282 ENGLISH AGRICULTURAL LABOURER. 



even as to the smallest details to men who are unaccustomed 

 to print. 



" I have long ago discovered," he writes, " that you have got 

 to lead the farm worker ; tell him what he has to do and he will 

 do it to a man. But leave it to him to think it out for himself 

 and you won't get much response. Just tell him what you want, 

 and tell him plain and straight, and he will be with you. It's 

 his class-consciousness that you want to discover. It is there, 

 though it is difficult to find. I know, because I am one of them 

 and have felt the stifling, stunting atmosphere of the great 

 estate." 



Though Mr. Shingfield is a member of the District Wages 

 Committee, he has found it necessary to institute a standing 

 joint council of the Farmers' Union and the Workers' Union, 

 which has done very useful work in settling disputes as to 

 the tenancy of cottages, victimisation, and the non-payment 

 of the minimum wage. By avoiding sending reports to the 

 Agricultural Wages Board and the consequent visitation 

 of an inspector (which often results in the labourer being 

 dismissed) this Council, by frank discussion, has prevented 

 a good deal of friction between the farmers and the workers. 



Of the new school of organisers similar to that of Mr. 

 Shingfield belongs Mr. Harry White the Workers' Union 

 organiser for the county of Bedford. The two men are 

 quite dissimilar in character and temperament ; but both 

 are sons of farm labourers and being deprived of education at. 

 an early age they sought knowledge where the poor man only 

 can gain it, that is in the towns. Mr. White's father worked 

 in the Bedfordshire village of Leagrave, seven days a week 

 for I2S. a week. Harry was the second of a family of eight. 

 He left school at n| years of age, being driven to increase the 

 family earnings by 2s. 6d. a week as carter's boy. 



At the first opportunity he abandoned this life to become 

 an errand boy to a firm of straw hat manufacturers. At 

 seventeen he began to take a keen interest in social and 

 political problems, joined an adult school in the village and 

 became a convinced socialist. Two years later, at the age 

 of nineteen, he, with one or two others, gave his village a 

 profound shock by opening a branch of the I.L.P. He soon 



