4 THE AGRICULTURAL CLUB. 



sentatives of employers and three representatives of workers 

 on the Agricultural Wages Board. The Officers and Committee 

 shall be elected annually, in January. 



8. The Committee shall arrange the subjects for discussion at 

 meetings of the Club, and for the persons to introduce them. 

 Non-members of the Club may be invited by the Committee 

 to open discussion. Speakers introducing a subject shall be 

 limited to half an hour, and subsequent speakers to ten minutes. 



9. Any member of the Club may introduce one visitor at 

 any meeting. Visitors may only take part in discussions by 

 consent of the meeting. No person may be introduced as a 

 visitor at more than six meetings in the course of a year. 



10. Any alterations of these rules must be proposed by at 

 least three members (being members of the Wages Board) and 

 no alteration shall be made unless due notice of the proposed 

 alteration has been given to every member of the Club, and the 

 alteration is carried by a majority of two-thirds of the members 

 present at a meeting of the Club. 



The distinctive character of the Club was that farmers 

 and agricultural labourers were placed on an absolute 

 equality, and that the maintenance of this equality was the 

 basis of the constitution. This was in effect embodying in 

 the rules of the Club the fundamental principle of the 

 Agricultural Wages Board. 



It is curious that the historical significance of the com- 

 position of the Wages Board has been so little regarded. 

 The relationship of man and master in Agriculture evolved 

 out of the manorial system, under which the hired labourer 

 was a serf, and developed through a long period in which 

 the farmer's status and power, political and economic, 

 steadily increased, while the agricultural wage-earner 

 (largely owing to the superfluity and immobility of labour 

 in the rural districts) sank lower and lower into a position 

 of dependence and subservience. The gulf widened 

 between employer and employed, and although it was 

 undoubtedly often bridged by personal relations of mutual 

 respect and regard, it yawned inexorably in public affairs. 

 When the labourer won his way to the polling booth, 

 political equality was established, but this had little or 

 no effect on the social or economic relations of the two 

 classes. If labourers were invited to join an Agricultural 



