270 ENGLISH AGRICULTURAL LABOURER 



Mrs. Hodge has found out her husband's money will not pur- 

 chase as much as in the past, and she has grumbled at her hus- 

 band about it until both have often got to words and finally 

 he hears of a Trade Union meeting somewhere ; he goes to get out 

 of her company, he listens, and the dawn of a new world opens 

 before his vision, he joins and becomes an enthusiast, gets more 

 and so the cause has spread, is spreading, so fast that, given the 

 same rate of progress for another five years we shall come near 

 the top of the Trade Union tree, and what applies industrially 

 applies also politically. Every member of our Union is a poten- 

 tial Labour Voter given the chance at any and every election 

 from the Parish Council to the British Parliament." 



Mr. S. E. George, the N.A.L.U. organiser for Leicester, 

 writes : 



" The N.A.L.U. seems to have been re-born at Fenny-Drayton 

 in 1915 and at Empingham later, but no great strides were made 

 until 1918-19, when the membership rose from 500 to 3,000. 

 The Union not only brings men together, but is the means of 

 making them discuss the cost of living, the economics of farming, 

 etc. The men are certainly more independent ; more like men 

 and less like sheep. The trouble lies in getting suitable rooms 

 in which to hold meetings. We are barred from church and 

 chapel schoolrooms ; I don't know why, for I am sure we should 

 be more use there practising temperance than they are preach- 

 ing it to teetotallers. The parson generally asks me if I have 

 tried to get a room at the pub. 



" At one place Medbourne, near Market Harboro' we had 

 the use of a Church Army hut. It was purchased by a kindly- , 

 natured woman when she discovered we had been debarred 

 from the church schoolroom. Three classes are now running 

 for farm labourers : two dancing classes, a reading circle, and 

 a book club, and we are going to make an outdoor skittle alley 

 in the summer. 



" I once rode with a farmer towards Melton in the train, and 

 although a member of his own union, he absolutely denied his 

 men the right to join their union. He said ' I am done with 

 them directly they join the union. I keep them no longer.' 



" He quite forgets," caustically adds Mr. George, " it is not 

 he who has kept the men but the men who have kept him and 

 allowed him to put a pile away." 



In the outlying districts he finds that the men are still 

 given a week's notice to quit their cottage if they join the 

 union, and that it is difficult to convince some of the men 



