has long since taken upon itself, so that our British farmers are, like our British mechanics, the most sensible and yet the most ignorant of their kind. But to enumerate all the causes of the present agricultural depression would exhaust both the patience of the reader and the industry of the writer, more especially as many of them are inextricably implicated in the general conditions of English industry.1 Those already mentioned -high rents and low prices, foreign competition and domestic carelessness, lack of capital and want of education-are possibly among the chief. Everyone who knows much about agriculture will add others from his own experience, and those who know but little will add still more. It is, therefore, perhaps better to consider a subject which is closely connected with them, and of dangerous importance to the nation at large. I refer to the serious depopulation of the rural districts. § 249. The Labourer and the Land. 2 It has been previously mentioned that the Industrial Revolution was accompanied by an equally important revolution in agriculture: the main features of the agrarian revolution being the consolidation of small into large farms, the introduction of new methods and machinery, the enclosure of common fields and waste lands, and discontinuance of the old open-field system, and, finally, the divorce of the labourer from the land. The consolidation of farms reduced the number of farmers, while the enclosures drove the labourers off the land, for it became almost impossible for them to exist on their low wages now that their old rights of keeping small cattle and geese upon the commons, of having a bit of land round their cottages, and other privileges, were ruthlessly taken from them. They have retreated in large numbers into the towns, and taken up other pursuits, or helped to swell the ranks of English pauperism. Before the Industrial and Agrarian Revolu1 See Prothero's excellent article in Vol. I. of Palgrave's Dictionary of Political Economy. 2 Above, pp. 343, 430. 3 Above, pp. 335, 408; and Prothero, Pioneers, &c., p. 73. the depression. It is a very important cause, and operates in more ways than are usually seen on the surface, nor is it any argument to say, as some have done, that because land will not pay for the expense of farming, even when it is let rent free, that therefore the former high rent had nothing to do with the matter. For when a farmer has lost all his capital in paying rent when he was not earning it, he is not anxious to continue the experiment even at a reduction of that rent, especially when he knows that, if successful, he will only have to pay more rent again in the future. But, apart from this, the causes of the depression are manifold and various, Almost chief among them may be placed a certain lack of adaptability to changed circumstances which has characterised the British farmer as compared with his foreign competitors. This is very noticeable in the case of dairy farming, where foreign producers have rapidly overtaken our own countrymen in supplying the British home market. Many an English farmer has gone on growing wheat for years after it was obviously a loss to him, when he might gradually have introduced some other crop. Again, he has neglected dairy farming, or only carried it on on unscientific principles, while foreigners have been scientifically perfecting their methods. He has certainly despised the smaller industries of the farm, such as poultry-rearing and egg-producing,1 so that our home market is now largely stocked with fowls and eggs from France, Germany, Denmark, and even Italy. Again, as a nation, we have paid too little heed to agricultural education, and though socalled "technical instruction" is now given, it is conducted in many places in a most chaotic manner, and money is lavishly wasted with the minimum of result. Dairy schools are certainly at length being established, but not before they had become familiar to every Danish cowherd and Danish butter was ousting our own from the home market. Here, as elsewhere in our educational system, the State has neglected duties which every other great European nation 1 It is only in the last two years (1895) that the farmers of a certain parish which I know well in Wiltshire have paid attention to their poultry, by placing fowl-houses for them in the stubble after harvest. has long since taken upon itself, so that our British farmers are, like our British mechanics, the most sensible and yet the most ignorant of their kind. But to enumerate all the causes of the present agricultural depression would exhaust both the patience of the reader and the industry of the writer, more especially as many of them are inextricably implicated in the general conditions of English industry. Those already mentioned -high rents and low prices, foreign competition and domestic carelessness, lack of capital and want of education—are possibly among the chief. Everyone who knows much about agriculture will add others from his own experience, and those who know but little will add still more. It is, therefore, perhaps better to consider a subject which is closely connected with them, and of dangerous importance to the nation at large. I refer to the serious depopulation of the rural districts. 249. The Labourer and the Land. It has been previously mentioned 2 that the Industrial Revolution was accompanied by an equally important revolution in agriculture: the main features of the agrarian revolution being the consolidation of small into large farms, the introduction of new methods and machinery, the enclosure of common fields and waste lands, and discontinuance of the old open-field system, and, finally, the divorce of the labourer from the land. The consolidation of farms reduced the number of farmers, while the enclosures drove the labourers off the land, for it became almost impossible for them to exist on their low wages now that their old rights of keeping small cattle and geese upon the commons, of having a bit of land round their cottages, and other privileges, were ruthlessly taken from them. They have retreated in large numbers into the towns, and taken up other pursuits, or helped to swell the ranks of English pauperism. Before the Industrial and Agrarian Revolu 3 1 See Prothero's excellent article in Vol. I. of Palgrave's Dictionary of Political Economy. 2 Above, pp. 343, 430. 3 Above, pp. 335, 408; and Prothero, Pioneers, &c., p. 73. tion, Arthur Young, in 1769, estimated that out of a total population of 8,500,000, the agricultural class, "farmers (whether freeholders or leaseholders), their servants and labourers," numbered no less than 2,800,000— i.e., over one-fourth of the total population-and, with others interested in agriculture, the number was 3,600,000. The number of those engaged in manufactures of all kinds he puts at 3,000,000. His figures may be taken as substantially correct, though perhaps not as accurate as a modern census. Now let us look at the agricultural population of more recent years. In 1871 the number of wage-earners in agriculture was just under one million (996,642) in England and Wales. In 1881 it had declined further to 890,174, and in 1891 it had again declined 2 to just over three-quarters of a million (798,912). The proportion that these wage-earners bear to the class of agriculturists, as a whole, is 73 per cent., so that they are quite adequately representative of the general rural population. This decline in absolute numbers in twenty years is startling enough, but it is still more so when we take the proportion of the numbers to the total population of England and Wales, and find that the percentage of agricultural wage-earners was only 4.34 in 1871, 3.43 in 1881, and as low as 2.75 in 1891. Even if we include, besides wage-earners, the whole class of agriculturists, we shall find that the proportion has sunk from the one person in four employed in agriculture in Arthur Young's time to more like one in twenty-four. There is in these figures much cause for uneasiness, not only for the economist, but for the patriot and for the politician. Nor is that uneasiness lessened by the fact that the same phenomenon of rural depopulation may also be seen in other European countries.3 The modern rush to the towns is not a healthy sign, nor can any nation rest on a firm and secure basis unless, to use a rustic metaphor, its roots strike deep into its native soil. 1 Quoted above, p. 334. 2 The figures are from the Official Reports of the Census, and are conveniently summarised in Hazell's Annual for 1895. 3 See E. G. Ravenstein's interesting paper in Vol. LII. (1889), p. 241, of the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society. § 250. The Condition of the Labourer. But not only have the numbers of the agricultural population decreased, but the labourer no longer has, as a rule, any share in the land. Certainly the agricultural labourer, at any rate in the South of England, was much better off in the middle of the eighteenth century than his descendants were in the middle of the nineteenth. In fact, in 1850 or so, wages were in many places practically lower in purchasing power, and not much higher in actual coin, than they were in 1750. But meanwhile almost every necessary of life, except bread, has increased in cost, and more especially rent has risen, while on the other hand the labourer, as we have seen, has lost many of his old privileges, for formerly his common rights, besides providing him with fuel, enabled him to keep cows or pigs and poultry on the waste, and sheep on the fallows and stubbles, while he could generally grow his own vegetables and garden produce. All these things formed a substantial addition to his nominal wages. From 1750 or so to about 1800 his nominal wages averaged 7s. 6d. or 10s. a week; in 1850 they only averaged1 10s. or 12s., although in the latter period his nominal wages represented all he actually received, while in the former they represented only part of his total income. Since 1850, however, even agricultural wages have risen, the present average being about 13s. a week. This, of course, represents in rural districts far more than the same amount of wages would in a town, since the agricultural labourer of to-day has been enabled to obtain allotments for his own use in many places, and only pays a low rent for his cottage. But even then it does not represent a large income, and though there is more than one honest South Country labourer who has brought up a family respectably on 10s. a week, it can hardly be 1 Cf. the figures in Rogers, Six Centuries, p. 510. "The average weekly wages as based upon thirty-eight estimates of the mean rate for all the districts inquired into by the Assistant Commissioners on Agricultural Labour in the Labour Commission of 1891 was about 13s. 5d. per week. The average rate ascertained by the Richmond Commission of 1879-81 was 13s. Id., and the estimate for 1867-70 was 12s. 3d. per week. 3 I am speaking from my personal acquaintance with such. |