A somewhat novel meeting was held at Brampton Bryan, Herefordshire, on Friday in last week. The chairman was Mr G Dixon MP, and nearly all the speakers were agricultural labourers. In opening the meeting, the chairman said he had been invited there to hear what the men had to say in regard to their present position, and to see, if possible, what could be done to improve it. He called upon the men for a full and fair explanation of the grievances under which they believed they suffered. The first speaker was attired in a cleanly washed smock frock, and, during his statement, twirled in his finger a not very modern Jim Crow hat. He said the wages in the district (part of north Hereford and South Shropshire), were 9 shillings, 10 shillings, or 11 shillings per week, and the men wanted 15 shillings. He combated the idea that the farm labourer was better off now than 20 years ago; if wages were higher, provisions were higher also. Other speakers pointed out that out of the 10 shillings per week, one shilling had to go for rent and where there was a family it took five or six shillings for bread leaving only three or four shillings for all the other necessaries of life. Flesh meat, the men declared, they seldom, if ever taste, and one man said he had only had three pounds of butter in his house in 12 months. The masters, it was declared, did not as a rule give their men milk for their families. At present the cottages are all in the hands of the farmer, who rents them to his labourers, and when a labourer leaves his 'job' he has to leave his cottage also. The men all argued strongly in favour of being allowed a little bit of land to keep a cow. One or two of the men had grievances of another character; Earning 10 shillings a week, and having a family to support, they had to pay a shilling a week to the union, to support their poor old parents, which they didn't care to do if the poor old folks got the benefit of it, but they didn't. This, one man declared, was enough to make a fellow give up altogether and not try to pay his way no more. Another was puzzled how he got on at all, and when he went to bed at night, he often wished he should wake up in the morning in America or somewhere where a man who liked to work hard could pay his way and put something up for a rainy day. In default of any improvement at home, immigration seemed to be thought the natural remedy and letters were read from immigrants who left this country district a few years ago, and who are now in comparatively prosperous circumstances.

The Buckingham Advertiser, December 16th 1871