The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1874-05-02 00:00:00

A JAPANESE TRAGEDY.

THE HOMES OF THE LOCKED-OUT.

The following, extractsare f ruin the letter of the Special
Commissioner of the Dail!, Televraph at Bury St.
Edmunds, in which he describes the "Homes of the
Locked-out Labourers :

Eck? at EDMUNDS, Saturday.
My observations and inquiries made during the past week
in a score or au of the locked-out villages in /Suffolk have
thoroughly convinced me of at least one fact, and that is that
U charity and kindliness amongst themselves and towards
each other can win the battle for the labourers, their victory
should be certain. Those whose knowledge of such matters
Is founded on their experience of what takes place under
similar oirciunstences In large manufacturing towns can
form no idea of what these poor
_people are prepared
to undergo when they renounce anti-Unionist employment
and" take to
.the
.ticket." The mill-hand or miner on

•--- ...„.—. „.
strike pay, be his family great or small, believes that
he amply fulfils his duty to the cause if he manages
somehow to subsist on the pittance he receives from
the stake-pay table until such time as matters mend.
Not so the men of the Suffolk lock-out. In their abso-
. . .

fete Tait,l7-at;..1..; the
Juetice of their cause, and their an-
hounded reliance on the ability and integrity of their leader,
Joseph Arch, they are satisfied to believe that "everything is
sure to come right by-and-by,"and to that endthey are willing to
make present sacrifice to an extent that is almost past belief.
Nine shillings a week is their Union pay, and even out of
that sum the more fortunate are helping their sorely-pinched
brethren. The man who has a wife and but one or two

children will spare a few halfpence out of his sisteenpence a
day to assist another who has half-a-dozen helpless little
mouths to till. I may say that twentysuch cases at least. were
brought to my knowledge . . It must puzzle the working
men of London and other flourishing hives of

...—. ---
industry where the common wages for mechanics are now
tia a day, how any able-bodied man with a wife awl family
dependent on him contrives on agricultural strike-pay, week
after week, to keep body and soul together, to say nothing of
his having to preserve to himself over above, sufficient
animal spirits to save him from going iii7faucholy mad. As
regards keeping up their spirits, mrsonal observation enables
me to say that they accomplish that feat with perfect ease—
indeed, their buoyancy is such that ills fully equal to sus-
taining their wives as well, and there is hardly one sad, or, at
all events, downcast and hopeless, face to be found amongst
them. I have no doubt that the continuance of the delight-
ful weather which set In more than a week ago has not
a little to do with this satisfactory condition of things.
Under moat favourable worldly conditions it is not an easy
. , .

matter to be mirthful in the midst of rain and mire, or to
laugh and Mir fat in the teeth of an east wind. I cannot
say how the locked-out agriculturist would get on under
such dismal circumstances. I only know that the pro..
verhially '• Jolly sandboy " must have been quite a dull
person compared with him. In fair view of the cottager's
door at which I sit as I write this is a spectacle which is
almost enough to make one think that the days when poor
mortals were compelled to earn their bread by the sweat of
their brow were gone for ever, and the lot of the "lilies of
the held' was in f uture to be that even of the humblest of
mankind. .

It Is three o'clock in the afternoon, and there are the Jolly
" lock-outs" who inhabit the little cottages hereabout going
in, heart and soul, for the amusements of their boyhood.
Here, by the village pump—which serves both as a fount of
refreshment when the lively old boys are spent and athirst
from the heat and exercise of pastime, and as a block and
leaning-post for him who, for the time being, is" first horse,"
to rest his head against- are half-a-dozen horny-handed,
sinewy-throated greybeards, playing at "hook, buck, how
many horns do I hold up ? " and roaring with laughter
as they make elephantine springs upon the bent
hacks and hold on in a clutter. Other lock-outs
there were, however, for whom, despite their in-
clination to go and join in it the exercise of " buck,
buck" was deemed somewhat on violent. White-haired
patriarchs these, bent in the back and shaky at the knees.
They found recreation in the more sedate game of "hop-
scotch," chipping the " chany " with their iron-toed boots as
they balanced on one leg. and "going up for gravy' in the
most spirited manner. "They had bmter be doing this,
since they must be idle," I remarked to „he cottager's
wife to whose hospitalLy I was indebted, 'than drink-
ing at the ale-house." First declaring with a laugh
that she had no patience with that "dratted old dunder-
head her husband, who at hat moment was seen
flinging up his cap in delight at having achieved
"gravy" I adore any of the other boys, she replied, "I
don't believe that my old man has tasted a drink of beer for
a fortnight past, though he be mortal fond of a pint, too,
when he con spare to pay for it" While she was
speaking there came toddling In at the door a splendid
specimen of Suffolk infantine humanity aged about
four years, and with limbs like a baby giantess. "There,
sir," remarked the old lady, "she don't look much the
worse for the lock-out, do she?" I replied that she did
not, but rather as though a fair amount of the fat of the
land fell to her share. " What do you feed her on h'
I asked. " 'Baum, sir," replied the old lady, with a
{pin. Tobacco !" " well, that's what they say about
here. You see, sir, it's this way. She's my gran' young 'un,
and her poor mother has seven of 'ern, mid the father is
locked out like the rest ; and so a month ago my old man—
him as you see making such a donkey of himself a minute
ago—he says, says he, 'Old woman, dashed if I can enjoy
my pipe, which costs RV a week—hull-au-ounce of three-
penny a day—a cruel hard smoker he's alien been—
' can't enjoy my pipe,' sea my old man, and see
our Joe's young 'um wanting a meal, so I'll make over
my bacca mouiey to help 'cal, and put my pipe out
till things mend a bit'--and this is the young 'on
that gets the benefit of it in milk night and morn-
ing" It is, perhaps, not easy to estimate the farmers'
powers of endurance in the struggle now taking place be-
tween masters and nice, or to form any idea as to the amount
of sacrifice he is prepared to make rather than "give in," but
when one considers the love of an old smoker for his pipe,
and the perfect faith he has in it as a antidote against
hunger and as a comforter in times of perplexity, and then
reflects on such acts of noble generosity as that of the old
Sarmundham ploughman, one cannot hut admire him for
his rare good nature, and hope that, for the sake of heroes
such as he, the men may find a safe delivery out of the tough
fight they are at present engaged in.
As regards the scrod question, How does the agricultural
labourer, with his enormous length anti breadth of carcase,
contrive, with his wife and family, to obtain a sufficiency of
satisfying food on 9s. a week ?—the simple answer is that he
does nothing of the kind. Knowing how idle it would be to
quarrel with his present humble diet, he quietly puts up
with the aft-times miaturahle makeshift his poverty insists
on ; but it is quite a mistake to suppose that he is content
because he knows no better, or indeed, that he is content at
mil. He knows as well as we know that the convict in gaol
is better fed than he is, and it is not improbable that the
inevitable workhouse as a residenc for his declining
years appears a much less dismal look-out than
it otherwise would from the fact of the man's being per-
fectly well aware that it will secure hhu improved feeding,
at all events. Duriug the past week I have had frequent
opportunities of testing. as well as inspecting, the con-
tents of the agricultural labourer's family pot, and I have
seen the same turned out and distributed amongst the
hungry brood, round the family table, like famished black-
birds all agape in expectawy, anti at such times I could not
but picture to my mind what would be the expnission of
countenance worn by any one of our London labouring
population if, on coining home to breakfast or dinner,
he found such a spread prepared for him. The labourer's
invariable breakfast is bread ; if it he "home made" it is, as
a rule, so much the worse for the labourer. Butter is, of
course, a luxury never seen in such a cottage. The dry
bread is moistened with a cup ot tile weakest of tea or coffee,
without sugar when milk is cheap, and without milk when it
is dear. Sometimes a little treacle instead of sugar is used
as a "sweetener," By way of variety the family may at
breakfast-time indulge in a warm mess of what is termed
tea-kettle broth." and for the instruction of economical
town-dwellers who will seek in vain in modern cookery books
for a recipe f, r this comforting preparation, it inhere given.
Procure a loaf—if one may he bought on account of
its staleness for a penny less than the ordinary
price, buy it—have ready a kettle of boiling water, a
piece of dripping, and some pepper and salt. Break up the
btead into as many basins as there are persons to partake,
crown with a small piece of dripping--just enough, as one
woman said, to give a "sparkle" to the concoction--sprinkle
with plenty of salPand a little pepper, pour on boiling water
ad libitum, and the mess is ready for eating, The chief
drawback to this kind of breakfast in the agricultural house-
hold is the necessary expenditure for dripping and pepper,
but then it has the advantage of being victuals and drink as
well, and on this account is said by many to be cheaper than
dry bread, with weak tea or coffee. For dinner the labourer's
wife has a variety of dishes, many of which are com-
posed on the cunning principle of deceiving the eye in
order that the stomach may be better satisfied, Suf.
folkouade yeast dumplings evidently rank under this cate-
gory. At Batley I Raw a mother making duniplings, one for
each of her four boys and two for herself and husband, and I
was much aniseed to see her drop the six balls of dough, no
larger than a big orange, into a pot capacious enough to have
contained at least fifty such. It seemed that there would be
small chance of ultimate rescue for the mites of things con-
sign.' to such a fathomless deep, but the eXperienced
mistress of the house seas under no such apprehension. "If
you'll stay and see 'em took out you'll hardly know 'em agin,"
said she ; and she spoke an awful truth. Fully ten minutes
before they were done, the heavy pot-lid began to heave,
which phenomenon was occasioned. to my amazement I
was informed, by the imprisoned dumplings rising
against it. "Ali tot be sure," I remarked "the
gaseous properties of the yeast cause them to rise to
the surface of the water." " No, that ain't it," said she with
a pitying smile for my ignorance ; "it's because they've
eaelled to swim a nice " And then she hronght mighty
dish, and took them out with a tea-saucer cleverly made fast
in a cleft stick. Good heavens! they had "swelled "The
orange-sized balls had expended to the dimensiom, of melons
anti each one was big enough to cover the middle of a large.
sized dinner plate. When the prodigious things were cut
open, and the face of each inner half sparely smeared with
treacle, any peison innocent of the optical delusion, looking
in at that moment, would indeed have ridiculed the idea
of their being distress amongst the locked-out hands.
It certainly did look a plentiful meal. Each and
every one was, perforce, as long over his portion
as he would have been over the most substantial Milner,
and, when each had finished, to all outward appearance he
had taken his flll. The cost of the dinner, I was told, was
fivepence-halfpenny, or less than a penny a head. "It is all
very well for the boys," the father of the family afterwards
confided to me, "hilt I don't strictly believe in 'on myself.
There is a kind o' conjuring shout 'em I don't understand,
either after eating or before. Yon puts bullets, in a manner
of speaking into the pot, and they conic mit cannon-balle.
and you go on chawin' and swallerin' and swallerin' and
chawin', anti after all you feel pretty much as you'd
been trying to drink out of an empty bottle. Mind
ye," he continued, "they have this advantage—they do
rnsko the real food theme is in 'em touch you all round
for the time being. I will say that in their favour."
The yeast dumpling, however. as I %Vika auntie to
understand, is regarded rather in the light of a fancy
article of diet. Oatmeal porridge with a bit of fat in it
and flavoured with pepper and salt, or a potful of grey
peas and a little piece of bacon, or a hunch of
dry bread, and '• just cheese enough to save the disgrace of
lying about it if inquisitive folk asked questions," as
one mother of a family explained it, are the staple
articles of the agricultural' labourers' midday meal,
and it is on such coarse fare that are built the brawny
fellows who uncomplainingly face all weathers from
seed-time to harvest. This, I was repeatedly assurer:l,
with a couple of pounds of bacon or pickled pork on
Sunday, was the sort of feeding the men get ordinarily
that is to say when they are in qceipt of full wages.
What they do now that the latter is diminished by more
than a fourth, must be left to the reader's imagination.
The fanners themselves are at a loss to make out how it is
that their hands, whom they hoped to "starve hack to their
I proper senses" a fortnight since, contrive to "keep up" In
the amazingly cheerful manner they do .
id