FOREWORD 



RIGHT gladly do I comply with the request of the author 

 that I contribute a Foreword to this inspiring record of an 

 epoch-making and surprisingly successful social experiment. 



Initiated by the author's own fertile brain, and guided 

 by his tactful and sympathetic pilotage, the Agricultural 

 Club during the four years of its all-too-short existence 

 rendered a signal service, not merely to those who enjoyed 

 the privilege of its membership, but indirectly to the whole 

 rural community, which it would be difficult to over- 

 estimate. 



Arising out of the existence of the Agricultural Wages 

 Board and the necessity for its members to assemble in 

 London the night before its deliberations, it resulted in a 

 frank interchange of opinion often bluntly, but always 

 kindly expressed and a mutual respect and intimate 

 friendliness between leading representatives of the three 

 classes generally believed to be irreconcilably hostile in 

 outlook and purpose, which would have surprised most 

 armchair politicians who know little of the mentality of the 

 true countryman, had they looked in upon our pleasant 

 gatherings in the erstwhile studio of the great British artist 

 Gainsborough possibly the greatest, and certainly the most 

 truthful of England's eminent portrait painters. On many 

 a chilly winter's evening, illuminated and warmed by two 

 great fire-places and the often unvarnished rhetoric and 

 scathing sallies of bucolic orators of very varying poli- 

 tical views and social experience, the owner of many 

 broad acres, the tenant farmer of wide agricultural experi- 

 ence and renown, and the industrious and independent 

 farm worker, living in and loving (as only an English 

 agricultural worker can) his humble, creeper-clad cottage 

 home, could have been seen filling their pipes from the 

 same tobacco-pouch and enjoying each other's company 

 in an unaffectedly congenial atmosphere. To me, as to 

 many others, these gatherings were a monthly tonic and a 



xiii 



