Freedom and Progress 85 



I ever saw anywhere.' The scarcity of cottages to-day is due in 

 part to this foolish policy. 



The good sense and ordinary human feeling of landowners 

 and farmers frequently modified this policy. Time was required 

 to improve the relationships between masters and men. The 

 tradition and memory of past wrongs made the latter bitter. 

 Caird says that in 1851 rick-burning was common in Cambridge- 

 shire and Northamptonshire. The impression gained ground not 

 only among the labourers that they were not receiving a due share 

 of the prosperity which agriculture enjoyed. About 1868 Canon 

 Girdlestone, a Devonshire clergyman, took up the cause of the 

 labourers and the Rev. Charles Stubbs did the same in Bucking- 

 hamshire, and in 1872 the National Agricultural Labourers' 

 Union was formed. Combination of workmen to secure higher 

 wages and better conditions of employment had taken place in 

 other industries. Joseph Arch, a Warwickshire labourer, founded 

 the above Union, and became the leader of the movement. 

 Branches sprang up over the country. By local strikes and by 

 other forms of pressure they succeeded in raising wages by two 

 or three shillings a week in certain districts, and they secured 

 the abolition of the gang-system in its vicious forms. 



Their isolation and their poverty made it difficult for farm 

 labourers to come together and to keep themselves organized, 

 and other and wider forces were working against them. Farmers 

 in North and South America, in Australia and New Zealand had 

 been steadily increasing their production. Before 1850 a reaping 

 and threshing machine combined had been invented in Australia, 

 and shortly afterwards the reaping machine came into use in 

 America. These inventions enabled farmers in the new countries 

 to overcome the difficulties due to shortage of labour. Cheap 

 and rapid transport by railways and steamships was available for 

 all the corn, wool, and meat they could send to British markets. 

 By 1879 the ^ a ^ i n P r i ces which landlords and farmers expected 



