New-York tribune., 1872-06-25
FARM LABoRERs HERE AND ABROAD.

FARM LABORERS HERE And ABROAD.
Our "bosses' who are giving in, or other
wise, to the strikers, would find reading suited
TO the crisis in the English accounts OF the
feeble attempts of agricultural laborers to
combine into unions and the decisive way
which John Bull has found to nip such efforts
in the bud. A certain Isaac Bodfish, BAN
bury laborer "a pestilent fellow Of the baser
sort,r as the farmers call him, feeling the
spirit of freedom astir in his bosom, has been
going about persuading his fellow plowmen
to form a union; wheTeupOn Mr.. Garrett, a
neighbOring farmer and magistrate, proceeded
to take such revolutionary whim-whams out
of his head by means of q sound legal thrash
ing, administered with hunting-crOp, which
lasted over half an hour. BOdfish, finding he
was not killed outright, applied for justice at
the nearest court, where he was advised to
take pound or two and let the matter rest
Perhaps the gist of the matter lies IN the fact
that he did it,.
A more enliyening account comes to us from
Huntingdon. A meeting Of laborers was held
at Yaxley, numbering about thousand men,
whereupOn the farmers, says The Erdmlner
" to show their scOrn of the meeting, as sort
of crows parliament, kept shaking the
"wooden bird-clappers with which boys
" frighten the crows" The men-Of other
stuff than Bodfsh-" bore this insolence for a
"little while, but at last rushed at the farm
GERS, thrashed them soundly, and drove them
"into Yaxley.r Their wives (wOmen are al
ways bitterest in fght wanted to attack the
farm houses, but the labOrers determined only
to demand two more shillings than they had
asked before. The rattle of the bird-clappers
seems to have reused the stolid plOwmen
from John o. Groat's to Lands End; they are
holding meetings in the open air; even the
women tell their story with the pathetic elo-
quence of hard truth. The story usually
amounts to but little more than the plain
fact that a man is forced to support wife
and five or six children on two dollars and
half a week L" 1t goes to my heart" says one
woman, when l be forced to part bit o.
"bread with nothing ont among the eight
" children"
The Examiner is ready, with its usual NAL
thusian prescription, to do without the eight
children, so that the bit o. bread may go fur
ther; but we doubt if the mothers heart would
deem the remedy an economical one. When
we remember the regiments of stalwart, clear
eyed agricultural laborers who poured into our
armies from the West and Northwest, and
the comfortable homesteads full of tOw-headed
babies they left behind, we question whether
The Examiner might not find higher and more
cheerful remedy than this wholesale murder
of the Innocents. If all the theories OF our
physicians be true too, the change OF climatic
influences might have a beneficial effect on
these stOid plowmen should they emigrate
Even Bodlish might change his manners and
his skies. Imagine an Ohio farm hand legally
thrashed when he set higher price on his
labor, or the bosses invading one of the
trades-unions meetings with an orchestra of
bird-clappers! Verify the American has found
fresh supply of pluck by crossing the ocean;
he may be forgiven for adding to it little
braggadOcO