' Gasworkers' 

 Union,' now the National Union of General Workers, in that shop 

 or town, and I paid the penalty once more by being dismissed 

 for refusing to leave my Trade Union. When offered the choice 

 between leaving trade unionism or my work I had to consider 

 I had four children under ten years of age, so I consulted my wife 

 and she decided. Her decision was I was to maintain my Union 

 card no matter the cost, and it proved a very heavy cost, too, 

 for it meant I walked the streets for 15 long weary months out 

 of work, and never once during that trying period did the part- 

 ner of my joys and sorrows ever complain. Only those who 

 have been through such an experience can really grasp what 

 that meant. 



" Eventually I secured work as a drayman on a canal company, 

 and even there the fangs of capitalism tried to bite me, but once 

 I found a man and a brother who absolutely refused the many 

 appeals to sack me because I was a Trade Union and Labour 



