THE WINTER OF DISCONTENT. 139 



ments for agricultural labourers, though there is no doubt 

 that the allotment is a standby in a time of stress such as 

 lock-outs or strikes, as the miners found in the strike of 

 1893, 



If a man turns himself into a drudge by too diligent an 

 application to the land that is not the fault of the allotment, 

 but is due to the man making a wrongful use of his leisure, 

 losing a sense of proportion, and taking up too much time 

 on the allotment where others may take up too much time 

 in public houses. No allotment, however, ever makes up 

 for the lack of a cottage garden of equal size. It is to the 

 casually employed labourer, the piece-worker, such as a 

 hedger and thatcher, and the man who means to make his 

 allotment a stepping stone to a small holding, to whom it is 

 most valuable. 



No Allotment Act, not even the Parish Councils Act, which 

 had a stormy passage through the House of Lords, was 

 designed to free labourers from their economic servitude to 

 fanners. Only one or two counties had put into operation 

 the Small Holdings Act of 1892, and the few farms purchased 

 were quite small. In the same year of the passing of this 

 first Small Holdings Act an Allotment Association was 

 formed at Spalding under the energetic leadership of Mr. 

 Richard Winfrey. A field of 33 acres owned by Lord Car- 

 rington was let to the members, and at Ladyday, 1895, 

 a farm on good land (Willow Tree Farm) of 217 acres in 

 extent becoming vacant was leased by a syndicate formed 

 by Mr. Winfrey, from Lord Carrington. This syndicate, 

 or association, became known as the Lincolnshire and Norfolk 

 Small Holdings Association, with Mr. (now Sir) Richard Win- 

 frey as its chairman. Its history might be briefly told here. 



After extending its area round Willow Tree Farm, thus 

 milking a total of 650 acres in this district, it purchased 

 three farms at S waff ham and Whissonsett in Norfolk, on 

 land far inferior to the Spalding land. It leased 1,000 acres 

 at Wingland from the Crown, and eventually became con- 

 troller of 2,2(>6 acres worked by 290 tenants with a rent 

 roll (,[ 4,890. It is significant that this body of small 

 holders, who were almost all agricultural labourers, 



