Year: 1872

A strike of agricultural laborers is q
novel and by no means an unimportant
event. A new leven must be working
in the popular mind of England when
those quiet, patient, dumbfounded
creatures set up for having will of
their own. To see them attempting to
manage u strike is as wonderful as to
see any other of the beginnings of life
in inert masses, as to see babes begin
to walk, or tadpoles become frogs. If
we may trust the accounts of news pa
pers, the Warwickshife laborers seem to
have begun it all by themselves, and to
have met under chestnut tree, where
they discussed their grievances; and
then they took counsel, first of an ex-
perienced man who had once been in
the black country and might there have
learned the elements of strike-making
from the superior mining intelligence !;
and, secondly, of a dissenting minister.
These were their clever friends: the
men something Of their cwn stamp, but
who knew more than they did, and
could give something like shapeto their
dim purposes. It is not education in
any direct form that has stirred up to
action this portion of the population,
which it might have been supposed
most difficult to stir for most OF those
who joined the strike and testified their
adherence to the movement could only
place their mark to the document by
which they signified their assent. But
those whom education has not reached
directly may be affected by it indirect
~, and the agricultural laborers have
learned to strike because those who
have got new notions and taught them
Sc" es to urge new claims, in more ad-
vanoed districts, have silently penet-
rated with their influence the classes
beneath them. The rural poor have
been closely watched and tightly held
down by their master, the farmers, and
the basis of rural life has been an hum
BILE obedience and unquestioninR &C.
quiscence on the part of the laborer.


When change reaches so low a level
society must indeed be changing. Dis.
tress has in old days led to rick-burn.
ing and brutal ignorance has led to the
destruction of farm machinery; but
those were only the outbreaks of hungry
or panic-stricken barbarism. But q
strike, as strike is said to have been
conducted in Warwickshire, is a totally
different thing, It shows a power OF
union, a perception of the respect due
to law, a confidence that success can be
achieved without violation of the law.
The laborers may possible he mistaken
in thinking that they will succeed, o,
they may succeed at first, and then
push their triumph too far and sutfe,
for their temerity. But it is improba.
BILE that a strike of any considerable
magnitude should leave the condition
of the agricultural poor in the state in
which it found 1T. It will at least have
taught them to think and to act. Il
laborers in villages could think and
act, rural lie in England would be g
new thing. Some of it's placid pleas.
ures and animal content might pass
away, there would be many victims oi
change, many would be crushed by 0
competition to which they were un.
equal; the rural poor conld never bt
as they once we're, the bondsmen o.
those who, what with wages and what
with poor-rates, secured them at least
the certainty of bare substance


Saturday Review.