Eminent English liberals in and out of Parliament/Joseph Arch
III.
JOSEPH ARCH.
"Men rough and rude pressed round
To hear the praise of one
Whose heart was made of manly, simple stuff,
As homespun as their own."
SINCE Wat Tyler perished by the hand of the assassin Mayor of London, Walworth, the agricultural laborers of England have had no more sincere and capable leader than Joseph Arch. To sketch his career is in a great measure to depict the condition and characteristics of his class,—a numerous and important section of Englishmen,—of whom, until quite recently, less, perhaps, was known for certain than of Afghans, Zulus, or the Ten Lost Tribes. For centuries they had been forgotten helots,—mute bearers of other men's burdens,—the starved, unlettered, hereditary bondsmen of "merry England." Their misery gave the lie direct to our boasted prosperity and freedom. The statue might be imposing; but the feet were obviously of clay. "And behold the tears of such as were oppressed, and they had no comforter; and on the side of the oppressors there was power." Yea, very great power and very terrible oppression. On the agricultural laborer of England rests to this day the curse of the Roman Conquest,—the economic damnation of the "three profits,"—of which our "miraculous Premier" is so enamoured, that he has taken to demonstrating that the arrangement is a law of nature.
The English laborer is the true servus servorum, the slave of the farmer, who is in turn the slave of landlord and parson. On him presses with crushing weight the whole fabric of "society." He is the subject-matter, the corpus vile of the great unpaid. Where were the judicial dignity of Justice Shallow but for the peccant Hodge who pilfers a turnip, gathers a mushroom, or knocks over a hare? Where were the pride of "officers and gentlemen," were there no regiments of full privates recruited from rural England to command? On whom could the so-called National Church unctuously enjoin contentment with the condition of life wherein it has pleased God to place them, were there no serfs of the soil among her presumed adherents?
Indeed, for many generations the combination of powers spiritual and temporal against the English agricultural laborer has been so irresistible, that the marvel is he has the smallest manhood left. Reform after reform has passed him by unheeded, or rather has increased the distance between him and other classes of the community. The Protestant Reformation deprived him of the charities of the monasteries, and in their place put in force poor laws of unexampled barbarity. It found him sunk in ignorance, and it kept him so. In time reform bills came; but who should bestow franchises on a being so abject? Free trade gave a new impetus to British commerce; but, let the economists explain it as best they may, the Manchester cornucopia never poured any of its abundance into Hodge's lap. He was seemingly beyond the beneficent operation even of economic laws. For five and twenty years he had, with more or less variation, been going from bad to worse. So much indeed was this the case, that the opening of 1872 found the actual tillers of English soil in a state of "depression" bordering on actual famine. Then it was that the Agricultural Laborers' Union took root, and Mr. Joseph Arch first became known to the public as the Moses who had been raised up to lead his down-trodden brethren out of the house of bondage. Like his prototype, he might have gone over to the oppressor, much to his own advantage, in the capacity of land steward to a local Pharaoh; but he had resisted the temptation, and, when the hour struck, the man was ready.
Joseph Arch, founder and president of the Agricultural Laborers' Union, was born in November, 1826, at Barford,—a beautiful village, of some eight hundred souls, about three miles from the historic town of Warwick. All about are stately mansions Of the great, and Shakespeare's Avon winds close by through lovely meadows studded with majestic' trees. Like himself. Arch's father and grandfather were industrious, ill-requited hewers of wood and drawers of water. Howbeit,—
"Let not Ambition mock their useful toil,
Their homely joys and destiny obscure;
Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile
The short and simple annals of the poor."
The life-story of Mr. Arch's father is short enough, and sad enough. Unlike his son, he was a man of peace, disposed in all things to conform to the behests of the powers that be; but he "drew the line somewhere," and not to his advantage. He was sufficiently ill-advised to refuse to sign a petition in favor of the corn laws, and so became by one rash act a "marked man," on whom "quality" never after smiled. For more than fifty years he toiled; and, when at last he was no longer able to drag his weary limbs to the fields, he took to bed, and sorrowfully turned his face to the wall. The savings of a lifetime of painful industry and frugality amounted to four shillings and sixpence! The dénoûment I cannot better describe than in the words of the Rev. Mr. Attenborough, whose faithful sketch of Mr. Arch I cordially recommend to those who may wish further information regarding the origin of the National Agricultural Laborers' Union, and the early career of its founder:—
"The worn, crumbling Arch, just tumbling down, was to be propped up with ' good support,' and there was four shillings and sixpence towards providing it. 'Give him some beef-tea, get him a drop of good wine if you can, and take this prescription to the chemist's.' The poor patient's friends sat wondering, and weighing his four and sixpence against the doctor's counsel: it was nowhere. The old man wept, knowing he was, after all his work, to become a burden to those he loved, and who, as he knew, had barely enough for themselves. 'I be afeared, Joe, the parish will give thee nothin' for me, be'n as yer a Dissenter.' Joe was not anxious they should: but Joe' s wife had been in the habit of earning a couple of shillings a week at charing; and, now that the old man wanted nursing, she had to give this up, and stop at home. To the guardians Arch made a reasonable offer, 'Gentlemen, I don't want 30U to support my aged father; but if you will give my wife one shilling and sixpence towards nursing him, now that she is cut off her charing, I shall be much obliged to you It isn't much; it's less than the loss of my wile's earnings, and nothing towards the expense.'—'Certainly not, Arch: your father can go to "the house," and you must pay one and sixpence towards his support.'—'Good morning, gentlemen. I'd sooner rot under a hedge than he should go there.' The old man lingered for ten months; and, during the last few weeks of his life, the parish, against Arch's will, but with the consent of his wife, allowed him one shilling and sixpence and a loaf! Then he died; and his son bought him a coffin, and hid him down in the earth, on whose broad, bountiful breast there seemed to be no room for him. Fifty years a worker, thirty j-ears a ratepayer, a life's saving of four shillings and sixpence, a choice between the workhouse and his son's poor cottage, eighteenpence and a loaf for two months,—this was the life-story of Arch, senior!"
Nor was this in ante-union days an isolated instance of hardship. On the contrary-, so far from being the exception, it was the rule. Work as hard and live as sparingly as one might, the inevitable goal was the workhouse. Wages would admit of no other result; and this in Christian Jingo England, with its "miraculous Premier" and its capacity for undertaking unlimited campaigns! The thought burns like a hot iron, and the warning word "Beware!" rises to indignant lips,—
"Lest, when our latest hope is fled,
Ye taste of our despair,
And learn by proof in some wild hour
How much the wretched dare."
It was not from his father, but from his mother, that Mr. Arch inherited his moral stamina. She was a woman of well-defined views in religion and politics, leaning strongly towards Nonconformity and Radicalism. She could both read and write,—rare accomplishments for one in her lowly station of life; and, before her boy was six years of age, he could, thanks to her tuition, do likewise.
Thereupon he was sent to the village school, where he remained for two years and three-quarters; and then his education was pronounced complete. Money was wanted above all things in the Arch household; and at the ripe age of eight years and three-quarters young Arch commenced to earn his livelihood as a bird-scarer or "crow-kepper," with wages at the rate of fourpence per diem. In South Warwickshire the living scarecrows are dressed as nearly as possible like the more common inanimate objects with which farmers are wont to adorn their potato-fields. They are supposed to be more effective than the voiceless stationary "keppers," inasmuch as from dawn till eve they move from field to field, emitting all manner of strange and alarming sounds. Their garb is, however, so grotesque, that the birds, it is hinted, draw near for the purpose of laughing at them; and so the provident husbandman's laudable aim is frustrated.
At ten years of age Joseph was considered ripe for the more responsible occupation of plough-driving. All day long the poor lad would trail his heavily clogged boots by the side of the horse, to whose gearing he would occasionally have to cling from sheer exhaustion. Thereupon the furrow would bulge, and the incensed ploughman, dexterously hurling at him a great clod, would lay him prone, face downwards, on the just upturned soil.
Nor did material hardships constitute his sorest trials. As he grew older, and entered on his "teens," he was promoted to drive a team in harvest-time, and felt himself every inch a man. His employer, thoughtlessly taking advantage of his youthful elation of spirits, plied him with excessive quantities of liquor; and, but for the peremptory steps taken by Mrs. Arch to keep her boy in the strait path of sobriety, the apostolate of the agricultural laborers might have been rendered forever impossible in the person of Joseph Arch. In his sixteenth year this kind, judicious mother was no more; but her admonitions were indelibly impressed on her son's mind. To his mother Arch ascribes whatever good he has been able to achieve. At twenty years of age Arch's character was no longer to form. He was a local preacher, and earning the highest wages to be made as an agricultural laborer; viz., eleven shillings a week. Several eligible opportunities occurred for bettering his condition; but he resolved, instead, to "stand by the old man."
Shortly after, he married the daughter of a local artisan,—a woman of great natural endowments both of head and heart. Though uneducated, technically speaking, she is perhaps superior to her husband as a speculative politician. At every step she has stimulated his zeal by steady devotion to great principles,—greater, perhaps, than it would naturally occur to him to advocate. In due course two children were born to them, and Arch's wages unhappily fell to nine shillings a week. Four persons to maintain at the rate of say fourpence per head per diem! The thing, Mrs. Arch declared, could not be done; and so she took a bold step. She partially returned to her ante-nuptial employment, while her husband took up his tools, and scoured the country in quest of more remunerative work than was to be had in the neighborhood of Barford. For months he never crossed his own threshold. In his wanderings he encountered poverty beside which even the Barford standard was one of comparative plenty. In Herefordshire he found able-bodied men with wives and families toiling from morning till night for seven shillings a week. With one of these he once lodged. How the wife and children subsisted Arch could never ascertain; but the husband fared thus: "Breakfast, a dry crust; dinner, ditto; supper,—the great meal of the day,—sometimes 'scald-chops,' a dainty dish consisting of broken bread moistened by pouring hot water upon it, and sometimes a pint of cider warmed over the fire and a crust dipped into it. This from Monday till Saturday, and on Sunday occasionally a bit of bacon." He beheld the tears of the oppressed, and they had no comforter; and he vowed in the bitterness of his heart, that, if ever an opportunity should present itself, he would try to be that comforter. The clock struck sooner than he expected. Presently he was enabled to return to Barford to undertake "jobs" which required the assistance of other "hands." As an employer he was not merely considerate, but generous. His own specialty as an agricultural laborer is hedge-cutting: he is the champion hedge-cutter of all England.
All his life Mr. Arch has been addicted to reading. His earlier studies were chiefly of a pietistic character: he devoured the Bible, the "Pilgrim's Progress," Pike's "Early Piety," "Pearson on Infidelity," et hoc genus omne. He still preaches to vast audiences, generally twice and sometimes three times on Sundays. Originally a Primitive Methodist, he has latterly laid aside the shibboleths of sect altogether, and taken his stand on the common ground of Christ's humanitarian precepts, and the example of his spotless, self-sacrificing life. His experience as a local preacher in addressing large audiences is to a great extent the secret of his success as a political agitator.
The National Agricultural Laborers' Union was started in this wise: "On the 5th of July, 1872,"—I quote Mr. Arch's own unvarnished narrative of "The Rise and Progress of the National Agricultural Laborers' Union,"—"two farm-laborers, named Henry Perks and John Davis, were sent by their fellow-laborers from Wellesbourne, in Warwickshire, to the village of Barford. The object of the deputation was to wait upon me to ask me to help them to form a union. … Fortunately I was at home when they arrived. I went inside to see the men, who said, 'We are come over to see you about our having a union. We formed a bit of one under the hedge the other day; but we can' t go on very well without some one to put us right. The men are all ready for it, and we appeal to you.'—'But,' I said, 'do you mean to stick together?'—'Yes,' was the reply. 'Well, now,' said I, 'you go back and get some of the best men in Wellesbourne, and ask Mrs. Baker to let you have the club-room; and I will be over on Wednesday night at seven o'clock. But, remember, you must be prepared for conflict, as the farmers will be sure to oppose you.' The reply was, 'You come: it can't be worse for us than it is.'" Thus simply was the "Revolt of the Field," the most remarkable social upheaval of the day, commenced. The news spread like wildfire, and on the Wednesday night Mr. Arch addressed over a thousand fellow-laborers under a great chestnut-tree at Wellesbourne. Meeting followed meeting in rapid succession. Arch was ubiquitous and untiring; and at last, at a memorable meeting at Leamington, the National Union was formed, with Joseph Arch as chairman, assisted by an executive committee of twelve laborers and an influential consultative council, comprising Professor Beesly, Mr. Jesse Collings, Mr. J. C. Cox, Mr. Ashton Dilke, the Hon. Auberon Herbert, Mr. E. Jenkins, and others.
The moderation of the demands of the union was no less remarkable than the violence of the opposition offered by landlords, parsons, and farmers. Bishops menacingly alluded to "horseponds" as fitting receptacles for agitators. Then followed the memorable Chipping Norton prosecution and conviction of laborers' wives, and the important trial at Faringdon to test the right of public meeting, where Sir James Fitzjames Stephen and Mr. Jenkins held a brief for the union with such signal success. But it is not my business to write a history of the National Agricultural Laborers' Union. Suffice it to say that in most instances the immediate object of the union has been attained. Wherever the men have stood manfully by the union, wages have gone up, agricultural depression notwithstanding, from fifteen to twenty per cent. In South Warwickshire wages, which in 1872 stood at from $2.40 to $2.88, now range from $3.12 to $3.60 a week.
Within the executive of the National Agricultural Laborers' Union, harmony, I regret to say, has not uniformly prevailed. The urban unionists, who have exerted themselves, I believe, with perfect disinterestedness for the emancipation of the agricultural laborer, have never regarded Mr. Arch's lead with much confidence, and the latter has not failed to reciprocate this sentiment of distrust. The reason, I think, is that Mr. Arch is a thorough agricultural laborer, with all the virtues and some of the failings of his class. He has seen so little real generosity exhibited towards the serfs of the soil, that he is somewhat over-suspicious on their account. He fears the Greeks, even when they bring gifts to his clients; and this attitude, I am bound to say, has not always been without justification. It served him notably in Canada when he came to negotiate with the unscrupulous ring of emigration crimps who, in the fall of 1873, formed the Macdonald Cabinet. Canada is, in truth, a country where it is difficult to say whether the rigor of the climate or the corruption of the Government is the more unendurable. If he had listened to the warbling of the official sirens, and deported large numbers of English laborers to the inclement shores of Canada, it would have been enough to wreck the union forever.
Mr. Arch's sojourn in the United States was less satisfactory. The New York working-men, intending nothing uncomplimentary, had advertised him to speak at the Cooper Institute without his consent,—more Americano. He declined with quite unnecessary bluntness. He did not proceed far enough west; for there, if anywhere, is it possible to find the promised land of the English agricultural laborer. On a future torn* of inspection it is to be hoped he will repair so great an oversight, inasmuch as it is pretty certain that emigration has all along been the sheet-anchor of the union. Under the auspices of the National Agricultural Laborers' Union, and partly aided by its funds, some seven hundred thousand souls have left our shores, or migrated from country to town, since 1872. At that time members could with difficulty pay three cents a week to the union; now the subscription is five cents, and there is still a solid phalanx of twenty-five thousand subscribers.
But the good work is hardly begun. The laborer has to obtain the franchise, and the land has to be completely defeudalized before Mr. Arch' s mission will have been fulfilled. I have never met a man who, from personal observation, has grasped so comprehensively the evils of our land monopoly. In his own neighborhood Mr. Arch is an encyclopaedia of information regarding the past and present produce of the various adjacent estates. Within the last twenty-five years, cattle and sheep, he will tell you, have in most cases decreased by more than one-half, without a single rood of pasture-land being broken up. Instead of "three profits," there will hardly be enough for one if the present system is to obtain much longer. Feudalism is eating itself up in England. These be truths which no one could inculcate with greater authority at St. Stephen's, whither it is a cause for profound regret he was not sent, at the last general election, by the borough of Wilton to explain his view of the "three profits," and who ought to reap them.