THE RISE AND DEPRESSION OF MODERN AGRICULTURE
§ 1. SERVICES RENDERED BY THE GREAT LAND-OWNERS--Although there have
been occasions in our industrial history when one is compelled to
admit that the deeds of the landed gentry have called for anything but
admiration, we yet must not overlook the great services which this
class rendered to the agricultural interest in the eighteenth century.
I have already mentioned that the development and the success of
English agriculture in the half-century or more before the Industrial
Revolution was remarkable and extensive; and this success was due to
the efforts of the landlords in introducing new agricultural methods.
They took an entirely new departure and adopted a new system. It
consisted, as I mentioned before, in getting rid of bare fallows and
poor pastures by substituting root-crops and artificial grasses. The
fourfold or Norfolk rotation of crops was introduced, the landlords
themselves taking an interest in and superintending the cultivation of
their land and making useful experiments upon it. The number of these
experimenting landlords was very considerable, and in course of time
the tenant farmers followed them, and thus agricultural knowledge and
skill became more and more widely diffused. The reward of the landlords
came rapidly. They soon found their production of corn doubled and
their general produce trebled. They were able to exact higher rents,
for they had taught their {199} tenants how to make the land pay
better, and of course claimed a share of the increased profit. About
the years 1740–50 the rent of land, according to Jethro Tull, was 7_s._
an acre; some twenty years or more afterwards Arthur Young found the
average rent of land to be 10_s._ an acre, and thought that in many
cases it ought to have been more. It is probable that the landlord
would not have done so much for agriculture if he had not expected
to make something out of his experiments; but the fact that he was
animated by an enlightened self-interest does not make his work any
the less valuable. The pioneers of this improved agriculture came
from Norfolk, it being uncertain whether Lord Townshend or Mr Coke,
the descendant of the great Chief Justice, was the first. But this
much is certain: that Lord Lovell, one of the most distinguished and
energetic of the new agricultural school, found that his profits under
the new system were 36 per cent., as his accounts, still preserved for
the year 1731–32, and a copy of which is extant, bear witness. The
new agriculture indeed brought with it a revolution as important in
its way as the Industrial Revolution.[55] One of the chief features
of the change, the enclosures, has been already commented upon. The
enclosure of the common fields was beneficial, and to a certain extent
justifiable, for the tenants paid rent for them to the lord of the
manor. But it was effected at a great loss to the smaller tenant,
and when his common of pasture was enclosed as well, he was greatly
injured, while the agricultural labourer was permanently disabled.
But it was not unnatural that enclosures should rapidly be made when
farming, and especially grain-growing, had become so profitable. The
reason for the profits of agriculture at this period we can now examine.
[55. See _Industry in England_, p. 430.]
{200}
§ 2. _The stimulus caused by the Bounties_--The Government of the year
1660 had imposed heavy protective duties upon the importation of grain
from abroad, in fact prohibiting it except when wheat was at famine
prices, as it happened to be in 1662, when it was 62_s._ 9½_d._
a quarter, the ordinary price being 41_s._ But it did not reach this
price again for many years afterwards. The Government of 1688, not
content with the foregoing protective measure, added a bounty of 5_s._
per qr. upon the export of corn from England. But the effect of this
bounty was not felt for several years, for happily, soon after the
passing of the Bounty Act, a series of plentiful harvests occurred,
and corn was very cheap. There were consequently loud outcries from
the landlords about agricultural distress, which merely meant that
the people at large were enjoying cheap food. The aim of the bounty
on corn had been to raise prices by encouraging its export, and thus
rendered it scarcer and dearer in England. As a matter of fact, it
had the opposite effect, for it served as a premium upon which the
wheat-grower could speculate, and thus induced him to sow a larger
breadth of his land with wheat. The premium upon production caused
producers to grow more than the market required, and so prices fell.
Thus, happily for the consumer, the Corn Laws and the bounty were
harmless during the greater part of the eighteenth century, for farmers
competed one against the other sufficiently to keep down prices. But
the inevitable Nemesis of protective measures came at the end of the
century, when population was growing with unexampled rapidity and
required all the corn it could get. Then the prices of corn rose to a
famine pitch, while the duty upon its importation prevented it coming
into the country in sufficient quantities. The landlords received
enormous rents, and {201} the farmers did not mind paying them, for
the profits of both were immense. But meanwhile the mass of the people
was frequently on the verge of starvation, and at length the country
perceived that things could not be allowed to go on any longer in this
way.[56] The manufacturing capitalists of the day supported the leaders
of the people in their agitation, for they hoped that cheap food might
mean low wages. By their aid the landed interest was overcome, and in
1846 the Corn Laws, by the efforts of Cobden and his followers, were
finally repealed. Nevertheless the British farmer and his landlords,
forgetting, it seems, the days when they got high prices by the
starvation of the poor, still frequently clamour for the re-imposition
of the incubus of protection.
[56. By a law of 1773 importation of foreign wheat was forbidden
as long as English wheat was not more than 48_s._ per quarter. In
1791 a duty of 24_s._ 3_d._ was imposed as long as English wheat was
less than 50_s._ a qr.; if English wheat was over 50_s._, the duty
was 2_s._ 6_d._ The landed interest, however, was not satisfied yet.
In 1804 foreign corn was practically prohibited from importation if
English wheat was less than 63_s._ a qr.; in 1815 the prohibition was
extended till the price of English wheat was 80_s._ a qr. Then came
the agitations and riots of 1817–19, after which the country sank
into despair till the formation of the Anti-Corn Law League in 1839.]
§ 3. AGRICULTURAL IMPROVEMENTS--The high prices gained by farmers
before the repeal of the Corn Laws had, however, one good effect in
increasing the development of agricultural skill and of agricultural
improvements. The heavy soils of the London clay had at one time been
laid out in pasture lands, as being useless for turnip-growing or for
root-crops. The corn duties, however, caused these pastures to be
broken up for the sake of growing wheat, barley, and clover; the soil
was more thoroughly drained, and mangolds were grown as a rotation
crop, so that the {202} area of bare fallow was much diminished, while
the quantity of food, both for men and cattle, was much increased.
In recent years much of this very land has reverted to pasture for
dairy-farming. Besides the increase of the area under wheat, special
attention was given to artificial manures. The use of bones, at first
very roughly broken, became recognized. About 1840–41 dissolved bones
and Peruvian guano came into use, particularly in growing turnips,
and these were followed very soon by mineral phosphates, and more
recently by nitrate of soda and sulphate of ammonia. After the repeal
of the Corn Laws in 1846 the prospects of English agriculture began
to look rather gloomy, or at least the farmers thought so. But the
tremendous development of trade and population, the stimulus given to
all kinds of commerce by the employment of steam, not only for transit
but as a motive power for machinery, had their natural influence upon
agriculture, and the farmer did well. Improved agricultural machinery
came into use, by which farm work was facilitated, and the outlay for
labour was lessened. Makers of these machines showed great enterprise
and skill, and many altogether new appliances were placed in the
farmer’s hands. Steam power has come to be used with advantage in
digging, stirring and harrowing the ground, though it has not been
such a success in ploughing. Altogether English agriculture made great
strides, and was quite prosperous in the years 1870–73, when the
general prosperity of the industrial classes was increasing, and people
did not mind paying fairly high prices for farm produce. But afterwards
a period of depression set in. A succession of bad years, notably the
wet and sunless season of 1879 which ruined many a farmer, together
with excessive rain and deficient sunshine, most seriously injured the
average harvests. {203} Foreign competition in wheat, imported cattle,
and butchers’ meat largely increased. The price of wheat fell between
1880 and 1886 from 50_s._ to 30_s._ a qr.; between 1884 and 1887 beef
fell from 80_s._ to 55_s._ per cwt.; and other produce also fell in
proportion. Thousands of farmers were then ruined, and agriculture
generally suffered a severe and prolonged depression, and much arable
land was then laid down again as pasture, indeed some went altogether
out of cultivation. Meanwhile the political false prophets were going
about with their usual nostrums, and the flags of Protection and even
of Bimetallism were both waved before the bewildered eyes of the
British farmer, as if they were signals of salvation.
§ 4. THE CAUSE OF THE DEPRESSION. THE RISE IN RENT--Now it is perfectly
obvious to an impartial observer of economic facts, that an industry
so flourishing as English agriculture was not very many years ago,
could not have suffered so severe a collapse unless there had been some
great underlying cause, beside the ordinary complaints of bad harvests
and foreign competition. Bad harvests are not peculiar to England, and
foreign competition, however keen it may be, has first to overstep a
very considerable natural margin of protection in the cost of carriage.
It costs, for instance, according to that great authority Sir James
Caird, 9_s._ per quarter to transport American wheat from Chicago to
London. It is clear that besides these, there must have been other
influences of considerable importance, to cause English agriculture
to be, in spite of its apparent prosperity, in so insecure a position
that it should have sunk to the depressed condition in which it even
now remains. We have not to look far for one cause. It is the lack of
agricultural capital.
But how, it may naturally be asked, has it come about that the English
farmer, after the very favourable period {204} before the depression,
should thus suffer from a lack of capital, a lack which renders it
almost impossible for him to work his land properly? The answer is
simple. His capital has been greatly decreased, surely though not
always slowly, by a tremendous increase in his rent. The landlords
of the eighteenth century made the English farmer the foremost
agriculturist in the world, but their successors of the nineteenth
have raised his rent disproportionately. Such, at any rate, is the
verdict of eminent agricultural authorities; and the land-owners have
been compelled, for their own sake, to reduce the exorbitant rents
they received a few years ago. Unfortunately, too, the attention of
other classes of the community has been till lately diverted from the
condition of our agriculture by the prosperity of our manufactures. But
these two branches of industry, the manufacturing and the agricultural,
are closely interdependent, and must suffer or prosper together.
It is possible, as I have pointed out elsewhere, that there are
certain economic theories which have helped the decline of English
agriculture. They are the Ricardian theory of rent, and the dubious
“law of diminishing returns.” They have made many people think that
this decline was inevitable, and have diverted their attention from
the prime, though not the only, cause of the trouble--namely, the
increase of rent. But putting these doubtful theories aside, we may
employ ourselves more profitably in looking at the facts of the case.
I have mentioned before that in Tull’s time, at the beginning of the
eighteenth century, the average rent of agricultural land was 7_s._ per
acre, and by Young’s time towards the close of the century it had risen
to 10_s._ per acre. Diffused agricultural skill caused an increase of
profits, and the hope of sharing in these profits led farmers to give
competitive {205} rents, which afterwards the landlords took care to
exact in full and frequently to increase. The farmers were enabled to
pay higher rents by the low rate of wages paid to their labourers,
a rate which the landed gentry, as justices, kept down by their
assessments. In 1799 we find land paying nearly 20_s._ an acre; in 1812
the same land pays over 25_s._; in 1830 again it was still at about
25_s._, but by 1850 it had risen to 38_s._ 8_d._, which was about four
times Arthur Young’s average. Indeed £2 per acre was not an uncommon
rent for good land a few years ago (1885),[57] the average increase
of English rent being no less than 26½ per cent. between 1854
and 1879. Now such rent as this was enormous, and could only be paid
in very good years. In ordinary years, and still more in bad years,
it was paid out of the farmer’s capital. This process of payment was
facilitated by the fact that the farmer of this century did not keep
his accounts properly, a fruitful source of eventual evil frequently
commented upon by agricultural authorities; and also by the other fact,
that even when he perceived that he was working his farm at a loss, the
immediate loss (of some 10 or 15 per cent.) involved in getting out of
his holding was heavy enough in most cases to induce him to submit to a
rise in his rent, rather than lose visibly so much of his capital.
[57. Cf. statistics in my article in _Westminster Review_,
December 1888, p. 727.]
The invisible process, however, was equally certain, if not so
immediate. The result has been that the average capital per acre now
employed in agriculture is only about £4 or £5, instead of at least
£10 as it ought to be,[58] and the farmer cannot afford to pay for a
sufficient supply of {206} labour, so that the agricultural population
is seriously diminishing. Nothing in modern agriculture is so serious
as this decline of the rural population, and we must here devote a
few words to a consideration of the agricultural labourer and the
conditions of his existence.
[58. My calculations on this head will be found in the _Economist_
of April 28th, 1888, and they coincide closely with independent
statements made by Professor Rogers.]
§ 5. THE LABOURER AND THE LAND. WAGES--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 Revolution, 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. 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 to-day. The total number of males
and females engaged as agricultural {207} wage-earners is only some
689,000[59]--that is, very far below the numbers so engaged a century
ago, while the proportion has sunk from one person in four to one in
twenty-five concerned in agriculture. At the present time our fields
have on the average only one man to cultivate twenty-seven acres of
land--and that man is very badly paid for his trouble, be he farmer or
labourer.
[59. The figures are for 1901 and represent a fall of thirty
per cent. since 1881.]
But not only have the numbers of the agricultural population decreased,
but the labourer no longer has any share as a rule 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 actually lower than they were in
1750, and in hardly any county were they higher. 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
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, and he
could generally grow his own vegetables and garden produce. All these
things formed a substantial addition to his nominal wages. In 1750 or
so his nominal wages averaged 8_s._ or 10_s._ a week; in 1850 they only
averaged 10_s._ or 12_s._, although in the latter period his nominal
wages represented all he got, while in the former they represented only
part of his total income. Since 1850, however, even agricultural wages
have risen, the present average being 13_s._ or 14_s._ a week. The
rise, such as it is, is due to some extent to Trade Unions, the leader
and {208} promoter of which among agricultural labourers was Joseph
Arch. This remarkable man was born in 1826, and in his youth and middle
age saw the time when agricultural labour was at its lowest depth. Not
only were wages low, being about 10_s._ or 11_s._ a week, but the worst
evils of the factory system of child labour had been transferred to the
life of the fields. The philanthropists seem to have overlooked the
disgraceful conditions of the system of working in agricultural gangs,
under which a number of children and young persons were collected on
hire from their parents by some overseer or contractor, who took them
about the district at certain seasons of the year to work on the land
of those farmers who wished to employ them. The persons composing the
gang were exposed to every inclemency of the weather, without having
homes to return to in the evening, people of both sexes being housed
while under their contract in barns, without any thought of decency
or comfort, while the children often suffered from all the coarse
brutalities that suggested themselves to the overseer of their labour.
Their pay was of course miserable, though gangs flourished at a time
when farmers and landlords were making huge profits. But the degrading
practice of cheap gang-labour was defended as being necessary to
profitable agriculture; which means that tenants were too cowardly or
too obtuse to resist rents which they could not pay except by employing
pauperized and degraded labour. Amid times like these Joseph Arch grew
up, and it was not till 1872 (at which time it will be remembered that
British farmers were doing very well) that he began the agitation which
resulted in the formation of the National Agricultural Labourers’
Union. His difficulties in organizing the downtrodden labourers were
enormous, but he finally succeeded in spite of the resentment of
agricultural {209} employers. His efforts have already done much
to improve the material condition of the labourers, and wages have
decidedly risen from this and other causes. But they certainly cannot
be called high.
§ 6. THE PRESENT CONDITION OF BRITISH AGRICULTURE--It remains to notice
briefly the causes which are now influencing our agricultural industry,
and to point out in what direction we may expect a revival from the
present state of depression. Besides the great fact of the increase
of rents we notice an increase of foreign competition, which is of
comparatively recent date. Our competitors are mainly Russia, America,
and last but by no means least, India. At the time of the Crimean
War, and for some years subsequently, Russian competition ceased to
exist. When it began it, standing alone, was not very serious, for
America had not yet entered the field, and was prevented from doing
so by the sanguinary struggles of the Civil War. High prices for
grain prevailed therefore till some time after America had ceased her
internal conflict, and it was only quite recently that much grain
was grown for export in India. But since 1870 or so England has been
supplied with grain from these three great agricultural lands, and the
English farmer, no longer buoyed up at the expense of the rest of the
community by protective measures, has found it impossible to grow wheat
at a profit at the old rents. Many farmers have been ruined; and at Sir
James Caird’s estimate (in 1886) the loss of the agricultural classes
of all ranks in spendable income has been nearly £43,000,000 _per
annum_. According to this well-known authority rents should therefore
have been reduced by £22,800,000 instead of by much less than half that
amount. Even now the aggregate rental is higher than it was before the
Russian war. In course of time it is certain that the economic action
of {210} supply and demand will bring rents down to something like
their commercial value; meanwhile the English landlords, as Mr W. E.
Bear remarks, have the choice between allowing their old tenants to be
ruined first, and then accepting reduced rents, or granting reductions
soon enough to save men in whom they have hitherto had some confidence
as tenants. It will be necessary also to make important changes in the
laws and customs of land tenure, so that our farmers may have complete
security for their capital invested in improvements, and freedom of
enterprise (_e.g._ in cropping and tilling), in order that they may
do their best with the land. An extended system of small holdings and
allotments, guaranteed by a thorough measure of Tenant Right, together
with free trade in land as well as other commodities, would do much
to place moderate farms within the reach of industrious and thrifty
yeomen and labourers. Greater facilities for transit, including the
abolition of the essentially protective system of preferential railway
rates, would enable producers to put their produce with ease upon
the home market, for English food requirements guarantee an enormous
and steady demand at home for every scrap of food-stuff that the
land is capable of producing. The farmer is slow to adapt himself to
changed conditions, but a profitable future is open to him even if he
gives up wheat-growing and betakes himself more to dairy-farming and
market-gardening. But it may not be necessary for him to give up wheat,
for it seems probable that the wheat area of the world, except in
India, will not increase; since foreign farmers are beginning to find
out that they cannot put wheat on the English market at the present
low prices. People will see that it is desirable, and that ultimately
it will be profitable, to recall capital and labour back to the land
which it is evident that it has left; {211} and that it is the
height of economic folly to rely, as some do, upon the extension of
our manufacturing industries to counteract agricultural depression.
Prosperous agriculture means for us prosperous manufactures, and
from an economic point of view the interests of the plough and the
loom are identical. Neither can be served by protective tinkering.
Reforms of a totally different character are needed, foremost among
which is a widespread reduction of rent, and a general rearrangement
of the relations between landlord and tenant. It is on the face of it
ridiculous to assert that, with an unequalled demand in the home market
for all he can produce, the English farmer cannot find some means of
making the land pay and pay well. But before he can do this he must
spend more capital upon it than he has lately been able to do.
[Illustration: 1890 INDUSTRIAL ENGLAND
_Showing Population and Manufactures_
Manufacturing districts are shown by slanting lines; large
manufacturing towns by black circles; and the most populous counties
are coloured darker than the others. It will be noticed that
population since 1750 has shifted very much to the North and North
West of England, whilst manufactures are far more concentrated than
formerly.]