This book is more than the record of an adventurous and useful life. It is an outline of the conditions of labour in our greatest national industry during the last seventy years. It is the story of years of struggle to raise the status and standard of life of the agricultural workers of England from a state of feudal serfdom to the relatively high level now reached, mainly through the organization of the Agricultural Labourers' Union. In that long struggle no single person has done more disinterested, solid and self-sacrificing work than my old friend and colleague George Edwards. The Union which he founded some sixteen years ago and in the ranks of which, at the age of seventy-two, he still plays a vigorous and important part, is but the latest fruit of generations of effort at the organization and education of the workers of rural England.

Born in Norfolk in 1850 George Edwards commenced farm work at the age of six. His long life of struggle against tremendous odds should be, and I am certain will be, an encouragement and an inspiration to many whose opportunities and means of social service are greater than his have been. And surely no greater service can be rendered in our time to the cause of national well-being than work devoted to the establishment of labour conditions in the field of British agriculture in keeping with the vital importance of that great industry.

It would be an unprofitable speculation to try to think of what the author of this book might have achieved had his early life been spent under happier conditions. Poverty, servitude, oppression, the lack of what is regarded as education, as well as the active hostility of those who sought in order to protect their menaced interests to crush him, have all been factors in the life of George Edwards. But in spite of adverse circumstances, and it may be because of adverse circumstances, some men are capable of self-expression and refuse to be conquered. George Edwards is such a man. And he has lived to see tangible results of his life-devotion to the cause of the class to which he belonged.

I think of the author of this book as I met him first, thirty years ago, when he was conducting a campaign on behalf of the persecuted and exploited farm labourers of Norfolk. It is not perhaps easy for those who dwell in towns and cities to appreciate the difficulties that had to be encountered in the conduct of such a campaign; the fear of victimization and perhaps the indifference of those on whose behalf the fight was being waged, as well as the prejudice and hostility of those in authority. It is no exaggeration to say that the man who dared to raise his voice on behalf of the agricultural labourer at that time was in imminent danger of suffering injury to purse and person. A born fighter, George Edwards never counted the cost to himself of his agitations and propagandist activity. Never had any body of workers a more devoted or loyal servant. I have cycled with him, twenty miles or more, to meetings in various parts of Norfolk, attended by thousands of men, women and children from the surrounding districts, and even in his later years I have listened to him as he spoke with that vigour and enthusiasm and real eloquence which only strong conviction and deep human feeling can command.

Like Arch, his co-worker in the cause of the agricultural labourer, George Edwards inherited his fighting spirit and independence of mind from his mother. And from his wife, in his early manhood, he acquired the rudiments of the elementary education which was to equip him for the business side of his life-work.

A true record of the life of George Edwards would not only be a record of deep human interest on its personal side. He is the most lovable of the many lovable men it has been my privilege to know. But the main public interest and value of this book lies, I think, in the fact that it will give readers a glimpse of the conditions of agricultural England during the last seventy years, and some idea of the ideals and objects of those who have laboured to bring the country worker into line with other workers in the fight for democratic rights and political and economic freedom.

Wellnigh seventy years have passed since George Edwards, the Norfolk farmer's boy of six, entered on his life-work. In that time he has been continually in harness. He is an ex-General Secretary of the Agricultural Labourers' Union. Early in the war period he was elected an alderman of the Norfolk County Council, of which he is a member. He reached in 1920 the goal on which I believe his mind was fixed. In that year he was returned to the House of Commons as the representative of South Norfolk, the constituency in which a great part of his life had been spent and which he had unsuccessfully contested in 1918. In the House of Commons his contributions to debates on agricultural questions are listened to with the respect they deserve, and I can sincerely say that I share the feeling of all who know him, that George Edwards, O.B.E., M.P., J.P., is not only a worthy representative of the great cause with which he is associated, but a man whom I am proud to count amongst my dearest friends.

WALTER R. SMITH.

From Crow-Scaring to Westminster