INTRODUCTION 11 CHAPTER I. THE HUNGRY FORTIES 15 II. A WAGE EARNER 22 III. EDUCATION AT LAST 31 IV. PIONEERS AND VICTIMS 37 V. DARE TO BE A UNION MAN 54 VI. A DEFEAT AND A VICTORY 61 VII. DARK DAYS 75 VIII. FAREWELLS 90 IX. RESURRECTIONS 98 X. SUCCESS AT LAST 107 XI. UNREST 124 XII. THE GREAT STRIKE 136 XIII. DEFEAT 156 XIV. PARTING FROM OLD FRIENDS 173 XV. THE NEW MODEL 178 XVI. THE GREAT WAR 190 XVII. THE LABOUR PARTY 201 XVIII. PARLIAMENT 221 INDEX 238 ILLUSTRATIONS GEORGE EDWARDS, M.P., O.B.E. _Frontispiece_ TO FACE PAGE THE AUTHOR'S BIRTHPLACE, MARSHAM, NORFOLK 18 MR. AND MRS. EDWARD'S FIRST HOME AFTER MARRIAGE, OULTON-NEXT-AYLSHAM, NORFOLK 32 THE FIRST OFFICE OF THE AGRICULTURAL WORKERS' UNION, GRESHAM, NORFOLK 156 THE LATE MRS. GEORGE EDWARDS 184 INTRODUCTION This book is more than the record of an adventurous and useful life. It is an outline of the conditions of labour in our greatest national industry during the last seventy years. It is the story of years of struggle to raise the status and standard of life of the agricultural workers of England from a state of feudal serfdom to the relatively high level now reached, mainly through the organization of the Agricultural Labourers' Union. In that long struggle no single person has done more disinterested, solid and self-sacrificing work than my old friend and colleague George Edwards. The Union which he founded some sixteen years ago and in the ranks of which, at the age of seventy-two, he still plays a vigorous and important part, is but the latest fruit of generations of effort at the organization and education of the workers of rural England. Born in Norfolk in 1850 George Edwards commenced farm work at the age of six. His long life of struggle against tremendous odds should be, and I am certain will be, an encouragement and an inspiration to many whose opportunities and means of social service are greater than his have been. And surely no greater service can be rendered in our time to the cause of national well-being than work devoted to the establishment of labour conditions in the field of British agriculture in keeping with the vital importance of that great industry.