302 ENGLISH AGRICULTURAL LABOURER. 



comfort on wages earned by a working week of forty-eight 

 hours without being compelled to resort to overtime to 

 make both ends meet. Conditions should be better, and 

 not merely on an equality with the servitude of pre-war days. 



The agricultural labourer who could barely raise an 

 organised army of 15,000 before the war now had a dis- 

 ciplined army of nearly 200,000. No body of workers 

 had in the history of the English working class organised 

 with such rapidity in spite of the tremendous difficulties 

 which lay in the path a path on which the milestones 

 were few and far between. 



Now, on January 15, 1919, through their representatives on 

 the Agricultural Wages Board they made a bold demand 

 of an all-round i increase for a forty-eight hours' working 

 week. Mr. W. R. Smith, M.P., their leader, said they 

 wished to lift the farm- worker above the pre-war conditions 

 of life which all classes had now condemned as a degrading 

 poverty. The meeting which followed was stormy. Every 

 section of the Wages Board was filled with grave anxiety. 

 If a strike took place now it would not be confined to a 

 few parishes, but would become a national strike imperilling 

 the food supply of the nation. This momentous time was 

 aptly described by Sir Ailwyn Fellowes at a Conference 

 with District Wages Committees held in May : 



" The workers had made no secret of a demand for an all- 

 round increase. From their point of view an increase was 

 over-due when they made their demand last January. 

 Their representatives had great difficulty in agreeing to 

 the postponement of the matter, but they loyally accepted 

 the Board's decision and did their best to curb the im- 

 patience of those whom they represent . . . the general 

 situation in regard to the relations between capital and labour 

 was disturbed ; I may even say it was inflammable. Incon- 

 siderate action might have had disastrous consequences. It 

 is not too much to say that the country was on the edge of a 

 precipice where a rash step might have led to a catastrophe." 



Indeed, preparations were on foot for a strike on a large 

 scale if the farmers had refused to concede anything. 

 Farm workers around Chatteris in Cambridgeshire, in 

 Cheshire and South-West Lancashire were getting they: 



