PART EIGHT 



WHAT OF THE HARVEST? 



11. THE " ORGANISER" AT WORK. 



NEARLY every man who has spent his energies in champion- 

 ing the cause of the agricultural labourer has been broken 

 on the ruthless wheel of fortune. Though his spirit burned 

 like a bright flame to the very last, Cobbett, was broken 

 financially ; Arch was broken ; Vincent was broken ; and 

 those secretaries who attempted to organise the counties 

 of Kent and Suffolk disappeared in the darkness of financial 

 difficulties. Nearing the end of a long and strenuous career, 

 the South-AYest Lancashire strike almost killed Mr. George 

 Edwards, and financially, but for the assistance of friends, 

 even he, in these days of revived trade unionism, would have 

 been a broken man. 



During the war, in the freer atmosphere of a growing 

 spirit of independence, organisers had an easier task than 

 their forerunners, and when the Corn Production Act was 

 passcxl, not only was it lawful to be a trade unionist, but it 

 really became an injunction upon every labourer as well as 

 every farmer to belong to some organisation ; otherwise 

 the Act would be inoperative. No longer could any patron 

 of a village institute, be he squire or parson, refuse with 

 reason the use of the room for a meeting " to explain the 

 Act." Unreasonable men of course did refuse under the 

 plea that this was entering into the realm of politics ; 

 and it should not be assumed that the organiser was re- 

 ceived with open arms by the dominant class. Obstacles 

 had still to be overcome and organisers have many a story 

 to tell showing the hostility they had to meet. In Wilt- 

 shire, for instance, which has always been a county of hard 



25!) 



