The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1873-06-07 00:00:00

THE NATIONAL AGRICULTURAL
LABOURERS' UNION.

Commenting on the fret conference of the National Society's
Union, The Ones of Saturday has the following leader—
The National Agricultural Labourers' Union has
held what it hopefully calls its first annual Conference.
It has laid it, plans well, and got on the right track by
calling in the aid of men accustomed to regular and
peaceful agitation, by strenuously repudiating all vio.
lenre of language, and by claiming only for Labourers
that liberty of acting together of which the Employers
have set the example. The site chosen for the first
move in thin social revolution in most judicious. The
i,win towns of Warwick and Leamington make to-
zether the capital of a fertile, populons, and wealthy
district, where the Labourer can alweys, at a day's
notice, transfer himself and his household from agri-
cultural to some one of the many employments con-
nected with trade, and can so tar divide with the
farmer the command of the market. It is all under
the emoke, and whenever the factory chimney-ntalk
does but cut the horizon the Labourer I. comparatively
free. But freedom is contagions ; the rate ol wages in
contagious ; and a movement begun at Leamington
may share with the 'Kingmaker" in the Wars of the
Roses the pride of swaying the whole realm, If a
large proportion of toesie men are not 60 purely
and Pimply ploughmen. hedgers, and ditchere of
the claw which seem. the very offspring of he soil,
that is no novelty in movements, still lees an ill-omen
of succees. It is the mixed race that originates, 'enews,
and I revails. There are parts of Englano where it would
be as impossible to get the Labourers to make Unions
as to persuade the cows and sheep to "strike" for
teeter food, longer lives, and • lees precarious enjoy-
ment of family relations. But between the pit and the
dr'ey, between the North and the South, between the
E 6 and the Wee; there in not that uniformity of oon-
dition on race which oonetilaites the etiongiut bee to all
Change, whether kr Wars az far worse. , *on; the
drotrm th atanses of is movement my =Rept& it te
not the leo likely to be orilosiaL Just now btu

received an aid of a most uninteeded and inoredib
character. Had the Magistrates at Chipping Norton
desired to illustrate the existing agricultural system in
its worst light, to show beyond a doubt its severance
of social ties and its moral mischiefe, they could not
have done more than they have done. These are the
points to which public attention will direct itself. In
the long argument against slavery it warn vain to urge,
because impossible to prove, that the physical con-
dition of the West Indian slave wee worse than that
of his ancestors on their own continent, or even de-
cidedly worse than that of the English Labourer or
Irish peasant. But when it was proved that slaves
could be treated with a wholesale and Indiscriminate
disregard of all that was due to man, and still more to
woman, the system stood self-coedenuied. By It. own
freite it NVIIB judged, and that judgment was, in feet,
pronounced by the planters themselves.
wituotutthiewillwuiune t taint
gi w
e. e venturedviTyebod
,o tho.malc hade is.
lune!
acquaintance with English agricultural labourers must
b,a well aware that it in no slight responsibility to
meddle with their condition. It might in these days,
by the aid of able advisers and good organization, be
possible in a certain sense to emancipate our labourers
and make them their own matters. But this might not
he to raise them. For centuries they have worked well
under tee vigilant eye, strong hand, and calculating head
of the British farmer. The labourer's part has been
reduced to an extreme eimplicity, favourable for phy-
sical health and strength, but not so favourable for
either mental develcpment or moral self-command.
Beyond the restraint of his animal pensions within
safe bounds, he has had no trouble or anxiety. His
mingle problem hitherto has been the calculation of
his week's wages, and even this has generally been
done for him. He knows nothing of the world, of It.
history, or its surface, beyond the radius of a sheet
walk. The temptation that seems to rule his lot
and mutter bin weakness in that thirst which he
feels far more than hanger, which returns every
day and almost every hour, and may be said never
to leave him. It has often been said that if our La-
bourers were better fed and were generally stronger,
they would rot crave so much for drink. But as they
are, and till the physical condition of the whole clam
is invigorated, they
i will be certain to spend every ad-
ditional sixpence n strong drink, and the chief
onuses of the Agricultural Union will be that
which ecores itself at the publichouse and proclaims
itself to rural ears at eleven p.m. Wages have
risen considerably within the last twenty years—at
least 30 per cent. —and the remit has been too generally
that we refer to. Of course, it may be said that a man
has aright to spend his earnings as he pleases, and that
If the prospect of a pleasant evening in the society of
old acquaintances with the cup of kindness passing
round, stimulates to work, so much the better. But it
I. beet not to blink the questionable points of this move-
ment. We have to (see some disagreeable certainties
The gentlemen who made speeches at the Leamington
Conference would not have thought it their place to
sae how the additional wages should be spent. They
hoped for the best. It is possible, however, that even
they may be cruelly disappointed._ _ _

- -
The Conference his had to waive for the present
another question bearing on the dignity and independ-
ence of the Labourer, and even on his fitness for the
desired emancipation. The existing system, while it
makes the local Labourers in the aggregate the
servants of the local Employers, also throws upon
the latter all the burdens of old age, sickness,
orphanage, and disability. It recognizes In the
locality one great family, with mutual obligations
sufficient fir every just and natuaal purpose,
If the wages that pass from hand to hand are not
what they should be, it is because the balance
goes to the account of a sort of fritndly society. The
Labourers, however' as at present advised, want this
balance to deal with it as they please. They are even
told by some authorities that charity is a public duty,
and ha. no place in busintos transactione, such as a
bargain for wages. It is plain, however, that some of
the Labourers themselves have a conscience on this
point, and there is a floating suggestion of a Sick and
Benevolent Fund. Mr. Dixon recommends them not
to distress themselves on this point. He points out
that substantial benefits could only be secured by large
i payments. The Union, he observes s now struggling for
existence • so, much as he values a Sick and Benevo.
lent Fund, where he in the place of the Labourer, he
would not allow the establishment of such a society
and the necessary contribution to its funds to stand in
the way of the Union. This advice may be • matter of
disagreeable necessity, especially as the finances of the
Union are not yet in a producible concliti in, but in the
interest of justice sad humanity we are bound to say
that Mr. Dixon might have explained more clearly what
it is that he contemplates in the happy and proeperous
future of the Union. Let it be admitted that the we.
sent state of tniugs is transitional and to a certain ex-
tent one of war, for the assertion of rights and the
possession of a good stand. While the "straggle ^
lasts it may be wise, and even necessary, to throw on
the antagonists the entire weight of the ineffective
service—that is, to make the Farmers maintain the
fathers and mothers of the labourers, their sick and
other encumbrances. Necessity, they may, his no
laws, and must sometimes do a little painful violence
to the most natural feelings.. But considering that the
entire question is prospective, and that what is in-
tended is an industrial reformation, one would
like to know Mr. Dixon's views on the duty of
labourers, supposing them ever to be well paid,
towards their own sick and disabled rela-
tions. As we said above, we cannot think that the
question before us Is simply one of labour and wages.
It is rather the real and complete elevation of the Agri-
cultural Labourer to a higher and larger share of our
common, and perhaps we may add our Christian hu-
manity. He is to be made a more independent, more
self-governing, more rational, more social personage—
in a word, more of a man. He is to be made really a
citizen of this great commonwealth, and more worthy
of the franchise which one day he is to have. That he
is so ready t throw his burden on the public, and that
in so doing he fails of his natural and domestic duties,
is, perhaps', the worst feature of his present degrada-
tion. Are we to elevate the British Labourer by-tell-
ing him to be entirely satisfied with the very worst
feature of hi, degradation? Mr. Dixon can hardly in-
tend this, but it is a point on which he has to explain
himself much more clearly than he did the other day
at Leamington.