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 fingers a not very modern Jim Crow hat. He said the wages in the district were nine shillings 10 shillings or 11 shillings per week and the men wanted 15 shillings. He combatted 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 shillings or six shillings for bread, leaving only three or four shillings for all the other necessaries of life. Flesh meat, the man 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 the 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, emigration seemed to be thought the natural remedy and letters were read from emigrants who left the district a few years ago, and who are now in comparatively prosperous circumstances.

The Buckingham Advertiser, December 16 1871