WHAT OF THE HARVEST? 309 



unless employers and employed made special arrange- 

 ments. A conference between the Farmers' Union and the 

 N.A.L.U. resulted in a refusal on the farmers' part to agree 

 to fix any definite rate. Thereupon a number of men round 

 about Tamworth, Gonsall, Eccleshall, and Wolverhampton 

 struck work, apparently without giving proper notice. 

 The strike dragged on for four weeks. The farmers man- 

 aged to get in their crops, and the men were beaten. They 

 had yet to learn the lesson that harvest is the worst time 

 of all, from the workers' point of view, to succeed with a 

 strike. 



Bad feeling, unfortunately, was shown, and a few assaults 

 took place, the strikers being heavily fined. Such instances, 

 however, have been rare in agricultural disputes ; and when 

 the workers' leaders called off the strike, the farmers, to 

 their credit, agreed to reinstate every man. 



On the very day the Staffordshire strike was ended 

 Saturday, September 27 the great railway strike started. 



Now came the test as to whether that link which had been 

 forged in the fiery furnace of war between the industrial 

 and the rural workers would stand the strain of a great 

 railway strike. Hitherto, the temptation to leave ill-paid 

 work on the land for the railway had been irresistible. 

 The railway porter's minimum was 51$. ; the farm worker's 

 average minimum was 375. 6d. 



But the farm \vorker and the railway porter, the plate- 

 layer and the signalman, even in the most remote country 

 districts, had now become comrades in the new trade union 

 and political movement ; and many of them had seen a 

 vision of a new earth as they stood close to one another 

 in the ordeal of battle. The link, as of truest steel, held. 



To most, not excluding those who had been watching 

 the growing solidarity of labour, the loyalty of the farm 

 workers to the men on the line came as a surprise. They 

 were firmer in their determination to stand by the railway 

 men even than the industrial workers, and this, I think, 

 can be traced to their minds being uninfluenced by the daily 

 press to the same extent as townsmen. They learn not 

 from the printed page, but from Nature and their nearest 



