The other day the village was celebrating the birthday of its Labourers’ Union in a manner which used to be reserved for the coming of age of the Squire’s son, or for the Harvest Festival, in which the farmer might give thanks for the harvest, and the peasant, perhaps, for having been allowed to assist in winning it.  I take a sort of pride in recording a staidness in the observance which I believe to be peculiar to the countryside in which I live.  There was a service, with a sermon, in church, all persuasions uniting; then a dinner with speeches; then sports and dancing on the grass.  Every stave of the Pastoral was announced and punctuated by the village band.  “God save the King” closed all down at nine o’clock.

It was sober merry-making after our manner, yet one could feel the undercurrent of a triumph not difficult to understand.  Not a man there but knew, or had heard his father tell, of how things used to be.  Ten years ago those men were earning sixteen shillings a week for twelve hours a day; fifteen years ago they were earning twelve shillings; thirty years ago they were earning nine shillings; a hundred years ago they were on the rates, herded about in conscript gangs under the hectorings of an overseer.  Now—­and it has seemed to come all in a moment—­the humblest of them earn their 36_s._ 6_d._; the head men their 40_s._; their hours are down to fifty for the week, with a half-holiday on Saturday; delegates of their kind sit at a board in Trowbridge face to face and of equal worth with delegates of their employers.  All matters affecting their status, housing, terms of employment can be brought before the board; and beside that, and behind it, like a buttress, there is a Union, whose name recalls that other grim fortress to which alone in times bygone they had to look when old age was upon them.  This new Union has been in existence here little more than a twelvemonth, but they know now that it has spread all over England.

They know more than that.  They know that this plexus of organisations is not only social, but political; they feel that the estate of the realm which they stand for may soon become, and must before long become, the predominant estate.  They feel the rising tide already lifting them off their feet.  The elders are sobered by the flood; but the young ones taste the salt water sprayed off the crest of the wave and look at each other, laugh and cheer.  If they rejoice they have good reason, knowing what they know; and if I rejoice with them, I think that I have good reason too.  This time seven years ago I sang at length of Hodge and his plow; and looking back and forth over his blood-stained, sweat-stained and tear-stained history, I seemed to see what was coming to him as the crown of his thousand years of toil.

  I look and see the end of it,
  How fair the well-lov’d land appears;
  I see September’s misty heat
  Laid like a swooning on the corn;
  I see the reaping of the wheat,
  I hear afar the hunter’s horn,
  I see the cattle at the ford,
  The panting sheep beneath the thorn! 
  The burden of the years is scor’d,
  The reckoning made, Hodge walks alone,
  Content, contenting, his own lord,
  Master of what his pain has won.