I realised that my last article* was incomplete, and therefore feel 
it to be my due to write the present one. I spoke there about the 
Agricultural Union,”"’ founded 6 years ago by citizen Arch, who is 
now famous throughout Britain for this initiative and for the 
quality of his public speaking: he is a real tribune, somewhat 
unrefined, but powerful in his lack of refinement. 

The Union began its propaganda over the wages question. The 
farm workers earned no more than the equivalent of 16 lire (Italian) 
a week. Arch, with the help of some able friends, increased the 
membership of the Agricultural Union by over 50 thousand in 3 or 4 
years and was able to organise a strike of 30 thousand men. The 
strike was successful, and wages rose by two and a half lire a week in 
the Eastern counties. At the same time provisions were adopted to let 
farm workers emigrate to America and Australia or move from one 
English county to another. These transfers obtained the desired 
effect of raising wages where manpower decreased. This struggle 
was conducted to good effect until 1874.7’? But after this date things 
changed. There was an attempt to tackle the question of an 
expropriation of the land in favour of the State, as the famous 
economist Stuart Mill had already proposed.” The questions of 
universal suffrage and popular education were also raised. Note, 
however, a very significant circumstance, namely that the movement 
in favour of collective property was almost exclusively the work of 
those who broke away from citizen Arch, whose constant 

predilection was for those issues which did not touch the holy altar of 
the individual ownership of land. Indeed, in the presence of the 
collectivist movement, he felt disposed to preach a sort of conciliation 
between agricultural labourers and their exploiters; in the presence, 
in other words, of the revolutionary idea of collectivism he felt 
himself to be a conservative: he reserved all his hostility for the 
upper aristocracy. He thought it useful to woo the tenant farmers a 
little, to avoid having them as avowed enemies in the parliamentary 
elections. It is therefore not unlikely that we shall see citizen Arch in 
the House of Commons: there is already a certain amount of 
agitation in this direction and Arch is willing to stand as a candidate 
for membership. All this does not stop the collectivist movement 
from making headway: indeed even at the recent meeting of the 
Agricultural Union * something was said about it. After recognising 
the need for great improvements in agriculture, the desire was 
expressed for a law which would place all cultivable land in the hands 
of a representative body and indemnify the owners. This 
expropriation would be intended to benefit the working people— 
those people, in other words, in whose hands the future prosperity 
of agriculture lies. 

I have been concerned to set this out for you because I want the 
Italian socialists to have a clear idea of the spirit of our 
Agricultural Union and the movement agitating round it.