UNIONS OF AGRICULTURAL LABOURERS 407 



fordshire, unions were formed. The ground was thus gradually 

 prepared for a movement which, when once started, spread with 

 surprising rapidity. On February 7th, 1872, a trade union of 

 agricultural labourers was founded at Wellesbourne in Warwickshire 

 by Joseph Arch. The tinder was ready, and the spark was struck. 

 By the end of the following month, 64 branches had been organised 

 in Warwickshire alone. In May a Congress, attended by delegates 

 from many parts of the country, was held at Leamington, at which 

 the National Agricultural Labourers' Union was formed, and Arch 

 elected to be the first president. The prime objects of the new 

 organisation were to raise wages, shorten hours, abolish payments hi 

 kind, regulate the employment of women and children, increase 

 the number of moderately rented allotments. In other respects it 

 made a new departure. Up to 1878, trade unions of the ordinary 

 type had confined themselves to the improvement of industrial 

 conditions. From the first, the Agricultural Union included political 

 and social reforms. It demanded not only the parliamentary 

 franchise for agricultural labourers, but changes in the land laws, the 

 disestablishment of the Church, enquiries into charitable endow- 

 ments, the creation of peasant ownerships. It also introduced new 

 weapons which were not employed by trade unions of the industrial 

 type. It spent considerable sums of money in transferring labourers 

 from congested districts to counties where there was a greater 

 demand for labour both on land and in factories. By its aid also, in 

 the first nine years of its existence, 700,000 persons emigrated to the 

 British Colonies and elsewhere. 1 One feature the Labourers' Union 

 shared in common with the trade unions, and with disastrous 

 results. It endeavoured to combine with its other objects the work 

 of Friendly Societies. But the attempt proved to be beyond its 

 powers, and became one of the chief causes of its ultimate collapse. 

 The immediate success of the Labourers' Union was considerable. 

 Wages certainly rose, though no statistical evidence can be relied 

 on to show the extent of the rise. It must be remembered that the 

 better class of workmen had left the poorly-paid districts of the 

 South and East, and that employers were asked to pay more money 

 for labour which was inferior in quality and less in result, without 

 the advantage of the better prices for their produce which were 

 obtainable in the industrial centres of the North and Midlands. 



i See the evidence of Joseph Arch before the Agricultural Commission in 

 1881, Qu. 68, 422. (Parliamentary Papers, 1882, vol. xiv., p. 51.) 



