serable state of
the labourer which he saw all around him entered into his soul, meat
was rarely seen on his table, even bacon was a luxury in many
cottages. Tea was 6s. to 7s. a lb., sugar 8d., and other prices in
proportion; the labourers stole turnips for food, and every other man
was a poacher. Arch made himself master of everything he undertook,
became famous as a hedger, mower, and ploughman, and being
consequently employed all over the Midlands and South Wales, began to
gauge the discontent of the labourer who was then voiceless, voteless,
and hopeless. His wages by 1872 had increased to 12s. a week, but had
not kept pace with the rise in prices. Bread was 7-1/2d. a loaf; the
labourer had lost the benefit of his children's labour, for they had
now all gone to school; his food was 'usually potatoes, dry bread,
greens, herbs, "kettle broth" made by putting bread in the kettle,
weak tea, bacon sometimes, fresh meat hardly ever.'[662] It is
difficult to realize that at the end of the third quarter of the
nineteenth century, when Gladstone said the prosperity of the country
was advancing 'by leaps and bounds', that any class of the community
_in full work_ could live under such wretched conditions. Arch came to
the conclusion that labour could only improve its position when
organized, and the Agricultural Labourers' Union was initiated in
1872. Not that the idea of obtaining better conditions by combination
was new to the rural labourer. It was attempted in 1832 in Dorset, but
speedily crushed, and not till 1865 was a new union founded in
Scotland, which was followed by a strike in Buckinghamshire in 1867,
and the foundation of a union in Herefordshire in 1871.[663] It was
determined to ask for 16s. a week and a 9-1/2 hours' working day,
which the farmers refused to grant, and the men struck. The agitation
spread all over England, and was often conducted unwisely and with a
bitter spirit, but the labourer was embittered by generations of
sordid misery. Very reluctantly the farmers gave way, and generally
speaking wages went up during the agitation to 14s. or 15s. a week,
though Arch himself admits that even during the height of it they were
often only 11s. and 12s. With the bad times, about 1879, wages began
to fall again, and men were leaving the Agricultural Union; by 1882
Arch says many were again taking what the farmer chose to give. From
1884 the Union steadily declined, and after a temporary revival about
1890,