Present and former condition of the country--Progress of
cultivation--Evil influence of feudalism--State of
agriculture in the sixteenth century--Modern
improvements--Prices of wheat--Increased breadth of land
under cultivation--Average consumption of wheat--Implements
of agriculture now in use--Number of agriculturists in Great
Britain.
It is the remark of foreigners, as they travel from the sea-coast to
London, that the country is a garden. It has taken nineteen centuries to
make it such a garden. The marshes in which the legions of Julius Caesar
had to fight, up to their loins, with the Britons, to whom these swamps
were habitual, are now drained. The dense woods in which the Druids
worshipped are now cleared. Populous towns and cheerful villages offer
themselves on every side. Wherever the eye reaches there is cultivation.
Instead of a few scattered families painfully earning a subsistence by
the chace, or by tilling the land without the knowledge and the
instruments that science has given to the aid of manual labour,--that
cultivation is carried on with a systematic routine that improves the
fertility of a good season, and diminishes the evils of a bad. Instead
of the country being divided amongst hostile tribes, who have little
communication, the whole territory is covered with a network of roads,
and canals, and navigable rivers, and railroads, through which means
there is an universal market, and wherever there is demand there is
instant supply. Rightly considered, there is no branch of production
which has so largely benefited by the power of knowledge as that of
agriculture. It was ages before the great physical changes were
accomplished which we now behold on every side; and we are still in a
state of progress towards the perfection of those results which an
over-ruling Providence had in store for the human race, in the gradual
manifestation of those discoveries which have already so changed our
condition and the condition of the world.
The history of cultivation in Great Britain is full of instruction as
regards the inefficiency of mere traditional practice and the slowness
with which scientific improvement establishes its dominion. It is no
part of our plan to follow out this history; but a few scattered facts
may not be without their value.
[Illustration: 1. The plough. 2. The pole. 3. The share (various). 4.
The handle, or plough-tail. 5. Yokes.]
The oppressions of tenants that were perpetrated under the feudal
system, when ignorant lords of manors impeded production by every
species of extortion, may be estimated by one or two circumstances.
There can be no doubt that the prosperity of a tenant is the best
security for the landlord's due share of the produce of the land.
Without manure, in some form or other, the land cannot be fertilized:
the landlords knew this, but they required to have a monopoly of the
fertility. Their tenants kept a few sheep, but the landlords reserved to
themselves the exclusive privilege of having a sheepfold; so that the
little tenants could not fold their own sheep on their own lands, but
were obliged to let them be folded with those of their lord, or pay a
fine.[17] The flour-mill was the exclusive property of the manorial
lord, whether lay or ecclesiastical; and whatever the distance, or
however bad the road, the tenant could grind nowhere but at the lord's
mill. No doubt the rent of land was exceedingly low, and the lord was
obliged to maintain himself and his dependents by adding something
considerable to his means by many forms of legalized extortion. The rent
of land was so low because the produce was inconsiderable, to an extent
which will be scarcely comprehended by modern husbandmen. In the
law-commentary called 'Fleta,' written about the end of the thirteenth
century, the author says the farmer will be a loser unless corn be dear,
if he obtains from an acre of wheat only three times the seed sown. He
calculated the low produce at six bushels an acre: the average produce
was perhaps little higher; we have distinct records of its being no
higher a century afterwards. In 1390, at Hawsted, near Bury, the produce
of the manor-farm was forty-two quarters of wheat, or three hundred and
thirty-six bushels, from fifty-seven acres; and upon an average of three
years sixty-one acres produced only seventy quarters, or five hundred
and sixty bushels. Sir John Cullum, who collected these details from the
records of his own property, says, "no particular dearness of corn
followed, so that, probably, those very scanty crops were the usual and
ordinary effects of the imperfect husbandry then practised." The
husbandry was so imperfect that an unfavourable season for corn-crops,
which in our days would have been compensated by a greater production of
green crops, was followed by famine. When the ground was too hard, the
seed could not be sown for want of the sufficient machine-power of
plough and harrow. The chief instrument used was as weak and imperfect
as the plough which we see depicted in Egyptian monuments, and which is
still found in parts of Syria. The Oriental ploughman was with such an
instrument obliged to bend over his plough, and load it with all the
weight of his body, to prevent it merely scratching the ground instead
of turning it up. His labour was great and his care incessant, as we may
judge from the words of our Saviour,--"No man having put his hand to the
plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God." Latimer, the
Protestant martyr, in his 'Sermon of the Plough,' in which he holds that
"preaching of the Gospel is one of God's plough-works, and the preacher
is one of God's ploughmen," describes the labour upon which he raises
his parallel: "For as the ploughman first setteth forth his plough, and
then tilleth his land and breaketh it in furrows, and sometimes ridgeth
it up again; and at another time harroweth it and clotteth it, and
sometimes dungeth it and hedgeth it, diggeth it and weedeth it, purgeth
it and maketh it clean,--so the prelate, the preacher, hath many divers
offices to do." Latimer was the son of a Liecestershire farmer, and knew
practically what he was talking about. He knew that the land would not
bear an adequate crop without all this various and often-repeated
labour. And yet the labour was so inadequately performed, that a few
years after he had preached this famous sermon, we are told by a
credible writer of the times of Queen Mary--William Bulleyn, a physician
and botanist--that in 1555 "bread was so scant, insomuch that the plain
poor people did make very much of acorns." A few years onward a great
impulse was given to husbandry through various causes, amongst which the
increased abundance of the precious metals through the opening of the
mines of South America had no inconsiderable influence. The industrious
spirit of England was fairly roused from a long sleep in the days of
Queen Elizabeth. Harrison, in his 'Description of Britain,' says, "The
soil is even now in these our days grown to be much more fruitful than
it hath been in times past." This historian of manners saw the reason.
"In times past" there was "idle and negligent occupation;" but when he
wrote (1593) "our countrymen are grown to be more painful, skilful, and
careful, through recompense of gain." The cultivators had their share of
the benefits of cultivation; they had their "recompense of gain."
Capital had been spread amongst the class of tenants: they were no
longer miserable dependents upon their grasping lords. For a century or
so onward the improvements in agriculture were not very decided. The
rotation of crops was unknown; and winter food for sheep and cattle not
being raised, the greater number were slaughtered and salted at
Martinmas. The fleeces were wretchedly small, for the few sheep nibbled
the stubbles and commons bare till the spring-time. The carcases of beef
were not half their present size. At the beginning of the last century
the turnip cultivation was introduced, and in the middle of the century
the horse-hoeing husbandry came into use. Our agricultural revolution
was fairly begun a hundred years ago; and yet for many years the value
of manure was very imperfectly understood, and even up to our own time
it has been wasted in every direction. There is given in Sir John
Cullum's book an abstract of the lease of a farm in 1753. The tenant was
to be allowed two shillings for every load of manure that he brought
from Bury, about four miles distant. During twenty-one years the
landlord was charged with only one load. At that period all agriculture
was in a great degree traditional. There were no agricultural
societies--no special journals for this great branch of national
industry. Arthur Young applied his shrewd and observing talent to the
dissemination of farming knowledge; but the agricultural mind, with very
few exceptions, rejected book-knowledge as vain and impertinent.
Chemistry applied to the soil was as unknown to the cultivator as the
perturbations of the planets. Geology was an affair of conjecture, and
had assumed no form of utility. Meteorology entered into no farmer's
mode of estimating the comparative value of one site and another. Sir
John Cullum made a most curious and instructive estimate of the science
of the Suffolk farmers in 1784, when he wrote,--"The farm-houses are in
general well furnished with every convenient accommodation. Into many of
them a _barometer_ has of late years been introduced--a most useful
instrument for the husbandman, and which is mentioned here as _a
striking instance of the intelligence of this period_."
The wars of the French Revolution, and the high prices consequent upon
the almost utter absence of foreign supplies, gave a stimulus to
agriculture, which principally displayed itself in the effort to bring
waste lands into cultivation. From 1790 to 1819, a period of thirty
years, there were two thousand one hundred and sixty-nine Inclosure
Bills passed by Parliament. In the first ten years of this period the
average price of wheat had increased ten shillings above the average of
the ten years from 1780 to 1789. In the second ten years it had
increased thirty-six shillings above that average. In the third ten
years it was very nearly double, being 88_s._ 8_d._ from 1810 to 1819,
and 45_s._ 9_d._ from 1780 to 1789. A portion of these prices, however,
must be attributed to a depreciated currency. During that period of
thirty years, very few of the great scientific improvements which have
cheapened production had been introduced, although better modes of
cultivation unquestionably prevailed. During the twenty years from 1820
to 1839 there were only three hundred and thirty-one Inclosure Bills
passed; and the price of wheat had fallen to about the average of the
ten years from 1790 to 1799, and it continued at that average for
another ten years. In the ten years from 1840 to 1849, we cannot gather
the amount of land brought into new cultivation from the number of
Inclosure Bills, as there was a General Inclosure Act passed in 1835, to
prevent the expense of particular bills for small tracts of land. But it
has been calculated that, while more than three million acres were
brought into cultivation in the twenty years from 1800 to 1819, about
one million acres only were inclosed in the thirty years from 1820 to
1849.[18] If we look then, as we shall briefly do, at the wonderfully
increased production of Great Britain, we shall be naturally led to the
conclusion that some cause, much more efficient than the inclosure of
waste lands, has given us the means of feeding a population which has
doubled since the beginning of the century. This production is the
result of the whole course of improvement effected by science, and
stimulated by capital. The Bedford Level was drained by our ancestors.
The fens of Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire have been drained
effectually in our time. That luxuriant flat now rejoices in waving
corn-crops over many a mile. A few years ago it was a land of stagnant
ditches; where little wind-mills, that looked to the solitary traveller
through that cold district like the toys of children, lifted the water
out of the trenches, and left an isolated acre or two of dry earth for
man to toil in. Now mighty steam-pumps carry the water into artificial
rivers, and the whole region is unrivalled for fertility.
It is estimated by some statists that the average consumption of wheat
for each individual of the population is eight bushels. Others estimate
that consumption at six bushels. It will be sufficient for a broad view
of the increase of production, as compared with the increase of
population, to take the consumption at eight bushels, or a quarter of
wheat per head. In the ten years from 1801 to 1810, deducting an annual
average of 600,000 quarters of foreign wheat and flour imported, the
population in 1811 being 11,769,725, the number fed by wheat of home
growth was somewhat above eleven millions. In the ten years from 1841 to
1850, deducting an annual average of 3,000,000 quarters of foreign wheat
and flour, the population in 1851 being 21,121,967, the number fed by
wheat of home growth was somewhat above eighteen millions. The
productive power of the country had increased, in the course of fifty
years, to the enormous extent of giving subsistence, in one article of
agricultural produce alone, to seven millions of people. The population
in 1751 was estimated at little more than seven millions. It has trebled
in a century; and we may be perfectly sure that the production of the
land has far more than trebled in that period. The probability is that
it has quadrupled; for there is no doubt that the great bulk of the
people are better fed than in 1751, when rye-bread was the common
sustenance of the great body of labourers throughout the country.
Let us endeavour to take a rapid view of the implements of agriculture
in common use at the present time--implements which have been described
as "intended not to bring about new conditions of soil, nor to yield
new products of any kind, but to do with more certainty and cheapness
what had been done hitherto by employing the rude implements of former
centuries." Such are the words of Mr. Pusey's admirable Report on the
Agricultural Implements in the 'Exhibition of the Works of Industry of
all Nations.' We cannot do better than furnish a few slight notices of
the leading subjects of this report.
The plough and the harrow were the sole instruments of tillage at the
beginning of this century. Bloomfield, in his 'Farmer's Boy,' describes
them:--
"The ploughs move heavily, and strong the soil,
And clogging harrows with augmented toil
Dive deep."
The old plough used to be drawn with four horses; and they were needed.
It was a cumbrous instrument, "adapted to the clay soils when those
soils were the chief source of corn to the country, and had been handed
down from father to son, after the heavy lands had been widely laid down
to grazing-ground, and the former downs had become our principal arable
land." The modern plough is an implement constructed on mathematical
principles, which, by its mould-board, "raising each slice of earth
(furrow-slice) from its flat position, through an upright one, lays it
over half inclined on the preceding slice." The perfect instrument
produces the skilled labourer. A good ploughman will set up a pole a
quarter of a mile distant, and trace a furrow so true up to that goal
that no eye can detect any divergence from absolute straightness. Mr.
Pusey justly says that this is a triumph of art.
With an agriculture that permits no waste, much of the picturesque has
fled from our fields. Bloomfield describes the repose of the ploughman
after he has driven his team to the boundary of his furrow:--
"Welcome green headland! firm beneath his feet;
Welcome the friendly bank's refreshing seat;
There, warm with toil, his panting horses browse
Their sheltering canopy of pendent boughs."
Gone is the green headland; gone the cowslip bank; gone the pendent
boughs. The furrow runs up to the extremest point of a vast field
without hedges. Gone, too, are the green slips between the lands of
common fields. Their very names of "balk" and "feather" are obsolete.
These adornments of the landscape are inconsistent with the demands of a
population that doubles itself in half a century. The labourer has small
rest, and the soil has less. Under the old husbandry, before the culture
of the green crops, one-third of the arable land was always idle. Two
years of grain-crop, and one year of fallow, was the invariable rule.
Look how the land is worked now. The plough and the harrow turn up and
pulverize the soil, but they do it much more effectually than of old.
The roller is a noble iron instrument, instead of an old pollard. Modern
ingenuity has added the clod-crusher. But something was still wanting
for the better preparation of land for seed--this is the scarifier or
cultivator; which, according to Mr. Pusey, will save one half of the
horse-labour employed upon the plough. Into the details of this saving
it is no part of our purpose to enter.[19] We give a cut of the
implement, covering as much ground in width as 8-1/2 ploughs.
[Illustration: Clod-crusher.]
[Illustration: Scarifier.]
We proceed to "Instruments used in the Cultivation of Crops." Mr. Pusey
tells us that "the sower with his seed-lip has almost vanished from
southern England, driven out by a complicated machine, the drill,
depositing the seed in rows, and drawn by several horses." We miss the
sower; and the next generation may require a commentary upon the many
religious and moral images that arose out of his primitive occupation.
When James Montgomery says of the seed of knowledge, "broadcast it o'er
the land," some may one day ask what "broadcast" means. But the drill
does not only sow the seed; it deposits artificial manures for the
reception of the seed. The bones that were thrown upon the dunghill are
now crushed. The mountains of fertilizing matter that have been
accumulated through ages on islands of the Pacific, from the deposits of
birds resting in their flight upon rocks of that ocean, and which we
call guano, now form a great article of commerce. Superphosphate,
prepared from bones, or from the animal remains of geological ages, is
another of the precious dusts which the drill economizes. There are even
drills for dropping water combined with superphosphate. "Such," says Mr.
Pusey, "is the elastic yet accurate pliability with which, in
agriculture, mechanism has seconded chemistry." The system of
horse-hoeing, which is the great principle of modern husbandry, entirely
depends upon the use of the drill. The horse-hoe cannot be worked unless
the plants are in rows. Such a hoe as this will clean at once nine rows
of wheat, six of beans, and four of turnips. To manage such an
instrument requires "a steady and cool hand." The skilled labourer is as
essential as the beautiful machine.
[Illustration: Horse-hoe.]
Of instruments for gathering the harvest, the most important are
reaping-machines. In the United States they are sold to a great extent.
Mr. M'Cormick, who completed his invention in 1845, states that the
demand reaches to a thousand annually. Mr. Pusey says of this machine
that, "in bad districts and late seasons, it may often enable the farmer
to save the crop." In Scotland and the north of England Mr. Bell's
reaping-machine is coming into extensive use. The Americans have also
their mowing-machines, drawn by two horses, which mow, upon an average,
six acres of grass per day. The haymaking machines, as labour-saving
instruments, are not uncommon in England.
Machines for preparing corn for market are amongst the most important
inventions of modern times. Here, indeed, agriculture assumes many of
the external features of a manufacture. Steam comes prominently into
action. In many large farms there is fixed steam-power; and most
efficient it is. But the moveable steam-engine comes to the aid of the
small farmer; and in some districts that power is let out to those who
want it. By this little engine applied to a thrashing-machine, corn is
thrashed at once from the rick, instead of being carried into the barn.
Here is a representation of the combined steam-engine and
thrashing-machine. The thrashing-machine with horse-power is that
generally used in England. Rarely, now, can the beautiful description of
Cowper be realized:--
"Thump after thump resounds the constant flail,
That seems to swing uncertain, and yet falls
Full on the destined ear."
[Illustration: Moveable steam-engine and thrashing-machine.]
Few now wield that ancient instrument. Nor is the chaff now separated
from the corn by the action of the wind, which was called winnowing, but
we have the winnowing-machine, by which forty quarters of wheat can be
taken from the thrashing-machine and prepared for the market in five
hours.
But machinery does not end here. The food of stock is prepared by
machines. First, there is the turnip-cutter. Our 'Farmer's Boy' will
tell us how his sheep and kine were fed in the winter fifty years
ago:--
[Illustration: Thrashing-machine with horse-power.]
"No tender ewe can break her nightly fast,
Nor heifer strong begin the cold repast,
Till Giles with ponderous beetle foremost go,
And scattering splinters fly at every blow;
When, pressing round him, eager for the prize,
From their mix'd breath warm exhalations rise."
We are told that "lambs fed with a turnip-cutter would be worth more at
the end of a winter by eight shillings a head than lambs fed on whole
turnips." The chaff-cutter is an instrument equally valuable.
The last machine which we shall mention is connected with the greatest
of all improvements in the crop-producing power of British land--the
system of tile-draining. Pipes are now made by machinery; and land may
be effectually drained at a cost of 4_l._ per acre.
[Illustration: Draining-tile machine.]
The farmers of England have made what we may fairly call heroic efforts
to meet foreign competition; but their efforts would have been
comparatively vain had science not come to the aid of production.
According to the Census of 1851, the total population of Great Britain
is 20,959,477--in round numbers, twenty-one millions. In the 'Return of
Occupations,' one-half of this entire population is found under the
family designation--such as child at home, child at school, wife,
daughter, sister, niece, with no particular occupation attributed to
them. They are important members of the state; they are growing into
future producers, or they preside over the household comforts, without
which there is little systematic industry. But they are not direct
producers. Of this half of the entire population, one-fifth belong to
the class of cultivators, viz.:--
Male. Female.
Holders of farms 275,676 28,044
Farmers' relatives, in-door 137,446
Out-door labourers 1,006,728 70,899
Farm-servants, in-door 235,943 128,251
Shepherds, out-door 19,075
Woodmen 9,832
Gardeners 78,462 2,484
Farm bailiffs 12,805
Graziers 3,036
____________ __________
1,779,003 229,678
This total (in which we omit the farmers' wives and daughters, amounting
to about 240,000) shows that one-fifth of the working population provide
food, with the exception of foreign produce, for themselves and families
and the other four-fifths of the population. Such a result could not be
accomplished without the appliances of scientific power which we have
described in this chapter. In the early steps of British society a very
small proportion of labour could be spared for other purposes than the
cultivation of the soil. It has been held that a community is
considerably advanced when it can spare one man in three from working
upon the land. Only twenty-six per cent of our adult males are
agricultural--that is, three men labour at some other employment, while
one cultivates the land. During the last forty years the proportion of
agricultural employment, in comparison with manufacturing and
commercial, has been constantly decreasing; and is now about twenty per
cent., whereas in 1811 it was thirty-five per cent. of all occupations.
[17] Cullum's 'History of Hawsted.'
[18] See various tables in Porter's 'Progress of the Nation.'
[19] See 'Journal of Royal Agricultural Society,' vol. xii. p. 595.