The Rural Labourer 



or to the history of social conditions and to the 

 great part that land plays in the development 

 of every nation. 



Wat Tyler's rebellion, for example, is re- 

 corded in most histories as a mere rising of 

 peasants, but to understand its inward meaning, 

 and the feeling that actuated these rustics, it is 

 necessary to read such a book as Mr. Jesse 

 Collings' " Land Reform," a volume which 

 should become a national classic. 



Land provides us with our whole means of 

 subsistence and it is well to know something 

 about it ! 



No reference to the condition of the rural 

 labourer would be complete without some short 

 mention of that veteran champion of the cause 

 of agriculture and the betterment of the rural 

 labourer, Mr. Jesse Collings, the member for 

 the Edgbaston division of Birmingham. 



For years his has been the only voice raised 

 in favour of land reform ; he has reiterated in 

 season and out of season, in the House of 

 Commons and outside it, the demand that 

 Parliament and the nation at large should pay 

 more attention to the condition of the agri- 

 cultural industry and that of the rural labourer. 

 Himself the son of a labourer, he has been a 

 strong advocate of the policy which he believed 

 would most benefit the labourer and agriculture 

 as a whole — the creation of a class of small 



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