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Showing posts from August 25, 2019

Three Acres And A Cow

Dear Reader, Amidst all the hurly-burly and puff of the 19th c. Industrial Revolution, there was - in case you didn't know - a serious interest in the welfare of the country 'ag lab' by a proposal to provide him with a smallholding of three acres and a cow. This was in response to the effect of the Enclosure Laws and severe reduction of 'ag lab' wages. His material condition had reduced greatly since the 18th c. This movement to create a smallholding for the 'ag lab' got as far as the attention of the great Birmingham industrialist and politician Joe Chamberlain, who saw to it that it was included in a set of radical party policies for consideration by the Liberal Party. But with Chamberlain's move to the Tory benches on the matter of the Home Rule for Ireland question, those radical proposals got left behind. A protest song of the mid-1800s reveals the disgust of the rustic labourers that they were not being taken seriously enough, with one of i