1837-1875
REVIVAL OF AGRICULTURE.--THE ROYAL AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY.--CORN LAW
REPEAL.--A TEMPORARY SET-BACK.--THE HALCYON DAYS
The revival of agriculture roughly coincided with the accession of
Queen Victoria.
It was proved that Scotch farmers who had farmed highly had weathered
the storm. Instead of repeatedly calling on Parliament to help them
they had helped themselves, by spending large sums in draining and
manuring the land; they had adopted the subsoil plough, and the
drainage system of Smith of Deanston, used machinery to economize
labour, and improved the breed of stock. This was an object-lesson
for the English farmer, and he began to profit by it. It was high
time that he did. In spite of the undoubted progress made, farming
was still often terribly backward. Little or no machinery was used,
implements were often bad, teams too large, drilling little
practised, drainage utterly inefficient; in fact, while one farmer
used all the improvements made, a hundred had little to do with them.
But better times were at hand.
About 1835 Elkington's system of drainage, which among the more
advanced agriculturists, at any rate, had been used for half a
century, was superseded by that of James Smith of Deanston, a system
of thorough drainage and deep ploughing, which effected a complete
revolution in the art of draining, and holds the field to-day.
Hitherto the draining of land had been done by a few drains where they
were thought necessary, which was often a failure. Smith initiated a
complete system of parallel underground drains, near enough to each,
other to catch all the superfluous water, running into a main drain
which ran along the lowest part of the ground. His system has also
been called 'furrow or frequent draining', as the drains were
generally laid in the furrows from two to two-and-a-half feet deep at
short intervals. Even then the tributary drains were at first filled
in with stones 12 inches deep, as they had been for centuries, and
sometimes with thorns, or even turves, as tiles were still expensive;
and the main was made of stonework. However, the invention of machines
for making tiles cheapened them, and the substitution of cylindrical
pipes for horse-shoe tiles laid on flat soles still further lowered
the cost and increased the efficiency.[613] In 1848, Peel introduced
Government Drainage Loans, repayable by twenty-two instalments of 6
1/2 per cent. This was consequently an era of extensive drainage works
all over England, which sorely needed it; but even now the work was
often badly done. In some cases it was the custom for the tenant to
put in as many tiles as his landlord gave him, and they were often
merely buried. At Stratfieldsaye, for instance, where the Iron Duke
was a generous and capable landlord, the drains were sometimes a foot
deep, while others were 6 feet deep and 60 feet apart,[614] although
the soil required nothing of the kind.
Vast sums were also spent on farm-buildings, still often old and
rickety, with deficient and insanitary accommodation; in Devonshire
the farmer was bound by his lease to repair 'old mud and wooden
houses', at a cost of 10 per cent. on his rent, and there were many
such all over England. Farm-buildings were often at the extreme end
of the holding, the cattle were crowded together in draughty sheds,
and the farmyard was generally a mass of filth and spoiling manure,
spoiling because all the liquid was draining away from it into the
pool where the live stock drank; a picture, alas, often true to-day.
It was to bring the great mass of landlords and farmers into line with
those who had made the most of what progress there had been, that the
Royal Society was founded in 1838, in imitation of the Highland
Society, but also owing to the realization of the great benefits
conferred on farming during the last half-century by the exertions of
Agricultural Societies, the Smithfield Club Shows having especially
aided the breeding of live stock.
Writing on the subject of the Society, Mr. Handley[615] spoke of the
wretched modes of farming still to be seen in the country, especially
in the case of arable land, though there had been a marked improvement
in the breeding of stock. Prejudice, as ever, was rampant. Bone
manure, though in the previous twenty years it had worked wonders, was
in many parts unused. It was felt that what the English farmer needed
was 'practice with science'. The first President of the Society was
Earl Spencer, and it at once set vigorously to work, recommending
prizes for essays on twenty-four subjects, some of which are in the
first volume of the Society's Journal. Prizes were also offered for
the best draining-plough, the best implement for crushing gorse, for a
ploughing match to be held at the first country meeting of the Society
fixed at Oxford in 1839, for the best cultivated farm in Oxfordshire
and the adjacent counties, and for the invention of any new
agricultural implement.
In 1840 the Society was granted a charter under the title of the Royal
Agricultural Society of England, and its career since then has been
one of continued usefulness, and forms a prominent feature in the
agricultural history of the times.
In 1839[616] the first country meeting of the Society was held at
Oxford, and its 247 entries of live stock and 54 of implements were
described as constituting a show of unprecedented magnitude. According
to _Bell's Weekly Messenger_ for July 22, 1839, the show for some time
had been the all-absorbing topic of conversation not only among
agriculturists, but among the community at large, and the first day
20,000 people attended the show, many having come great distances by
road. Everybody and every exhibit had to get to Oxford by road; some
Shorthorn cattle, belonging to the famous Thomas Bates of
Kirkleavington, took nearly three weeks on the road, coming from
London to Aylesbury by canal. But such a journey was not unusual then,
for cattle were often two or three weeks on the road to great fairs,
and stood the journey best on hay; it was surprising how fresh and
sound they finished.[617] The show ground covered 7 acres, and among
the implements tested was a subsoil plough, Biddell's Scarifier, and a
drill for depositing manure after turnips. There were only six classes
for cattle--Shorthorns, Herefords, Devons, Cattle of any other breed,
Dairy Cattle, and Oxen; one class for horses, and three for
sheep--Leicesters, Southdown or other Short Wool, and Long Woolled;
with one for pigs.[618] The Shorthorns, with the exception of the
Kirkleavingtons, were bred in the neighbourhood, and many good judges
said long afterwards that a finer lot had not been seen since. The
Duchesses especially impressed all who saw them. The rest of the live
stock was in no way remarkable.
From this small beginning, then thought so much of, the show grew
fast, and the Warwick meeting[619] of 1892, after several years of
agricultural depression, illustrates the excellent work of the Society
and the enormous progress made by English agriculture. The show ground
covered 90 acres; horses were now divided into Thoroughbred Stallions,
Hunters, Coach Horses, Hackneys, Ponies, Harness Horses and Ponies,
Shires, Clydesdales, Suffolks, and Agricultural Horses. Cattle were
classified as Shorthorns, Herefords, Devons, Sussex, Longhorns
(described as few in number and of no particular quality, 'a breed
which has now been many years on the wane', but has recently been
revived),[620] Welsh, Red Polled, Jerseys, Guernseys, Kerry and
Dexter-Kerry.
The increased variety of sheep was also striking; Leicesters,
Cotswolds, Lincolns, Oxford Downs, Shropshires, Southdowns, Hampshire
Downs, Suffolks, Border Leicesters, Clun Forest, and Welsh Mountain.
Pigs were divided into Large, Middle, and Small white Berkshires, any
other black breed, and Tamworths.
Altogether the total number of stock exhibited was 1,858, and the
number of implements was 5,430.
In 1840 appeared Liebig's _Chemistry in its Application to Agriculture
and Physiology_, tracing the relations between the nutrition of plants
and the composition of the soil, a book which was received with
enthusiasm, and completely changed the attitude which agriculturists
generally had maintained towards chemistry; one of contempt, founded
on ignorance.
But, as Mr. Prothero has said,[621] 'if the new agriculture was born
in the laboratory of Glissen, it grew into strength at the
experimental station of Rothamsted.' There, for more than half a
century, Lawes and Gilbert conducted experiments, of vast benefit to
agriculture, in the objects, method, and effect of manuring; the
scientific bases for the rotation of crops, and the results of various
foods on animals in the production of meat, milk, and manure.
The use of artificial manures now spread rapidly; bones, used long
before uncrushed, are said to have been first crushed in 1772, and
their value was realized by Coke of Holkham, but for long they were
crushed by hammer or horse mill, and their use was consequently
limited. Then iron rollers worked by steam ground them cheaply and
effectively, and their use soon spread, though it was not till about
1840 that it can be said to have become general. Its effects were
often described as wonderful. In Cheshire, cheese-making had
exhausted the soil, and it was said that by boning and draining an
additional cow could be kept for every 4 acres, and tenants readily
paid 7 per cent. to their landlords for expenditure in bone manure.
Its use had indeed raised many struggling farmers to comparative
independence.[622] A very large quantity of the bones used came from
South America.[623] Porter also noticed that 'since 1840 an extensive
trade has been carried on in an article called Guano', the guana of
Davy, 'from the islands of the Pacific and off the coast of Africa'.
Nitrate of soda was just coming in, but was not much used till some
years later. In 1840 Liebig suggested the treatment of bones with
sulphuric acid, and in 1843 Lawes patented the process and set up his
works at Deptford.[624]
Italian rye grass, not to be confounded with the old English ray
grass, had been introduced by Thomson of Banchory, in 1834, from
Munich;[625] and though the swede was known at the end of the
eighteenth century, in many parts it had only just become common. In
Notts it was in 1844 described as having recently become 'the
sheet-anchor of the farmer'.[626] In Cheshire a writer at the same
date said, 'in the year 1814 there were not 5 acres of Swedish turnips
grown in the parish where I reside; now there are from 60 to 80, and
in many parts of the county the increase has been in a much greater
ratio.'[627]
About this time a remedy was found in the south for leaving the land
idle during the nine months between harvesting the corn crop in
August, and sowing the turnip crop in the following June, by sowing
rye, which was eaten green by the sheep in May, a good preparation for
the succeeding winter crop. Turnip cutters were at last being used,
and corn and cake crushers soon followed.
The seasons from 1838 to 1841 were bad, and must be characterized as
a period of dearth, wheat keeping at a good price.[628] That of 1844-5
was remarkable for the first general appearance of the potato disease,
not only in these islands but on the continent of Europe.[629] In
August, 1846, the worst apprehensions of the failure of the crop were
more than realized, and the terrible results in Ireland are well
known. In the early part of 1847 there was a fear of scarcity in corn,
and the price of wheat rose to 102s. 5d. in spite of an importation of
4,500,000 quarters, but this was largely owing to the absence of any
reliable agricultural statistics, which were not furnished till 1866,
and the price soon fell.[630]
We have now reached the period of free trade, when the Corn Laws,
which had protected agriculture more or less effectually for so long,
were definitely abandoned. That they had failed to prevent great
fluctuations in the price of corn is abundantly evident, it is also
equally evident that they kept up the average price; in the ten years
from 1837 to 1846, the average price of wheat was 58s. 7d. a quarter,
in the seven years from 1848 to 1853, the average price was 48s.
2d.[631]
The average imports of wheat and flour for the same period were
2,161,813 and 4,401,000 quarters respectively. But to obtain the real
effect of free trade on prices, the prices for the period between 1815
and 1846 must be compared with those between 1846 and the present day,
when the fall is enormous.
The Act of 1815, which Tooke said had failed to secure any one of the
objects aimed at by its promoters, had received two important
alterations. In 1828 (9 Geo. IV, c. 60) a duty of 36s. 8d. was imposed
when the price was 50s., decreasing to 1s. when it was 73s.
In 1843 (5 Vict. c. 14) a duty of 20s. was imposed when the price was
50s., and the duty became 7s. when the price reached 65s.
A contemporary writer denies that these duties benefited the farmer at
all: 'if the present shifting scale of duty was intended to protect
the farmer, keep the prices of corn steady, insure a supply to the
consumer at a moderate price, and benefit the revenue, it has signally
failed. During the continuation of the Corn Laws the farmers have
suffered the greatest privations. The variations in price have been
extreme, and when a supply of foreign corn has been required it has
only reached the consumer at a high price, and benefited the revenue
little.'[632] Rents of farms were often calculated not on the market
price of wheat, but on the price thought to be fixed by the duties,
which was occasionally much higher.[633]
It was also said that but for the restrictions that had been imposed
in the supposed interests of agriculture, the skill and enterprise of
farmers would have been better directed than it had been. By means of
these restrictions and the consequent enhancement of the cost of
living, the cultivation of the land had been injuriously restricted,
for the energies of farmers had been limited to producing certain
descriptions of food, and they had neglected others which would have
been far[634] more profitable. The landlord had profited by higher
rents, but, according to Caird, a most competent observer, had
generally speaking been induced by a reliance on protection to neglect
his duty to his estates, so that buildings were poor, and drainage
neglected. The labourer was little if any better off than eighty years
before. It was a mystery even to farmers how they lived in many parts
of the country; 'our common drink,' said one, 'is burnt crust tea, we
never know what it is to get enough to eat.'[635] Against these
disadvantages can only be put the fact that protection had kept up the
price of corn, a calamity for the mass of the people.
The amount of wheat imported into England before the era of Corn Law
repeal was inconsiderable. Mr. Porter has shown[636] how very small a
proportion of wheat used in this country was imported from 1801-44.
From 1801 to 1810 the average annual import of wheat into the kingdom
was 600,946 quarters, or a little over a peck annually per head, the
average annual consumption per head being about eight bushels. Between
1811 and 1820 the average importation was 458,578 quarters, or for the
increased population a gallon-and-a-half per head, and the same share
for each person was imported in the next decade 1821-30. From 1831-40
the average imports arose to 607,638 quarters, or two-and-a-quarter
gallons per head, and in 1841-4 an average import of 1,901,495
quarters raised the average supply to four-and-a-half gallons per
person, still a very small proportion of the amount consumed.
In 1836 a small association had been formed in London for advocating
the repeal of the Corn Laws, and in 1838 a similar association was
formed in Manchester.[637] At one of its earliest meetings appeared
Richard Cobden, under whose guidance the association became the
Anti-Corn Law League, and at whose invitation John Bright joined the
League. Under these two men the Anti-Corn Law League commenced its
great agitation, its object being 'to convince the manufacturer that
the Corn Laws were interfering with the growth of trade, to persuade
the people that they were raising the price of food, to teach the
agriculturist that they had not even the solitary merit of securing a
fixed price for corn'. The country was deluged with pamphlets, backed
up by constant public meetings; and these efforts, aided by
unfavourable seasons, convinced many of the errors of protection. In
1840 the League spent £5,700 in distributing 160,000 circulars and
150,000 pamphlets, and in delivering 400 lectures to 800,000 people.
Bakers were persuaded to bake taxed and untaxed shilling loaves, and,
on the purchaser choosing the larger, to demand the tax from the
landlord; in 1843 the League collected £50,000, next year £100,000,
and in 1845 £250,000 in support of their agitation.
Yet for some years they had little success in Parliament; even in 1842
Peel only amended the laws; and it was not until 1846 that, convinced
by the League's arguments, as he himself confessed, and stimulated by
the famine in Ireland, he introduced the famous Act, 9 & 10 Vict. c.
22.
By this the maximum duty on imported wheat was at once to be reduced
to 10s. a quarter when the price was under 48s., to 5s. on barley when
the price was under 26s., and to 4s. on oats when the price was under
18s., with lower duties as prices rose above these figures, but the
most important part of the Act was that on February 1, 1849, these
duties were to cease, and only a nominal duty of 1s. a quarter on
foreign corn be retained, which was abolished in 1860.
By 9 and 10 Vict. c. 23 the duties on live stock were also abolished
entirely. Down to 1842 the importation of horned cattle, sheep, hogs,
and other animals used as food was strictly prohibited,[638] but in
that year the prohibition was withdrawn and they were allowed to enter
the country on a payment of 20s. a head on oxen and bulls, 15s. on
cows, 3s. on sheep, 5s. on hogs; which duties continued till 1846.
It is interesting to find that so shrewd an observer as McCulloch did
not expect any great increase in the imports of live animals from the
reduction of the duties, but he anticipated a great increase in salted
meat from abroad; cold storage being then undreamt of.
The full effect of this momentous change was not to be felt for a
generation, but the immediate effect was an agricultural panic
apparently justified by falling prices. In 1850 wheat averaged 40s.
3d. and in 1851 38s. 6d. On the other hand, stock farmers were doing
well. But on the corn lands the prices of the protection era had to
come down; many farms were thrown up, some arable turned into pasture;
distress was widespread. Owing to the depressed state of agriculture
in 1850, the _Times_ sent James Caird on a tour through England, and
one of the most important conclusions arrived at in his account of his
tour is, that owing to protection, the majority of landowners had
neglected their land; but another cause of neglect was that the great
body of English landlords knew nothing of the management of their
estates, and committed it to agents who knew little more and merely
received the rents. The important business of being a landowner is the
only one for which no special training is provided. Many of the
landlords, however, then, as now, were unable to improve their estates
if they desired to do so, as they were hopelessly encumbered, and the
expense of sale was almost prohibitive. The contrast between good and
bad farmers was more marked in 1850 than to-day, the efforts of the
Royal Agricultural Society to raise the general standard of farming
had not yet borne much fruit. In many counties, side by side, were
farmers who used every modern improvement, and those who still
employed the methods of the eighteenth century: on one farm wheat
producing 40 bushels an acre, threshed by steam at a cost of 3s. 6d.,
on the next 20 bushels to the acre threshed by the flail at a cost of
9s.[639]
Drainage in the counties where it was needed had made considerable
progress, the removal of useless hedgerows often crowded with timber,
that kept the sun from the crops and whose roots absorbed much of the
nourishment of the soil, was slowly extending, but farm-buildings
almost everywhere were defective. 'The inconvenient ill-arranged
hovels, the rickety wood and thatch barns and sheds devoid of every
known improvement for economizing labour, food, and manure, which are
to be met with in every county in England, are a reproach to the
landlords in the eyes of all good farmers.'[640] The farm-buildings of
Belgium, Holland, France, and the Rhenish Provinces were much
superior. In parts of England indeed no progress seems to have been
made for generations at this date. Thousands of acres of peat moss in
Lancashire were unreclaimed, and many parts of the Fylde district were
difficult even to traverse. Even in Warwickshire, in the heart of
England, between Knowle and Tamworth, instead of signs of industry and
improvement were narrow winding lanes leading to nothing, traversed by
lean pigs and rough cattle, broad copse-like hedges, small and
irregular fields of couch, amidst which straggled the stalks of some
smothered cereal; these with gipsy encampments and the occasional
sound of the poacher's gun from woods and thickets around were the
characteristics of the district.[641]
Leases were the exception throughout England, though more prevalent in
the west.[642] The greater proportion of farms were held on yearly
agreements terminable by six months' notice on either side, a system
preferred by the landlord as enabling him to retain a greater hold
over his land, and acquiesced in by the tenant because of easy rents.
In spite of this insecurity of tenure and the absence of Agricultural
Holdings Acts, the tenants invested their capital largely with no
other security than the landlord's character, 'for in no country of
the world does the character of any class of men stand so high for
fair and generous dealing as that of the great body of the English
landlords.'
The custom of tenant-right was unknown except in certain counties,
Surrey, Sussex, the Weald of Kent, Lincoln, North Notts, and in part
of the West Riding of Yorkshire.[643] Where it existed, the
agriculture was on the whole inferior to that of the districts where
it did not, and it had frequently led to fraud in a greater or less
degree. Many farmers were in the practice of 'working up to a
quitting', or making a profit by the difference which their ingenuity
and that of their valuer enabled them to demand at leaving as compared
with what they paid on entry. The best farmers as well as the
landlords were said to be disgusted with the system. The dislike for
leases in the days immediately before the repeal of the Corn Laws was
partly due to the uncertainty how long protection would last; but
chiefly then, as afterwards, to the fact that if a man improved his
farm under a lease he had nearly always to pay an increased rent on
renewal, but if he held from year to year his improvement, if any, was
so gradual and imperceptible that it was hardly noticed and the rent
was not raised. It may also be attributable to the modern
disinclination to be bound down to a particular spot for a long
period. At all events, the general dislike of farmers for leases is a
curious commentary on the assertions of those writers who said that
leases were his chief necessity.
The disparity of the labourer's wages in 1850 was most remarkable,
ranging from 15s. a week in parts of Lancashire to 6s. in South Wilts,
the average of the northern counties being 11s. 6d., and of the
southern 8s. 5d. a difference due wholly to the influence of
manufactures, which is still further proved by the fact that in
Lancashire in 1770 wages were below the average for England. In fact
since Young's time wages in the north had increased 66 per cent., in
the south only 14 per cent. In Berkshire and Wiltshire there had been
no increase in that period, and in Suffolk an actual decrease. It is
not surprising to learn that in some southern counties wages were not
sufficient for healthy sustenance, and the consequence was, that
there, the average amount of poor relief per head of population was
8s. 8-1/2d., but in the north 4s. 7-3/4d., and the percentage of
paupers was twice as great in the former as in the latter. This was
mainly due to two causes: (1) the ratepayers of parishes in the south
were accustomed to divide among themselves the surplus labour, not
according to their requirements but in proportion to the size of their
farms, so that a farmer who was a good economist of labour was reduced
by this system to the same level as his unskilful neighbours, and the
labourer himself had no motive to do his best, as every one, good and
bad, was employed at the same rate. (2) To the system of close and
open parishes, by which large proprietors could drive the labourer
from the parish where he worked to live in some distant village in
case he should become chargeable to the rates, so that it was a common
thing to see labourers walking three or four miles each day to their
work and back, and in one county farmers provided donkeys for them.
Between 1840 and 1850 the labourer had, however, already benefited by
free trade, for the price of many articles he consumed fell 30%; on
the other hand the rent of his cottage in eighty years had increased
100%, and meat 70%, which however did not, unfortunately, affect him
much. The great development of railway construction also helped him by
absorbing much surplus labour, and the work of his wife and children
was more freely exploited at this date to swell the family
budget.[644]
The great difference between the wages of the north and the south is
a clear proof that the wages of the agricultural labourer are not
dependent on the prices of agricultural produce, for those were the
same in both regions. It was unmistakably due to the greater demand
for labour in the north.
The housing of the labourer was, especially in the south, often a
black blot on English civilization. From many instances collected by
an inquirer in 1844 the following may be taken. At Stourpaine in
Dorset, one bedroom in a cottage contained three beds occupied by
eleven people of all ages and both sexes, with no curtain or partition
whatever. At Milton Abbas, on the average of the last census there
were thirty-six persons in each house, and so crowded were they that
cottagers with a desire for decency would combine and place all the
males in one cottage, and all the females in another. But this was
rare, and licentiousness and immorality of the worst kind were
frequent.[645]
As for the farmer, the stock raiser was doing better than the corn
grower. The following table shows the rent of cultivated land per
acre, the produce of wheat per acre in bushels, the price of
provisions, wages of labour, and rent of cottages in England at the
date of Young's tours, about 1770, and of Caird's in 1850[647]:
Rent of Produce of
cultivated land Wheat Price per lb. of
per acre. per acre. Bread. Meat. Butter.
1770 13s. 4d. 23 1-1/2d. 3-1/4d. 6d.
1850 26s. 10d. 26-3/4[646] 1-1/4d. 5d. 1s.
Price of Wool Cottage Labourer's wages
per lb. rents. per week.
1770 5-1/2d. 34s. 8d. 7s. 3d.
1850 1s. 74s. 6d. 9s. 7d.
Thus in eighty years the average rent of arable land rose 100%, the
average wheat crop 14%, while the price of bread had decreased 16%.
But meat had increased 70%, wool over 100%, butter 100%. The chief
benefit to the farmer therefore lay in the increased value of live
stock and its products, and it was found then, as in the present
depression, that the holders of strong wheat land suffered most, which
was further illustrated by the fact that the rent of the corn-growing
counties of the east coast averaged 23s. 8d. per acre; that of the
mixed corn and grass counties in the midlands and west, 31s. 5d.
Writing in 1847, Porter said rents had doubled since 1790.[648] In
Essex farms could be pointed out which were let in 1790 at less than
10s. an acre, but during the war at from 45s. to 50s. In 1818 the rent
went down to 35s., and in 1847 was 20s.
In Berks. and Wilts. farms let at 14s. per acre in 1790, rose by 1810
to 70s., or fivefold; sank in 1820 to 50s., and in 1847 to 30s. In
Staffordshire farms on one estate let for 8s. an acre in 1790, rose
during the war to 35s., and at the peace were lowered to 20s., at
which price they remained. Owing to better farming light soils had
been applied to uses for which heavy lands alone had formerly been
considered fit, with a considerable increase of rent.
On the Duke of Rutland's[649] Belvoir estate, of from 18,000 to 20,000
acres of above average quality, rents were in--
1799 19s. 3-3/4d. an acre.
1812 25s. 8-3/4d. "
1830 25s. 1-3/4d. "
1850 36s. 8d. "
But the Dukes of Rutland were indulgent landlords and evidently took
no undue advantage of the high prices during the war, a policy whose
wisdom was fully justified afterwards.
It was the opinion of most competent judges, even after the abolition
of the Corn Laws, that English land would continue to rise in value.
Porter stated that the United Kingdom could never be habitually
dependent on the soil of other countries for the food of its people,
there was not enough shipping to transport it if it could.[650]
Caird prophesied that in the next eighty years the value of land in
England would more than double. The wellnigh universal opinion was
that as the land of England could not increase, and the population was
constantly increasing, land must become dearer. Men failed to foresee
the opening of millions of acres of virgin soil in other parts of the
world, and the improvement of transport to such an extent that wheat
has occasionally been carried as ballast. About twenty-five or thirty
years after these prophecies their fallacy began to be cruelly
exposed.[651]
About 1853[652] matters began to mend, chiefly owing to the great
expansion in trade that followed the great gold discoveries in America
and Australia. Then, came the Crimean War, with the closing of the
Baltic to the export of Russian corn, wheat in 1855 averaging 74s.
8d., and in the next decade the American War crippled another
competitor, the imports of wheat from the United States sinking from
16,140,000 cwt in 1862, to 635,000 cwt. in 1866. From 1853 until 1875
English agriculture prospered exceedingly, assisted largely by good
seasons. Between 1854 and 1865 there were ten good harvests, and only
two below the average. Prices of produce rose almost continuously, and
the price and rent of land with them. The trade of the country was
good, and the demand for the farmer's products steadily grew; the
capital value of the land, live stock, and crops upon it, increased in
this period by £445,000,000.[653]
It appeared as if the abolition of the Corn Laws was not to have any
great effect after all.
Now at last the great body of farmers began to approach the standard
set them long before by the more energetic and enterprising. Early
maturity in finishing live stock for the market by scientific feeding
probably added a fourth to their weight The produce of crops per acre
grew, and drainage and improvements were carried out on all sides, the
greatest improvement being made in the cultivation and management of
strong lands, of which drainage was the foundation, and enabled the
occupier to add swedes to his course of cropping.[654]
It was in this period that Shorthorns, Herefords, and Devons attained
a standard of excellence which has made them sought after by the whole
world; and other breeds were perfected, the Sussex and Aberdeen Angus
especially; while in sheep the improvement was perhaps even
greater.[655] The improved Lincolns, Oxford Downs, Hampshire Downs,
and Shropshires took their place as standard breeds at this period. In
1866, after many years of expectation and disappointment,
agriculturists were furnished with statistics which are trustworthy
for practical purpose, but are somewhat vitiated by the fact that the
live stock census was taken on March 5, which obviously omitted a
large number of young stock; so that those for 1867, when the census
was taken on June 25, are better for purposes of comparison with those
of subsequent years, when the census has been taken on June 4 or 5.
Between 1867 and 1878 the cattle in England and Wales had increased
from 4,013,564 to 4,642,641, though sheep had diminished from
22,025,498 to 21,369,810.[656] The total acreage under cultivation had
increased from 25,451,526 acres to 27,164,326 acres in the same
period.
There was, however, one black shadow in this fair picture: in 1865
England was invaded by the rinderpest, which spread with alarming
rapidity, killing 2,000 cows in a month from its first appearance, and
within six months infecting thirty-six counties.[657] The alarm was
general, and town and country meetings were held in the various
districts where the disease appeared to concert measures of defence.
The Privy Council issued an order empowering Justices to appoint
inspectors authorized to seize and slaughter any animal labouring
under such diseases; but, in spite of this, the plague raged with
redoubled fury throughout September. There was gross mismanagement in
combating it, for the inspectors were often ignorant men, and no
compensation was paid for slaughter, so that farmers often sold off
most of their diseased stock before hoisting the black flag. The
ravages of the disease in the London cow-houses was fearful, as might
be expected, and they are said to have been left empty; by no means an
unmixed evil, as the keeping of cow-houses in towns was a glaring
defiance of the most obvious sanitary laws. In October a Commission
was appointed to investigate the origin and nature of the disease, and
the first return showed a total of 17,673 animals attacked. By March
9, 1866, 117,664 animals had died from the plague, and 26,135 been
killed in the attempt to stay it. By the end of August the disease had
been brought within very narrow limits, and was eventually stamped out
by the resolute slaughter of all infected animals. By November 24 the
number of diseased animals that had died or been killed was
209,332,[658] and the loss to the nation was reckoned at £3,000,000.
The disease was brought by animals exported from Russia, who came from
Revel, via the Baltic, to Hull. In 1872, cattle brought to the same
port infected the cattle of the East Riding of Yorkshire, but this
outbreak was checked before much damage had been done, and since 1877
there has been no trace of this dreaded disease in the kingdom. The
cattle plague, rinderpest, or steppe murrain, is said[659] to have
first appeared in England in 1665, the year of the Great Plague, and
reappeared in 1714, when it came from Holland, but did little damage,
being chiefly confined to the neighbourhood of London. The next
outbreak was in 1745, and lasted for twelve years, undoubtedly coming
from Holland; it is said to have caused such destruction among the
cattle, that much of the grass land in England was ploughed up and
planted with corn, so that the exports of grain increased largely. In
1769 it came again, but only affected a few localities, and
disappeared in 1771, not to return till 1865.
Foot and mouth disease was first observed in England in 1839,[660]
and it was malignant in 1840-1, when cattle, sheep, and pigs were
attacked as they were during the serious outbreak of 1871-2. In 1883
no less than 219,289 cattle were attacked, besides 217,492 sheep, and
24,332 pigs, when the disease was worse than it has ever been in
England. Since then, though there have been occasional outbreaks, it
has much abated. Another dread scourge of cattle, pleuro-pneumonia,
was at its worst in 1872, a most calamitous year in this respect, when
7,983 cattle were attacked. In 1890 the Board of Agriculture assumed
powers with respect to it under the Diseases of Animals Act of that
year, and their consequent action has been attended with great success
in getting rid of the disease.
At the end of this halcyon period farmers had to contend with a new
difficulty, the demand for higher wages by their labourers at the
instigation of Joseph Arch.[661] This famous agitator was born at
Barford in Warwickshire in 1826, and as a boy worked for neighbouring
farmers, educating himself in his spare time. The miserable state of
the labourer which he saw all around him entered into his soul, meat
was rarely seen on his table, even bacon was a luxury in many
cottages. Tea was 6s. to 7s. a lb., sugar 8d., and other prices in
proportion; the labourers stole turnips for food, and every other man
was a poacher. Arch made himself master of everything he undertook,
became famous as a hedger, mower, and ploughman, and being
consequently employed all over the Midlands and South Wales, began to
gauge the discontent of the labourer who was then voiceless, voteless,
and hopeless. His wages by 1872 had increased to 12s. a week, but had
not kept pace with the rise in prices. Bread was 7-1/2d. a loaf; the
labourer had lost the benefit of his children's labour, for they had
now all gone to school; his food was 'usually potatoes, dry bread,
greens, herbs, "kettle broth" made by putting bread in the kettle,
weak tea, bacon sometimes, fresh meat hardly ever.'[662] It is
difficult to realize that at the end of the third quarter of the
nineteenth century, when Gladstone said the prosperity of the country
was advancing 'by leaps and bounds', that any class of the community
_in full work_ could live under such wretched conditions. Arch came to
the conclusion that labour could only improve its position when
organized, and the Agricultural Labourers' Union was initiated in
1872. Not that the idea of obtaining better conditions by combination
was new to the rural labourer. It was attempted in 1832 in Dorset, but
speedily crushed, and not till 1865 was a new union founded in
Scotland, which was followed by a strike in Buckinghamshire in 1867,
and the foundation of a union in Herefordshire in 1871.[663] It was
determined to ask for 16s. a week and a 9-1/2 hours' working day,
which the farmers refused to grant, and the men struck. The agitation
spread all over England, and was often conducted unwisely and with a
bitter spirit, but the labourer was embittered by generations of
sordid misery. Very reluctantly the farmers gave way, and generally
speaking wages went up during the agitation to 14s. or 15s. a week,
though Arch himself admits that even during the height of it they were
often only 11s. and 12s. With the bad times, about 1879, wages began
to fall again, and men were leaving the Agricultural Union; by 1882
Arch says many were again taking what the farmer chose to give. From
1884 the Union steadily declined, and after a temporary revival about
1890, practically collapsed in 1894. Other unions had been started,
but were then going down hill, and in 1906 only two remained in a
moribund condition. Their main object, to raise the labourer's wages,
was largely counteracted by the acute depression in agriculture, and
though there has since been considerable recovery, there are districts
in England to-day where he only gets 11s. and 12s. a week.
The Labourers' Union helped to deal a severe blow to the 'gang
system', which had grown up at the beginning of the century (when the
high corn prices led to the breaking up of land where there were no
labourers, so that 'gangs' were collected to cultivate it[664]), by
which overseers, often coarse bullies, employed and sweated gangs
sometimes numbering 60 or 70 persons, including small children, and
women, the latter frequently very bad specimens of their sex. These
gangs went turnip-singling, bean-dropping, weeding &c., while
pea-picking gangs ran to 400 or 500. Though some of these gangs were
properly managed, the system was a bad one, and the Union and the
Education Acts helped its disappearance.
FOOTNOTES:
[613] Cylindrical pipes came in about 1843, though they had been
recommended in 1727 by Switzer.
[614] _R.A.S.E. Journal_ (1st series), xxii. 260.
[615] _R.A.S.E. Journal_, 1890, pp. 1 sq.
[616] Ibid., 1894, pp. 205 sq.
[617] McCombie, _Cattle and Cattle Breeders_, p. 33.
[618] These classes, however, did not comprise all the then known
breeds of live stock.
[619] _R.A.S.E. Journal_, 1892, pp. 479 sq.
[620] At the show at Birmingham In 1898 there were 22 entries of
Longhorns; in 1899 a Longhorn Cattle Society was established, and the
herd-book resuscitated. More than twenty herds of the breed are now
well established.
[621] _R.A.S.E. Journal_, 1901, p. 24.
[622] Caird, _English Agriculture in 1850-1_, pp. 252 sq.
[623] Porter, _Progress of the Nation_, p. 142.
[624] _R.A.S.E. Journal_, 1901, p. 25.
[625] Ibid. 1896, p. 96.
[626] Ibid. (1st ser.), vi. 2.
[627] Ibid. (1st ser.), v. 102.
[628] 1838, 64s. 7d; 1839, 70s. 8d.; 1840, 66s. 4d.; 1841, 64s. 4d.
[629] Tooke, _History of Prices_, iv. 19.
[630] C. Wren Hoskyns, _Agricultural Statistics_, p. 5.
[631] The abnormal prices during the Crimean War cannot fairly be
taken into account. The home and foreign supplies of wheat and flour
from 1839-46 were:--
Home Supplies. Foreign Supplies.
qrs. qrs.
1839-40 4,022,000 1,762,482
1840-1 3,870,648 1,925,241
1841-2 3,626,173 2,985,422
1842-3 5,078,989 2,405,217
1843-4 5,213,454 1,606,912
1844-5 6,664,368 476,190
1845-6 5,699,969 2,732,134
(Tooke, _History of Prices_, iv. 414.)
1844-5 was a very abundant crop, and the threatened repeal of the Corn
Laws induced farmers to send all the corn possible to market.
[632] Tooke, _History of Prices_, iv. 32.
[633] Cobden's Speech, March 12, 1844.
[634] Tooke, _History of Prices_, iv. 142.
[635] From evidence collected by Mr. Austin in the southern counties.
[636] _Progress of Nation_, pp. 137 sq. For the amount imported before
that date, see Appendix 2.
[637] Walpole, _History of England_, iv. 63 sq. Cobden apparently
never contemplated such low prices for corn as have prevailed since
1883. In his speech of March 12, 1844, he mentioned 50s. a quarter as
a probable price under free trade, and he died before the full effect
of foreign competition was felt by the English farmer.
[638] McCulloch, _Commercial Dictionary_, 1847, p. 274. See below, pp.
325 sq.
[639] Caird, _English Agriculture in 1850-1_, p. 498.
[640] Ibid. p. 490.
[641] _Victoria County History: Warwickshire_, ii. 277.
[642] Caird, _op. cit._, p. 481.
[643] Caird, _op. cit._ p. 507.
[644] Hasbach, _op. cit._ pp. 220, 226.
[645] Cobden's Speech, March 12, 1844.
[646] Mr. Pusey, one of the best informed agriculturists of the day,
estimated the produce of wheat per acre in 1840 at 26
bushels.--_R.A.S.E. Journal_, 1890, p. 20.
[647] Caird, _English Farming in 1850-1_, p. 474.
[648] _Progress of the Nation_.
[649] Thorold Rogers, _History of Agriculture and Prices_, v. 29.
[650] _Progress of the Nation_, pp. 137-9.
[651] Yet as the growth of population overtakes the corn and meat
supply, these prophets may in the end prove correct.
[652] The Great Exhibition of 1851 was said to have widely diffused
the use of improved implements.--_R.A.S.E. Journal_, 1856, p. 54.
[653] _R.A.S.E. Journal_, 1890, p. 34.
[654] _R.A.S.E. Journal_, 1856, p. 60.
[655] Ibid. 1901, p. 30. See below, p. 343.
[656] _Board of Agriculture Returns_, 1878, and _R.A.S.E. Journal_,
1868, p. 239. Young estimated the number of cattle in England in 1770
at 2,852,048, including 684,491 draught cattle.--_Eastern Tour_, iv.
456.
[657] _R.A.S.E. Journal_, (2nd ser.), ii. 230.
[658] Ibid. iii. 430.
[659] _R.A.S.E. Journal_ (2nd ser.), ii. 270.
[660] See _Autobiography of Joseph Arch_.
[661] Ibid. ix. 274.
[662] In many districts, however, his food was better than this.
[663] Hasbach, _op. cit._, pp. 276-7.
[664] Hasbach, _op. cit._, pp. 193, et seq. The Gangs Act (30 & 31
Vict. c. 130) had already brought the system under control.