2

| Part Five

nd the men who brought it to birth

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The “‘Flying Dutchman’ comes to grief on the Great Western Railway, 1876. It was
in. order to bring pressure on the Government to restrict railwaymen’s long working
hours, and thus incidentally to reduce the toll of accidents, that the A malgamated
Society of Railway Servants had been founded, with the help of middle-class

patrons, in 1871. ;

The struggle of the farm labourers’ unions
drew the support of the urban unions—but
sharply divided the churchmen :

of the county by assisting them to increase their wages;
“to lessen, the number of ordinary working hours:

“to improve their habitations:

“to provide them with gardens or allotments;

“and to assist deserving and suitable labourers to migrate
and emigrate.”

Such were some of the declared objects of the Warwickshire
Agricultural Labourers’ Union, the immediate forerunner
of the National Agricultural Labourers’ Union—both of
which were founded in 1872 by the farm labourer and
Primitive Methodist lay preacher, Joseph Arch.

On the wages front, Arch’s union, working towards the same

“... TO ELEVATE the social position of the farm labourers

ends as the Lincolnshire Labour League and the Kent and
Sussex Labourers’ Union, made spectacular but short-lived
advances. In 1870, the average weekly wage of a farm
labourer had stood at 12/— a week, a rise of 2/6 on the 1850
level. By 1875, after three years of union pressure, the
average wage had risen to some 55 per cent above the 1850
level.

Then, farm-produce prices slumped. Farmers became
ruthless in the use of the lock-out. Wage-levels fell back.
And, in spite of the support of trade unionists like Odger
and Potter, and Radicals like Herbert and Dilke, and
eminent churchmen like Manning and Girdlestone, the
influence of Arch’s union was gradually but decisively
broken.

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