mense." 5 3 artisans added to their earnings by agricultural work, so, too, agricultural labourers increased their wages by such bye-industries as spinning and lace-making.1 There was an abundance of food, clothing, and furniture.2 Wheat-bread had almost entirely superseded rye-bread. Every poor family now drank tea, which had formerly been a costly luxury.1 The consumption of meat was, says Arthur Young, "pretty considerable," and that of cheese “im-. An earlier writer states that the labourers, "by their large wages and the cheapness of all necessaries, enjoyed better dwellings, diet, and apparel in England than the husbandmen or farmers did in other countries."6 Certainly Arthur Young was struck with the difference between the agricultural population of England and that of France, which latter country he visited shortly before the Revolution," when the misery of the labourer was at its lowest depth, owing to the extortions of the privileged noblesse. § 199. Growth of Population. But not only had the condition of the industrial population improved in the period 1700-1750, but their numbers had, as a consequence, also considerably increased. The figures rose from 5,475,000 in 1700 to 6,467,000 in 1750.8 And now, too, was beginning that great shifting of the centres of population, from the South to the North of England, which is so important a feature in the new industrial epoch. The most suggestive fact of this period is the growth of the population of Lancashire and of the West Riding of Yorkshire, which were rapidly becoming 1Cf. Davies, Case of Labourers in Husbandry (1795), p. 83; Arthur Young, Annals of Agriculture, xxv. 344, 484, and xxxvii. 448. 2 Smith, Wealth of Nations, Bk. I. ch. viii. (Vol. I. p. 82). 3 Young, Farmer's Letters, i. 207, 208 (edn. 1771). ▲ Ib., pp. 200, 297; Eden, State of the Poor, iii. 710. 8 See The Statistical Journal, xliii. 462. For the migration of population from Devonshire and the "cider counties" to Yorkshire, cf. Massie's Observations on the New Cyder Tax (1764), the seats of the cotton and coarse woollen manufactures. Similarly also Staffordshire and Warwickshire, the pottery and hardware centres, were growing in numbers,1 and so, too, were Durham and Northumberland, whose coal-fields were now far more developed than before. On the other hand, the population of the Western and Eastern counties, still large manufacturing centres, had increased very little.3 But in the North and North-west the increase was enormous. Between 1685 and 1760 the people of Liverpool had increased tenfold, of Manchester fivefold, of Birmingham and Sheffield sevenfold. The total population of England had increased from the five millions or so of the Elizabethan period, to not much less than eight millions in Arthur Young's time, and far more of these were in the northern portions of the country than was the case even in Defoe's time. Defoe said, in 1725, "the country south of the Trent is by far the largest, as well as the richest and most populous." But forty or fifty years later the shifting towards the North had already made itself felt." The cause of the great increase of population between 1700 and 1760 is to be found in the rapid increase of national wealth gained by foreign commerce, and in the progress of home manufactures and of agriculture. These in turn led to a greater demand for labour, and, in consequence, to higher wages. Increased wealth and higher wages mean increased comfort in living, increased command of food, and consequently better chances of survival among children born of poor parents. Now, in this period the increase in national wealth was, in spite of foreign wars, enormous; for if England had to pay heavily for these wars, other countries had to pay more heavily still, and were, moreover, No. 4. Cf. also Toynbee's chapter on Population in his Industrial Revolution, pp. 32 to 38. 1 Toynbee, Industrial Revolution, p. 35. 2 Ib., p. 35. See the figures in Toynbee, Ind. Rev., p. 36. 3 Ib., p. 35. "It was 7,428,000 in 1770, and 8,675,000 in 1790. Statistical Journal, xliii. 462. Tour, iii. 57 (7th edn.). 7 See Toynbee's careful analysis, Indust. Rev., p. 35. 8 Cf. Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, Bk. I. ch. viii. (Vol. I. pp. 84, 85, Clarendon Press edn.), on "the liberal reward of labour,” the battle-grounds of contending armies, while our own land was at least free from invasion. § 200. England still mainly Agricultural. Of the population of the country at this time the majority were still engaged in agriculture, and the agricultural labourers alone formed one-third of the working classes, while a large number even of the manufacturing classes still worked in the fields for a portion of the year, especially in harvest time.1 In 1770 England was still mainly an agricultural country, and Arthur Young estimates that the income of the agricultural portion of the nation was larger than that of all the rest of the community. But it must be remembered that by far the largest portion of this income was in the hands of the great landowners and the farmers, the share of the labourer being, of course, much smaller. Arthur Young's estimates must be taken with a certain amount of caution, but they are probably approximately correct, and are certainly interesting as giving us a very fair idea of the distribution of occupations and national wealth just before the Industrial Revolution. Hence I append a small table, giving in round numbers the figures of his estimates. It will be noticed that the number of the population is rather too high, but the proportion of one class to another is probably correct. 2 Cf. Arthur Young, Northern Tour, iv. 543-547 (ed. 1770). 3 The lines here are drawn to scale. It will be perceived that the agriculturists, though only about half a million more in numbers than the manufacturing classes, had a far larger proportionate income, in fact, more than double. This was of course partly due to the agricultural improvements of this period, and to the fact, that manufactures were still carried on almost solely by hand, thus giving only a small production from a good many workmen. But the Industrial Revolution rapidly changed all this, and now agriculture is no longer the staple industry of the country. We may here refer to what has been previously mentioned in regard to the agricultural development on enclosed land, and to the superiority of the results of enclosures over those of the common fields.1 Those farmers and large owners who understood the best way of raising crops prospered, and more and more land was enclosed every year to grow corn (which, by the way, was rapidly rising in price), clover, turnips, and other rootcrops. No less than 700 Enclosure Acts 2 were passed between 1760 and 1774. Corn was becoming a more valuable crop owing to the increase of population, and now, for the first time in English history, it became necessary to import it. The old common fields were beginning to disappear, and the working classes also lost their rights of pasturing cattle on the wastes, for wastes now were en1 Above, p. 275. 2 Cunningham, Growth of Industry, ii. 476. 3 The period 1766 to 1773 is said to have been the time when our imports first began to exceed our exports (West, Price of Corn (1826), p. 10), but Prothero, Pioneers of English Farming, p. 88, says that it was not till 1793 that the imports finally out-balanced the exports, 3 closed.1 It must be admitted that the old common-field system produced very poor results,2 but the loss of his common rights was very disastrous to the labourer, for it drove him from the land at the same time as the growth of manufactures attracted him from it, and thus the labourer became in a few years completely divorced from the soil. At present attempts are being made to attract him back to it by offering him small strips of inferior land at a high rent. This is known as the allotment system. It need scarcely be said that, as at present carried out, it is hardly likely to replace the almost universal allotments of previous times. § 201. The Domestic System of Manufacture. But in the period we are now speaking of, the period before the great inventions, neither the agricultural labourer nor the manufacturing operative was quite divorced from the land. The weavers, for instance, often lived in the country, in a cottage with some land attached to it. But in other respects there had certainly been changes in the industrial system before 1760. At first the weaver had furnished himself with warp and weft, worked it up, and brought it to the market himself; but by degrees this system grew too cumbersome, and the yarn was given out by merchants to the weaver, and at last the merchant got together a certain number of looms in a town or village, and worked them under his own supervision. But even yet the domestic system, as it is commonly called, retained 1 Toynbee, Industrial Revolution, pp. 69, 101. 9 Above, p. 275. $ Or, when they did not attract him away, they took from him to a very great extent his bye-industries of spinning, &c. Cf. Cunningham, Growth of Industry, ii. 483. 4 The writer was much blamed for this remark when it was first made in 1890. But he cannot see any reason to alter it. Allotment-land is not usually the best in a parish, though labourers often get very good results from it; and the rents charged are certainly far in excess of those on farmers' land. For rents of allotments and results of labour, see the article by Bolton King, Statistics of some Midland Villages, in the Economic Journal for March 1893. 53. 5 "Manufactures were little concentrated in towns, and only partially separated from agriculture." Toynbee, Indust. Rev., p. 6 Toynbee, u. s., p. 54, 7 Ib. |