ABSTRACT
Relationships between master and man on the farms of Norfolk in the period 1870–1925 were exploitative. This currently unfashionable notion means simply that in pre-mechanised but capitalist agriculture, labour is the main source of value, and that the labourers were consistently underpaid for the production of that value. Thus the workplace was the scene of constant potential conflict. Again, put simply, it was in the interest of the master to get as much work done for as little as possible; in the interest of the labourer to do as little work for as much as possible. As Lord Ernie recognised in an age less worried by the hypocrisies of modern management jargon, ‘The interests of agricultural labourers . . . conflict with those of their employers. They want high wages and low prices: their employers want high prices and low wages.’ 1 Of course there were many qualifications to this crude picture but they do not alter this basic antagonism. Whatever strategies of ‘management’ were adopted to obscure this must be seen as no more than that.
