I soon found that the men I was then appealing to were of quite a different type to those we appealed to in the seventies. They were more thoughtful. Therefore the progress of the Union was not so rapid as in 1872, but it was a steady growth. I had a feeling from the first that its growth would be steady, but that it would attain a much greater strength than the defunct Unions, and that the work which it would be called upon to do would be of a far wider nature and of greater importance than that of the other unions. From September 1st to December 31st I opened forty-nine branches with a membership of 1,500. As I look back to-day to those weary months I often wonder how I stood the work, and my heart is sad when I think of the lonely life led by my poor wife. I used to leave home on the Monday morning, returning again on the Saturday evening. As soon as I reached home I retired to a little bedroom which I had cleared in my cottage for an office, and there would help my niece with the accounts and the week's correspondence. Then on the Sunday I would again be away from home, conducting services for the Primitive Methodists. I always made it a point never to let my public work interfere with my religious work. Besides addressing five meetings a week and attending to the Guardians and District Council work, I wrote a weekly article on the objects of the Union in the _Eastern Weekly Press_, the _People's Weekly Journal_ and the _Bury Free Press_, and by so doing kept the Union well before the working people, which greatly assisted it. I had not proceeded far before I experienced the same difficulty in finding branch secretaries as in the old days, and young men soon became marked men. Our first trouble of the kind arose at Ashill, Norfolk, where a young man was elected branch secretary. He was promptly told by his employer he must give up his office with the Union or leave his employment. In several other places pressure was put upon the men, which all added to the difficulties of my task. Nevertheless, with strong faith in the justness of the cause, I pushed on with the work. The Union was received with ridicule by the farmers at the first, and they contended that its life would be short, for if Arch had failed, then George Edwards, with only a little local influence, must fail. They reckoned without their book, and by the end of the year they found that "old George Edwards" was more successful in his work than they had given him credit for. CHAPTER X SUCCESS AT LAST