LABOUR. 291 



ended at the walls of the factory. He had his own home 

 in which — to apply Blackstone's saying about " the pos- 

 sessor of sixpence being king to the extent of sixpence " 

 — in respect of relations with his employer he was king. 

 He was king of his doings and of his own time. His em- 

 ployer had nothing whatever to say there. Even if by 

 some odd chance he were to be also the man's landlord, 

 his relations to the tenant as such were entirely different 

 from those as the tenant's employer. The working man's 

 dwelling might be mean, poor, leaky, dismal, unsanitary. 

 The man might be compelled to leave it on account of want 

 of funds when earnings fell short. But so long as he occu- 

 pied it, it was his castle and, like the famous charbonnier 

 of the proverb, he was absolute master in it. That gave 

 our man the Archimedean ttoO crew, the little speck of firm 

 ground upon which to take his stand, from which, in the 

 words of Archimedes, he might proceed to " move the 

 earth " — as, in fact, he has done. Domestic freedom secured 

 to him some independence in labour, sufficient to enable 

 him to treat with his employer as a contracting party, not 

 as a mere dependant — cautiously at first, later firmly, 

 and sometimes exactingly. It was not proximity to others 

 of his class alone which enabled him to take up the cudgels 

 of Trade Unionist resistance. Of course the presence of 

 numbers of men similarly situated in close neighbourhood 

 made such joint action all the easier. But union would 

 not have been possible if the industrial labourer had not 

 first possessed his complete freedom in the matter of his 

 dwelling, of off hours and of absenting himself from work 

 on occasions of his own choosing. 



The agricultural labourer is in no such position. Scat- 

 tered and dispersed his class necessarily is, and that in itself 

 makes combination difficult. However dependence for a 

 dwelling, a practical absence of off hours and the impossi- 

 bility of free movement, unless he is prepared to give up his 

 employment altogether, are even more serious hindrances. 

 Joseph Arch broke through the ring fence and produced 

 united action, which led to a moderate and short-lived 

 success. But that was, under present conditions, an excep- 



