This ended all efforts for a settlement so far as I was concerned. All future efforts would have to be left to others. If the men had to go down then I would go down with them, but I would go down fighting. I ought to say also that Sir Ailwyn Fellowes, now Lord Ailwyn, expressed a willingness to intervene if both parties agreed. I at once on behalf of the men agreed, but the Farmers' Federation refused. And so the dispute continued and, as the weeks went by, the relationship became more strained. I think I can say never was there a Labour dispute when so many efforts at securing a settlement were made by the men's leaders as I made on this occasion, and never a leader's efforts thwarted by the employers' organizations as mine were by the Farmers' Federation. It seemed that they could not bring themselves to see that the days of autocratic methods of dealing with their men were fast passing away and that the days of collective bargaining were rapidly approaching. They constantly kept the old parrot cry, "I always did do as I liked with my men, why can't I now?" Happily there is a better spirit existing now. Both sides do meet together now and discuss these problems, but it is a sad reflection that it took a great war to bring about this long-desired change.

CHAPTER XIII DEFEAT

The committee at their quarterly meeting held at Cozens' Temperance Hotel, at King's Lynn, on Saturday, July 30th, decided, on the motion of Mr. Winfrey, to move the office of the Union from Gresham to Fakenham, if a suitable house could be found, and they appointed Mr. Robert Green and myself a sub-committee to secure one if possible. This we did after a good deal of correspondence. We first agreed on one on a seven years' lease in Walsall Terrace, Queen's Road, Fakenham, at a rental of £17 per annum and rates; but before the agreement could be signed and the lease drawn up, it transpired that the house was let to another man without the knowledge of the house agent. Then a Mr. Philips of Fakenham offered us Wensum House at Hempton, near Fakenham, at a rental of £20 per annum. This we accepted and took on a seven years' lease. This was a ten-roomed house with two large attics. The two front rooms were very large. One of the front rooms was taken as an office, and it was a very fine and suitable room at that time, and quite large enough to be used as a board room for the committee. The committee also decided that I should pay them the same rent as I paid my landlord for my cottage and garden at Gresham, namely £5 per year. The moving from my village caused me a good deal of pain, but I knew I must bow to the inevitable, for the Union had outgrown my little bedroom. I did, however, love my garden and my little cottage, small as it was. I cultivated my garden as a relief early in the morning when at home to occupy my mind from the worries of my official duties. I always managed so that I had some kind of vegetable all the year round. I was very fond of vegetable marrow and used to grow a very fine kind. We ate some as vegetables, the rest we could cut and keep and my wife would make what we called in our agricultural labourer's phrase, "million pies." My wife, too, was very fond of fowls, and we kept just enough to produce a few eggs for our own use. To my little cottage my dear wife and myself were devoted. In fact, I was as proud of it as any duke is of his palace. We had two downstair rooms, the front room 12 ft. by 14 ft., its height about 6 ft. 8 in., the back kitchen which we used to live in most of our time 9 ft. by 7 ft. There was a little cooking-stove in it and a perpetual oven in the wall in which my wife did most of her baking. The front room floor she covered with cocoanut matting and put a nice paper on the walls, and there were plenty of pictures and my bookshelf at one corner full of books, of which I am so proud. As we both looked at this little cottage home, which had so many sweet memories, one can understand how unwilling we were to leave it. Further, I was living there amongst my own fellow agricultural labourers, and the environments and surroundings were so dear to me as to be part of myself.

THE FIRST OFFICE OF THE AGRICULTURAL WORKERS' UNION, GRESHAM, NORFOLK.

I was also Superintendent of the Primitive Methodist Sunday-school, Society Steward and Circuit Steward of the Sheringham and Holt Primitive Methodist Circuit. To take me from it all was a wrench indeed, and I don't believe my dear wife ever did settle down to the change.

In moving into a town and a bigger house I knew I should be lifted out of my natural environment, which was no small matter now that I had reached sixty years of age. Besides, I was moving many miles from the spot which was so sacred to me, namely the village churchyard of Aylmerton, where I had buried my aged mother some eleven years before. But the movement that I had so successfully launched and for whose success or failure I was responsible I felt had a greater claim than any other earthly consideration, so I braced myself up to the inevitable. Those memories of the past are still, however, sweet to me, and, if I had my choice, I think I would prefer to go back to them again. On October 11, 1910, I moved from Gresham to Wensum House, Hempton, near Fakenham, with all unforeseen events to face which I think I have done bravely.