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UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
AT LOS ANGELES

^

THE RELATIONS OF RENTS, WAGES AND
PROFITS IN AGRICULTURE, AND THEIR
BEARING ON RURAL DEPOPULATION

2)i

The Relations of Rents, Wages
and Profits in Agriculture, and
their Bearing on Rural De-
population

BY

J. S. NICHOLSON, M.A., D.Sc.

Professor of Political Economy in the University of Edinburgh.,

AUTHOR OF "effects OF MACHINERY ON WAGES," " THE HISTORY OF THE
ENGLISH CORN LAWS," ETC., ETC.

LONDON

SWAN SONNENSCHEIN & CO., LIM.

New York: CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

1906

^ a > 'J % i i

PRINTED BY

COWAN AND CO., LTD.

PERTH

» • • • # ♦

WD

PREFACE

:^ In the last of the series of Gilbey Lectures,^ delivered

i^, in the University of Cambridge in the May Term,

~/f^ 1906, the object has been to present a general view

■ from the historical standpoint of the Relations of

* Rents, Profits and Wages in English Agriculture,

^ and to discuss the bearing on Rural Depopulation,

and other questions of popular interest at the present

time, e.£:, Small Holdings.

^ In a brief survey extending over six centuries,

it was necessary to confine the attention to the

^ main lines of development, although throughout

^ the economic tendencies have been brought to the

test of crucial facts.
^^ For the earlier history I am much indebted to
• ~^ Thorold Roger's " History of Agriculture and Prices,"
^ and " Six Centuries of English Work and Wages " ;
\^ Mr. Seebohm's " English Village Community " ; Dr.
V Cunningham's " Growth of English Industry and

^ In 1904 the subject of the Lectures was the " History of
the English Corn Laws"; and in 1905 "Rates and
Taxes as affecting Agriculture,'' both published by Messrs.
Sonnenschein, uniform with this edition.

V

vi Preface

Commerce," and Professor Ashley's " Economic His-
tory." For the later evidence I have used greatly
various papers in i\\Q Journal of the Royal Statistical
Society, by Major Craigie, Mr. Wilson Fox, and
others ; the two Reports on Agricultural Wages
by the latter writer ; the Reports of the last two
Commissions on Agricultural Depression (published
in 1882 and 1897), and finally, the general Report
of the last Census (1901).

As the main object was to give a general view,
I have avoided detailed references.

Mr. A. B. Clark, M.A., my Assistant and Lecturer
in Economics in the University, has kindly revised
and corrected the proofs,

J. SHIELD NICHOLSON.

University of Edinburgh,
September, 1906.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

THE HISTORY OF AGRICULTURAL RENT IN ENGLAND

PAGE

In the early mediceval period no sharp distinction between rents,
wages and profits — Labour Rents — the typical naanor and
serfdom — break-up of the manorial system — the emergence
of the tenant farmer and the yeoman — the enclosures for
sheep farming and rural depopulation in the sixteenth
century — improvements in agriculture by the landowners
in the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries, and the
rise in rent — further rise in rent during the great war —
survey of the course of rent in the nineteenth century —
serious fall since 1878 — the example of the Duke of Bed-
ford's estates — general conclusion of the effects of economic
progress on agricultural rents in England . . . i

CHAPTER n

AGRICULTURAL CAPITAL AND PROFITS

In the early mediaeval period the value of the stock, live and
dead, on agricultural land three times the capital value of
the land itself— large farming under bailiff supervision with
forced labour — effects of the Black Death — the landlords'
remedy — examination of the land and stock lease — the
enclosures and sonvertible husbandry in the sixteenth
century — the profits of tenant farming in the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries — the relations of landlord and
tenant — the views of Rogers and Adam Smith compared
on the security of the tenant's capital — high profits of
agriculture at the end of the eighteenth century — survey
of the progress of agriculture in the nineteenth century
with regard to farming, capital, and profits — the recent
depression and the losses in cnpital and profits. . . 42

vii

viii Contents

CHAPTER III

AGRICULTURAL WAGES

PAGE

Progress as regards real wages in agriculture greater in the
mediaeval period up to the end of the fifteenth century than
in any subsequent period — the fifteenth century the golden
age of agricultural labour — these opinions examined —
the effects of the Ehzabethau legislation on the Poor and
Employment — effects of the law of settlement — low rates of
wages in spite of the great prosperity in agriculture about
the end of the eighteenth century — the growth of agrarian
pauperism before 1834 — hardships of the agricultural
labourer — evils only partially remedied by the Act of
1834— surplus rural labour and low wages after the
repeal of the Corn Laws — the evils of the " gang "
system — remedial legislation — rise in wages during last
fifty years — agricultural wages always lower than corre-
sponding wages in the towns — wages and employment of
women and children in agriculture — comparison with other
countries ....... 88

CHAPTER IV

rural depopulation
Popular exaggerations on the nature and extent of rural
depopulation examined — the census of 1901 — meaning of
rural and urban — non-agricultural rural occupations —
growth of population greatest not in the large cities but
in the towns under 100,000 — no absolute decline in rural
districts on the whole, but serious decline in some parts —
great falling off of the workers on agricultural land —
number of farmers about the same — women and children
now very little employed in agriculture — contrast of
England with Germany and Austria and other countries
as regards the employment of women — complaints of
rural depopulation and the undue growth of London very
common from the sixteenth century onwards — rural depopu-
lation in other countries — France, Germany, Australasia,
etc. — consideration of the general causes and of some sug-
gested remedies of rural depopulation — small holdings —
general conclusion of the broad historical survey of the
relations of landlord, farmer, and labourer . . 131

THE RELATIONS OF RENTS, WAGES,
AND PROFITS IN AGRICULTURE,
AND THEIR BEARING ON RURAL
DEPOPULATION

CHAPTER I

THE HISTORY OF AGRICULTURAL RENT
IN ENGLAND

In tracing the history of agricultural rent
in England there are to be considered two
main questions, closely connected, it is true,
but logically different.

There is first the question of the historical
changes in the nature of rent, involving
the relations of landlord and tenant, and

A

2 RentSy Wages, and Profits in Agriculture

the kind of payments that are made in the
form of rent. And secondly, there is the
question of the historical changes in the
amount or value of the rent. The two sets
of questions are seen to be closely related,
from the fact that the amount of the rent
that is exacted by the landlord is found to
depend, partly at any rate, on the kind of
payment that is made, and partly also on
the general relations of landlord and tenant ;
and the further we go back the greater
the importance of the qualitative character
of the rent in determining its quantity.
The historical method is specially suited for
a study of agricultural rent, because even at
the present day all the important forms of
rent that have appeared in the past are
still represented, and we constantly have
reversions to older ideas.

Sir Henry Maine has well said that an
ancient legal conception corresponds not to

History of Agricultural Rent in England 3

one, but to several modern legal conceptions,
and the same proposition holds good if we
substitute economic for legal.

Under modern conditions in England we
distinguish sharply between rent, profits, and
wages, and the three kinds of income
derived from agricultural land are expressed
in the typical case in terms of money. The
first thing, however, we notice when we
go back to the beginnings of history is,
that the relations of landlord, tenant, and
labourer are not based on monetary
agreements, and the incomes of the three
parties are not reckoned in terms of money.

Before the Norman Conquest the dominant
system of landholding had come to be of
the manorial type, and this type was
intensified under the Norman influence.
In England at the present day there are
still manors, and the lords of these manors
have certain rights and privileges, but they

4 Rents^ Wages, and Profits in Agriculture

are only a shadow of what they were
originally.

At the time of the Domesday Survey the
whole country practically was portioned out
in manors. There are many interesting
questions regarding the origin and meaning
of the manor — both the thing and the
name — but in time the word came to mean
a landed estate, and the typical manor was
a large estate. Perhaps the most important
survival of the manorial system in England
at present is the distribution of a great part
of the country in large estates. In dealing,
then, with the manorial system, we are
dealing with the origin of our system of
large estates and our present landlord and
tenant system. Let us look at the features
of a typical manor in the early mediaeval
period.

The typical manor was a large estate
with a castle or hall, in which, on occasion.

History of Agricultural Rent in England 5

the lord of the manor resided, though the
same person might have several manors
and pass from one to the other. Connected
v^ith the manor were certain local courts,
in which, practically, the power of the lord
of the manor was supreme. It is true that
the general idea of these courts was to act
on customary rules, but in case of dispute,
the decision of the lord of the manor or
his representative was final. Of course I
am only looking at the power of the
manorial courts from the point of view
of landlord and tenant ; but incidentally, we
must notice that, to begin with, the lord
of the manor had such powers that the
tenants were, for the most part, in a state
of serfdom.

They could not leave the estate ; they
could not give their daughters in marriage
without the consent of the lord of the
manor ; they could not sell their stock, and

6 Rents, Wages, and Profits in Agriculture

they were subject to all sorts of police
regulations enforced by the manorial courts.
They were attached to the land, and under
the power of the lord, except so far as that
power was mitigated by custom, and so
far as it clashed with the law of the land
as enforced in the courts of the king.

It is clear that under these conditions
there was no contract for rent in our sense
of the term. But, in fact, very heavy rents
were exacted, though the nature of the
rent was also quite different. In reality,
the rent that the tenant paid was partly
in labour and partly in produce. And if
we were to put a value on the labour and
on the produce, we should find that, to
begin with, the amount that was exacted
was as much as the land could bear,
consistently with leaving enough in the
way of bare subsistence to keep up the
stock of labour.

History of Agricultural Rent in England 7

In a typical manor the estate consisted of
a certain amount of arable land, a large
tract of waste or common, and some
natural meadows. The most interest lies
in the arable. Some of it formed the
home farm or demesne, and some was
held by the serfs. The whole of the
arable land was, as a rule, in three large
open fields — that is, without any fences or
enclosures.

The ordinary holding of a serf was
thirty acres ; but the peculiarity of the
system was that it consisted of scattered
strips, and the demesne land was also
interspersed with the serf land.

Each villein or serf with a full or normal
holding had ten acres in each of the great
fields, and even the ten acres were all
separate — never two together. The acres
were also of a peculiar shape called long
acres. The normal length was a furlong —

8 Rents^ Wages, and Profits in Agriculture

i.e., furrowlong — and the breadth one-tenth
of a furlong. The origin of these propor-
tions is interesting : the furlong was forty
rods in length, and a rod was 5|- yards.
The ploughing was done by a large
plough drawn by eight oxen, and the rod
is supposed to be the breadth of the full
yoke with four abreast. With such a
heavy plough it was natural to have the
furrow as long as possible, but it w^as
considered unlucky to go beyond forty in
any measure, and so the furrowlong or
furlong was only forty of these rods.

These details illustrate the force of
custom in all matters pertaining to land.
For these long acres survived centuries
after their meaning had been forgotten,
and to this day in England we have farms
consisting of scattered acres owing to the
survivals of this system. In fact, it was
the observation of these scattered holdings

History of Agricultural Rent in England g

that led Mr. Seebohm to discover the
original meaning of the system.

The scattering of the long acres was
due to the fact that in ancient times, when
the open field system was in full swing,
the land of the serfs was cultivated
on a peculiar co-operative principle. The
antiquity of co-operation in agriculture is
interesting in the light of recent experi-
ence. Each serf with a full holding had,
as a rule, two oxen, so that four serfs had
to combine to furnish the oxen for a
plough team. There was also the expense,
at that time very great, of providing the
parts of the plough itself — e.g:, iron — the
equipment and the labour of working the
plough. Co-operation was then necessary.

We must now notice another peculiarity
in the holdings. In the ordinary case they
were all equal, each was just thirty acres
and no more. This equality of distribution

lo Rents, Wages, and Profits in Agriculture

leads to another point, namely, that the
land was originally held by a village
community, and at first the strips, or long
acres, were changed every year. The land
was ploughed by the great common
plough, and the produce was divided in
strips of long acres. The scattering gave
each person a share in the good and the
inferior land or produce.

By some this equality in the original
holdings is supposed to point to what we
should call communism, or equal division
of property. And perhaps it was so to
begin with. But long before the Norman
Conquest of England, the inhabitants of
the village community had become serfs to
the lord of the manor. And this equality
in the holdings had become itself a sign
of serfdom. With freedom you get
inequality. The holdings were in the
nature of burdens, involving so much

History of Agricultural Rent in England 1 1

labour rather than privileges giving rise
to so much wealth.

In fact, the lord of the typical manor
had to see that his land was adequately
stocked with men to work it, and the
most simple plan was to keep up the
same number of holdings, and on the
decease of a tenant or serf, one of his sons,
generally the youngest, was compelled to
take a re-grant of the land. These serfs
had not only to cultivate the long acres
which belonged to their part of the estate,
but also the strips which belonged, in a
more special sense, to the lord of the manor
as his home farm. And not only had they
to provide the labour, but generally also
oxen and ploughs. And besides this, they
were compelled to work at the command
of the lord of the manor for different
purposes, and, in fact, he used their labour
as he found it convenient. In return, they

12 Rents, Wages ^ and Profits in Agriculture

had their holdings in the open fields, but
then they were also, as a rule, compelled
to give up part of the produce ; in short,
they paid not only labour rents, but
produce rents. And in strict law, they
and their goods all belonged to the lord
of the manor, though he found it to his
interest to act on certain long-established
rules founded on custom.

Let us now leave out the details, and
look on the nature and the amount of the
rent under this system as a whole. The
power of the landlord was supreme, and
the rents were as great as could be
obtained from the so-called tenants.

The economic progress in the mediceval
period consisted mainly in the conversion
of these heavy rents in labour and produce
into comparatively moderate rents in
money. Coincidently with this, the serfs
gained their personal freedom, and in

History of Agricultural Rent in England 1 3

many cases became practically peasant
proprietors or yeomen.

I shall now try to show how this
great revolution was effected. It is one
of the best examples on record of the
influence of the great economic forces that
are always at work beneath the surface of
society, whatever may be the law of the
land, or the compulsion of custom. It
shows also that in some respects the
growth of the money power has been the
principal agent in the amelioration of the
lot of the masses of the people, for in this
period, and for long after, the masses of
the people were attached to the soil.

The great agency of economic progress
in the mediaeval period was the conversion
of what is called a natural economy into
a money economy, or the substitution of
money payments for payments in labour
and in produce of various kinds. The

14 Rents, Wag^s, and Pi'ojits in Agriculture

process is often described, shortly, by the
term commutation — that is, the commuta-
tion of payments in other things to
payments in money.

This conversion began in England at
a very early time, and had made con-
siderable progress as regards labour rents
and produce rents, before the occurrence of
that great pestilence, the Black Death,
which, from its important effects, has been
called the watershed of economic history.
The lords of the manors had gradually
found it more to their interest to accept
money in place of labour. They could do
with the money what they liked, and, if
necessary, they could hire labour when it
was wanted. The serfs also found it to
their advantage, because it was a step on
the way to freedom, and with their spare
labour they could earn a little more money
than they were compelled to pay in rent.

History of Agricultural Rent in England 1 5

Consequently, before this great pestilence,
a good many of the serfs were paying
money rents for their lands, and receiving
money wages for their labour. The sudden
diminution of the supply of labour caused
by the plague raised the rate of wages
much above what had been customary.
To get labour, landlords tried to induce
the labourers to come from other estates,
and offered more wages. The general
result was that the expense of cultivating
the home farms or the demesne land rose
enormously. Some of the landowners tried
to bring back the old system of forced
labour, but the attempt eventually led to
the Peasant Revolt, and, in fact, the
principle of commutation had been already
carried too far to be reversed. Accordingly,
most of the landlords adopted another
remedy, which has been called by Thorold
Rogers the " land and stock lease." By

1 6 Rents ^ Wages^ and Profits in Agriculture

this plan the landlord let not only the
land, but the stock and capital of all
kinds necessary to work the land. In this
way the serf became a tenant farmer, with
this difference, that he did not provide the
capital. The system was thus very like
the metayer system that still prevails over
large areas of Europe, and still more like
the "share" system of the United States.

It differed from the metayer system in
that the rent was not a customary part
of the produce, but a money payment
which might be varied on the lapse of a
lease. In the course of time the more
industrious and enterprising of these new
tenants were able to buy the stock from
the landowners, and in many cases they
also bought the land subject to certain
payments, which represented the old
burdens and the old feudal obligations.
But as we are only concerned with the

History of Agricultural Rent in England ly

progress of rents, we may leave these small
owners on one side.

With this method of tenant farming
cultivation in common began to lose its
hold. No progress was possible when all
the land was cultivated in the same slovenly
way, with exactly the same crops year after
year. Owing to the progress of the woollen
manufacture on the one side, and the
greater expense of landlord cultivation of
arable on the other, encouragement was
given to the creation of sheep farms.
Large tracts of land, formerly arable,
were converted into pasture for sheep.
This first great period of enclosures lasted
about sixty years — from say 1470 to 1530.
The enclosures were, of course, not uni-
versal — and not all for sheep — but the
sheep farming led to the eviction on a
large scale of the rural population formerly
engaged in agriculture. The landowners

B

1 8 Rents ^ Wages^ and Profits in Agriculture

were often able to get back the land
which was held as copyhold — that is, the
form of property I have described with
the feudal and customary burdens. And
in any case they need not renew the yearly
tenancies.

I may mention at this point also what
might have been taken earlier, namely,
that besides the three large open arable
fields, the village community had certain
customary rights over the waste, as it was
called — that is, the tract of uncultivated
land which lay around the open fields.
Besides this, they had shares, to a custom-
ary amount, in the hay of the permanent
meadows. Legally — that is, by the techni-
cal law — these customary rights depended
solely on the will of the lord of the manor,
and might at any time be cut away or
restricted. And in the period I am now
touching on, some of the landlords carried

History of Agricultural Rent in England 19

their legal rights to an extreme. They
suddenly dispossessed the people of these
customary rights over the waste and
commons. Fortunately, at the same time,
the beginnings of manufactures in the
towns required more labour, and after the
trouble caused by the transition, it may be
said that, on the whole, the prosperity and
power of the nation increased. In time, also,
the natural balance was effected between
sheep and corn, and a system of mixed
farming took the place of the old arable
cultivation in common.

From the economic point of view, the
modern period may be said to begin with
the reign of Elizabeth, and by the end of
that reign, the modern system of letting
land to tenants for a money rent was well
established. The chief points of contrast
with the mediaeval period, beyond those
already noted, are that a larger part of the

20 Rents, Wages, and Profits in Agriculture

produce is now sold for consumption in the
towns, which had increased at the expense
of the country in population. The farming
is carried on more for profit and less for
consumption on the estate. We observe
also, that at the end of this reign (1603)
complaints begin to be frequent that land-
lords are absentees from their estates, and
that their rents are expended in London
and not in the country. So much was this
the case, that on the accession of James II.
a royal proclamation was issued, stating
that the King will be justly offended with
those who stay about London or the Court
unless they are ordinary servants of the
King, and thereby neglect their duties in
the country.

Additional rates were often imposed on
absentees, and generally it was impressed
on the landlords that they had certain
duties in the way of local government to

History of Agriculhiral Rent in England 2 1

perform. With the modern period also,
we find complaints beginning about the
insecurity of the tenants' capital and
the enhancements of rents when any
improvements are made. >

These and other facts indicate the abuses
connected with the extension of the money
power. But on the other hand, we have
also the beginnings of a change in the
nature of rent, that has had most important
consequences on the development of English
agriculture.

Landlords began to find it remunerative
to sink capital in land in order to increase
the rent ; and accordingly, rent comes to
partake of the nature of profits, and no
longer to be derived either from the exac-
tions of monopoly, as in the typical manor,
or simply from the mere use of the natural
powers of the soil before improvements
are made.

22 Rents ^ Wages, and Profits in Agriculture

With the seventeenth century we have
great improvements effected by the land-
lords in drainage. To take an example :
A proprietor named Rowland Vaughan
published an account of the drainage
operations he carried out on his estate in
Herefordshire in 1610, under a curious and
lengthy title, beginning with a reference
to his most approved and long experienced
waterworks, and ending with a phrase
showing that the waterworks would in-
crease the fertility of certain lands by ten
for one. And he gives an example of
certain of his own lands which had been
let at £\o a year, and given up by the
tenant as too dear, being made worth £z^o
a year by these new methods of draining.
At the same time, the profit to be made
by improving land led the moneyed men
of the cities to purchase land, e.g.^ this
Vaughan ; and as Adam Smith points out,

History of Agricultural Rent in England 23

they applied business methods, and in this
way the commerce of the towns led to the
improvement of the country. On the other
hand, these new men, with their mercantile
views, had little of the traditional ideas
of the responsibilities of the landlord as
regards local government, and of his being
generally responsible for the welfare of
the inhabitants of the parish.

At this time the improvements which
attracted most capital and enterprise were
the reclamations of waste lands, and especi-
ally the lands which were liable to be
inundated by floods. This was the case
notably in the fen counties, and also in
the lands lying in the basins of the slow-
moving streams of the Midlands. The use
of embankments may in some cases be
traced back to the time of the Roman
occupation, and all through the Middle
Ages we find examples of the adjustment

24 Rents, Wages, and Profits in Agriculture

of the expenses of the repairs of these
permanent works by commissioners .ac-
cording to the value obtained by the
lands — an early instance of the imposition
of rates according to the principle of better-
ment. But on the whole, the works were
not sufficient, and were not well enough
kept up.

At the beginning of the seventeenth cen-
tury, however, greater powers were obtain-
able by law, by companies of adventurers,
for the reclamation of lands, so that they
could compel the owners to sell them the
lands they required for the construction
of their big drains and levels, just as
at present railways obtain powers of
compulsory purchases.
. As a rule, these enterprises were too
great to be undertaken by private people.
And even the companies at first often
failed to make a profit, and had to

History of Agricultural Rent in England 25

abandon the works. But ultimately these
endeavours were successful, and thousands
of acres of land were reclaimed, either by
new works or by the restoration of the
old embankments.

By far the most interesting of all these
cases is that of the reclamations begun by
Francis, the fourth Earl of Bedford, in 1630.
You will find an account in one of the
most interesting and instructive books ever
written on the economics of agriculture.
I refer to the book entitled : "A Great
Agricultural Estate : being the story of the
origin and administration of Woburn and
Thorney," by the Duke of Bedford. This
book was based on a speech made by the
Duke in 1896. As indicating the value of
the work, I may say that in an appendix
(2) are given accurate accounts of the
expenditure and the revenue of the two
estates named from 1816 to 1896, whilst

26 Rents, Wages, and Profits in Agriculture

a full general account is given from the
seventeenth century. Before I finish, I shall
have to refer to this book in connection
with the nineteenth century and the present
day, but at present I use it as evidence
of the agricultural enterprise of the great
landlords in the seventeenth century. The
Earl of Bedford of that day, and his
associates, spent in three years over ;f 100,000,
and after all failed. His enterprise was
also unpopular, because he employed a
famous Dutchman, Vermuyden (we still
have a big drain called by his name
in the fens), and this Dutchman brought
over foreign labour. The fen - men also
complained of the loss they incurred by
the drainage in destroying the natural
products of the fens in the shape of eels
and wild fowl. The works were made
over to the King, but after the fatal year
of 1649, the next Earl of Bedford became

History of Agricultural Rent in England 27

the undertaker of the Company, and he
was to get 95,000 acres for himself out
of the whole lands reclaimed.

It is impossible to go further into the
details. The general result may be indi-
cated by two or three sentences from the
book itself. " If ever," says the present
Duke, " there was an estate to which
coUectivist ideas regarding land are not
applicable, it is Thorney. Only 300 acres
of culturable land came to the house
of Bedford on the dissolution of the
monasteries. The remainder of the lordship
was won from the sea and the swamps
by patriotic enterprise, hard work, and
lavish expenditure."

This is, of course, in magnitude and in
kind a case of exceptional interest, but on
a lesser scale and in different ways, from
the seventeenth century onwards, the great

28 Rents ^ Wages, and Profits in Agriculture

landowners of England became also great
improvers.

In the next century — the eighteenth — the
wealthy landowners were keenly interested
in new methods of cultivation and in
improved implements and buildings, and
their efforts were eventually seconded by a
growing class of substantial tenants, or we
may say scientific farmers.

But the lead was taken by the spirited
proprietors, who had to contend with the
time-honoured prejudices of those who had
always practised the traditional methods.
In this century we have new roots and
grasses introduced, and a better system of
rotation and of tillage. In connection with
the adoption and extension of these im-
provements, the great landholders found it
expedient to consolidate holdings, and in
many cases large farms were made by the
amalgamation of the smaller.

History of Agricultural Rent in England 29

Towards the end of the century another
great movement began for the enclosure of
the open or common land that still survived
in large quantities in some parts of the
country. The main object of the enclosures
at this time was to allow of the adoption
of the new methods. In the open fields,
with the traditional simple cultivation, any
improvement was impossible. There is no
doubt that in the process of these enclosures
the small farmers and proprietors suffered.
In the redistribution and the enclosing of
the land, heavy legal expenses were
involved, beginning with the necessary Act
of Parliament, and these expenses were
proportionately heavier to the smaller
people, and many were obliged to sell
their land, and if tenants, their holdings
were consolidated. The small people also
lost, as regards the various rights of common
that still survived.

30 Rents, Wages, and Profits in Agriculture

But regarded from the national point of
view, on the whole, the result of the im-
provements and of the enclosures was to
add very greatly to the agricultural produce
of the country. A good deal of this increase
was due to the improvements of various
kinds effected by the landlords, and
naturally from this cause only there was
a considerable rise in rents. The great
advocate of improvements, and the writer
who has given the most detailed accounts
of the changes effected, is Arthur Young, a
most remarkable man in every way, and a
very curious personality. He lived to a
great age, and wrote, as well as the famous
tours in France, in different parts of England
and in Ireland, masses of pamphlets and
articles. His tour in Ireland, republished a
few years ago, ought to be read by everyone
who would understand the origin of the
Irish economic grievances. But this is a

History of Agricultural Rent in England 3 1

digression. Young, however, gives an
account of the rise in rent in England at
the end of the eighteenth century, and he
shows by actual cases that whilst the old-
fashioned farmers could not pay their rents
in spite of the labour of the other members
of their family, and often themselves, at
other industries (such as spinning and
weaving), the new farmers were taking the
land at higher rents and earning large
profits in addition. The small farmers were
again hit by the industrial revolution which
displaced the home industries by machinery
in factories.

It is no doubt true that, at the end of the
eighteenth century and the beginning of the
nineteenth, the very great rise that took
place in rents, sometimes fivefold, was not
due entirely to improvements and the
increase of produce. There was also the
succession of bad seasons, and as the

32 Rents ^ Wages ^ and Profits in Agriculture

country was practically dependent on its
own supplies, the rise in prices was much
greater than the loss in produce. The
population was growing in the towns ; the
war increased the expenses of freight and
insurance ; other countries also had defective
harvests, and often prohibited exports, so
that, altogether apart from the Corn Laws,
to which the high prices are often entirely
ascribed, prices must have been high, and
of course rents depend as much on the
prices as on the amount of the produce.

The first half of the nineteenth century,

say up to the repeal of the Corn Laws,

/ was marked by very great improvements

• in agriculture largely under the influence

\ of the landlords ; but rents fell, somewhat

owing to the fall in prices which took

place after the conclusion of the great

war.

The repeal of the Corn Laws did not

History of Agricultural Rent in England 33

have the effect anticipated of a great and
immediate fall in rents. The cost of
transport were still great, the foreign wheat-
lands were only partially opened up, and
the town population of this country was
rapidly increasing.

Up to the early seventies there was little
fall in the price of corn ; whilst as regards
other forms of produce, there was in most
cases a considerable rise. At the same time,
also, the improvements in agriculture con-
tinued, and of course the amount of
produce per acre increased, and the expenses
did not increase in proportion.

During this period, also, the tenants more
and more took an active part in the im-
provement of agriculture. And with this
increase of enterprise on their part, greater
security was given by the landowner for
the investment of capital — in Scotland by

the method of improving leases, and in

c

34 Rents, Wages, ajid Profits in Agriculture

England by keeping up the old tradition
of moderate rents and practical fixity of
tenure so long as the land was well
treated.

After about 1875 a period of depression
set in, so far as rents are concerned, the
great and sufficient cause being the immense
cheapening of transport, and at the same
time, the great development of agriculture
on a large scale in new countries. The de-
pression has affected agriculture generally,
but rents have suffered most. Not only have
money rents fallen, but in many cases
reductions have been made in addition and
arrears have been written off.

At the same time, greater security has
been afforded to the tenants by the Agri-
cural Holdings Acts, and the tenants have
protected themselves by refusing to take
long leases.

The burdens of rates and taxes have

History of Agricultural Rent in England 35

greatly increased in the last twenty years
without any corresponding gain to agri-
culture. All these sources of increased
expense have diminished the surplus
available in the form of net rent.

So far as the nineteenth century is
concerned, what I have described in general
language and in the roughest outline may
be read in the history of the great estate
by the Duke of Bedford. You have tables
from 18 16 to 1896 giving all the informa-
tion required to trace the changes in rents,
both the gross and the nominal rent, and
also the real net surplus — if any — for in the
end it seems to vanish entirely.

I will give one or two significant
figures first about the gross rental
received. The average annual rental
(gross) received from 18 16 to 1835
(twenty years) was ;£"20,ooo ; from 1836 to
1845, it was about ;{f 24,000 ; in the next

36 Rents^ Wages, and Profits in Agriculture

ten years — 1846 (repeal of the Corn Laws) to
1855 — it rose about ;{^2,ooo, to ^26,000 {i.e.,
gross). From 1855 to 1875 the average
annual gross rent rose to ;{i"35,ooo ; but
from 1876 to 1895 the average annual gross
rental received fell to ^27,000.

But the mere gross rental is of course
quite misleading ; though with improving
agriculture and stable prices it no doubt
implies a corresponding rise in the net
income. For the first twenty years — 1816
to 1835 — the net income was ;f 9,000 ; and
in the next twenty years — 1836 to 1855 —
it rose to ^11,000 per annum.

But taking 1856 to 1875 (the next twenty
years), the net income had fallen to ;£*8,ooo,
and this in spite of the high rents
obtained from 1869 to 1874, ^^^^ average
net income being about ^14,000 per
annum for these years.

From 1876 to 1895 ^^^^ average net

History of Agricultural Rent in England 37

income is only ;f5,ooo out of a gross rental
of ;f27,ooo. And during the last two
years given in the tables — 1894 ^'^^ ^^95 —
though the gross rentals are ;fi 8,000
and ^20,000, there is in the first year a
deficit of nearly ^2,000, and in the second,
in spite of the rise in the gross rental, there
is still a deficit of some ;f400.

I hope these figures have not confused
the main idea. It is not easy to take in
the meaning of figures with the ear, and
it often requires all the power of the eye
and close attention. But in this case the
results are so surprising that the general
trend cannot be mistaken. And if you
look into the tables, you will find
additional most interesting details. You
will find that the public burdens increase
with the gross rental ; you will find that
more and more of the rent received is
expended on the estate, until the net

o/i^ i^'i rcQ

38 Rents, Wages, and Profits in Agriculture

rental of some i^ii,ooo has entirely
vanished, and the deficit on the estate, as
a going concern, has to be made up out
of other sources of income.

And now a few words by way of a
general conclusion. Recall the typical
estate with which we began in the early
Middle Ages, and I may add one or two
touches of further details to the picture.
The lord of the manor exacted through
his steward the utmost the estate could
bear; he took all the labour he needed
and all the produce, besides a bare mini-
mum. And apart from these onerous
payments in labour and in produce, the
villein had scarcely any of the elements
which we consider essential to personal
freedom.

Mainly through the accident of the Black
Death many of the villeins obtained their
freedom and became either tenant farmers

History of Agricultural Rent in England 39

or yeomen. Two centuries later the first
set of enclosures produced over England the
same outcry, as in the nineteenth century
in Scotland, over the expulsion of men for
sheep and the sacrifice of the customary
rights of the peasantry. Gradually, how-
ever, the landowners became themselves
improvers of the land, and up to the
nineteenth century they took the lead. In
the course of that century, in England, the
tenant farmers gradually obtained the repeal
of the laws that still survived in favour of
the owner, and the enactment of laws in
favour of the security of their own capital.
But coincidently with this, taking the
average, the great landowners continued
to sink money in their land, and to take
the first shock of agricultural depression
by the remission of rents. So that in
some cases, as in the Bedford estates,
though there is nominally a large gross

40 Rents^ Wages, and Profits in Agriculture

rental, there is actually a net loss on the
estate (agricultural).

The villein, or serf, of the Middle Ages
has become a substantial tenant farmer, and
the feudal baron, who was formerly little
better than a slave- owner as regards the
masses of the cultivators, has become, in
many cases, a model philanthropist. In the
whole range of social history there is
perhaps no such striking evidence of real
progress as in connection with the changes
in the nature and in the amount of the
rent paid for agricultural land.

I

CHAPTER II

AGRICULTURAL CAPITAL AND PROFITS

Capital in modern industrial societies
assumes so many forms and has so many
functions that it is almost impossible to
frame a definition which will cover all
cases, or even to indicate in short compass
the results of scientific analysis. If, how-
ever, we confine our attention to agricul-
tural capital, and adopt the historical
method, most of these difficulties disappear.
Under the most primitive conditions,
capital appears as a necessary agent of
agricultural production, just as much as
labour and the land itself. The progress

in agricultural production may be traced

42

Agricultural Capital and Profits 43

by changes in the nature and amount of
the capital required. In the present chapter
I shall try to indicate the great landmarks
in agricultural progress in England from
the point of view of the part played by
capital. To some extent the same facts
will be appealed to as in dealing with
rent and progress ; but the subject is so
large that different details can be taken
by way of illustration.

We may begin, as with rent, with the
manorial economy of the mediaeval period.
The first point we notice is, that at first
the serfs may be said to have provided
the lord of the manor with the capital
necessary to work his demesne land, or
what corresponds to his home farm. He
had no need for circulating capital in the
form of money to pay wages, because he
obtained all the labour required through
compulsion or custom. It is true that for

44 Rents, Wages, and Profits in Agriculture

some forms of labour the villein received
a certain amount of food and other neces-
saries, but the manor was in the typical
case self-contained and self-sufficing, and
the villein may be looked on as obtaining
a certain share of the annual produce
directly, though the share in the distribu-
tion was determined by the custom of the
manor. As already seen, the principal
payment in return for the labour was the
right to occupy so much land. Besides
the work exacted in connection with
ploughing, hay - making, harvesting, etc.,
we have various forms of labour remuner-
ated by so much land : there was the aver-
land, or lod-land, granted to those who
performed the duties comprised under
averagium (horse - work — from ctffer or
aver^ a horse), including the carriage of
firewood, carting the seignorial produce,
etc, ; we find cheese - land for those who

\

Agricultural Capital and Profits 45

provided dairy produce for the manorial
household, scythe - land for the mowers,
and so on.

Again, as regards what we should now
call the auxiliary capital, the villeins pro-
vided ploughs, oxen, horses, and carts in
connection with the work done for the
lord of the manor. Accordingly, we find
that the villein was not allowed to sell
an ox without the consent of the lord or
his reeve.

With regard to the land cultivated by
the villeins for themselves, perhaps the
most noticeable point is, that the nature
of the capital required involved a curious
system of co-operation, as already noticed
in the first chapter. The great manorial
plough was drawn, in general, by eight
oxen, and as Mr. Seebohm has so graphi-
cally shown, the strips in the great open
fields were at first distributed according to

46 Rents, Wages, and Profits in Agriculture

the contributions made in oxen or equipment
or labour.

In the early mediaeval period everyone,
from the king dov^nv^ards, was interested in
tlie cultivation of land, and the royal
revenues v^ere first of all collected in
produce. The great barons v^ere also great
landowners and great farmers. The typical
manor was a large estate, and the manorial
farming was on a large scale. For this
purpose large capitals were required — but
they were not in the form of money.

In this period it is worth noting that the
capital employed on the land was worth
much more than the land itself. We can, of
course, only make the calculation by giving
money values to the land and the stock.
And it must be observed that money was
used for the purpose of measuring values to
a much greater extent than it was used for
purposes of exchange. And besides, the

Agricultural Capital and Profits 47

process of commutation had begun in very
early times, although the effects were not
seen fully till after the Black Death. In
the thirteenth century, according to the
calculations of Rogers, the value of the
rent of ordinary arable land was 6d. an
acre, and the capital value of such land
was about 6s. to 8s. an acre ; but the
amount of stock live and dead that was
required was worth i8s. to 20s. an acre, or
about three times as much.

As Rogers observes, this disproportion in
the value of land and stock had a consider-
able effect on the distribution of land itself.
According to feudal custom, the rule of
primogeniture governed the descent of the
land itself ; but personal property, including
capital on the land, was divided amongst
the children. In this way, the large estates
were often broken up by subinfeudation, and
we often hear of opulent younger sons.

48 Rents, Wages, and Profits in Agyiciilture

It is to this custom of landlord cultivation
on a large scale that we may trace what is
still considered the chief peculiarity of the
English system of landlord and tenant,
namely, the obligation on the part of the
landowner to effect permanent improve-
ments and to make the necessary repairs ;
and to begin with, this obligation extended
to making good any extraordinary losses of
stock — especially sheep.

But already I have rather anticipated the
actual course of progress. The system of
letting land to tenant farmers, as distinct
from the villeins, was greatly influenced by
the progress of commutation ; although
we find in very early times free tenants
occupying servile land and rendering the
customary services.

The progress of commutation, and also
the extension of the tenant system of culti-
vation, was greatly accelerated by the

Agricultural Capital and Profits 49

Black Death. The natural rise in the
price of labour made landlord cultivation
unprofitable unless forced labour could be
exacted, but in the scarcity this was found
to be impossible. It was to the economic
interest of every landowner to attract
labour, and the most effective way was
to offer higher money wages than were
customary. The proclamations and statutes,
intended to enforce the old customary rates,
were disregarded — sometimes with false
entries in the manorial accounts. The
landowners found their remedy in the land
and stock lease — already briefly mentioned
in the last chapter. The essence of this
plan was to let the stock that was re-
quired with the land. It was a develop-
ment of an ancient custom of letting out
particular forms of stock, especially cows —
a practice which survived to the time of

D

50 Refits, Wages, and Profits in Agriculture

Arthur Young at the end of the eighteenth
century.

The stock which was let with the land
was carefully recorded on the lease, and
the tenants rendered an annual audit, and
had to exhibit their stock to the landlord's
steward. To begin with, the landowner
generally let with the land not only the
necessary live and dead stock required on
the farm, but a certain amount of seed-
corn, and sometimes food, etc., for wages.
All this the tenant covenants to restore at
the end of the lease, in good condition,
reasonable depreciation excepted, at a fixed
price for every quarter of corn, head of
cattle, sheep, poultry, and the assessed
value of the dead stock let with the farm.
At the time, this form of lease was a
necessity to both landlord and tenant, and
an advantage to both. The tenant, out of
the profit obtained, was gradually able to

Agricultural Capital and Profits 51

acquire the necessary capital for himself,
and in many cases to buy the land. The
period of transition during which this form
of lease prevailed is placed by Rogers at
seventy years.

The general result was that, to a great
extent, the villeins were displaced by tenant
farmers using their own capital and by
yeomanry occupying their own land. By
the middle of the fifteenth century both
classes had become quite common. The
very fact that the land and stock tenants
in time were able to become owners of
the capital, and sometimes of the land,
shows that, on the average also, they must
have been able to pay the rent, and in
that way the landlord also gained, for if
he had tried to carry on with the bailiff
cultivation, the increased cost of labour
would have involved a loss. The small
tenant and his family provided the labour

52 Rents, Wages, mid Profits in Agriculture

required on the farm, and very often they
could afford time to take additional employ-
ment at the high wages that prevailed.
There were cases, no doubt (some are re-
corded by Rogers in detail), in which the
rent fell into arrears, and we find examples
of arrears being written off, and sometimes
the landlord's share in the risk, especially
as regards sheep, more than balanced the
rent ; but on the average, both parties
gained.

Another difficulty of the landlord arose
from the legal idea of rent. A farmer
often took land even from the same land-
lord in different plots for different periods.
This would be natural, from the original
scattered nature of the holdings ; but the
legal idea was that each particular plot of
land must be responsible for the rent
which issued out of it, and accordingly,
arrears of rent sometimes accumulated

Agricultural Capital and Profits 53

because the owner could not tell out of
which portion of land the rent issued.

At this time the rent that was exacted
was generally the old customary rent, and
was very moderate in amount. The
natural consequence was that there was a
great demand for land, and the capital
value rose considerably ; or, in other
words, the number of years purchase was
increased.

There are one or two other points of
interest in connection with the transition
from the method of landlord cultivation
to that of tenant farming. As the land-
owners no longer owned the stock the law
of primogeniture ceased to be modified as
it used to be, and the younger sons were
left poor or unprovided for. Rogers calls
attention only to the resulting evils, and
speaks of these younger sons as law- made
paupers quartered on the royal revenues,

54 Rents^ Wages, and Profits in Agriculture

and asserts that useless offices were pro-
vided for them in the Court or the army.
But on the other side, the more enterprising
would enter into the professions and also
into trade, and later on this spirit of enter-
prise and alliance of land with trade had
muclj^ to do with the expansion of the
English colonies. Another result, however,
was that the landowners, now being
dependent on rent and not on the profits
of agricidture made by themselves, began
to consider their own economic interests
too closely, and at the end of the fifteenth
century we have complaints of the exactions
of the landlords and other abuses, especially
in connection with the enclosures.

1 have dealt at some length with the land
and stock lease and its consequences, partl}^
because it was of great historical importance,
being indeed the main instrument in a great
social revolution, but also because it has

Agricultural Capital and Profits 55

often occurred to me that in some cases
some adaptation of this form of lease might
be advantageous under present conditions.
We are told on all sides that small farms
ought to be increased in number, but that
those who might make successful farmers
have no capital. Leaving on one side the
controversy on the possibility of the success
of small farms at present in this country,
and assuming that there are landowners
willing to make the experiment, and also
suitable tenants, the farms might be started
with a land and stock lease.^ There are,
however, two practical difficulties that did
not exist in the mediaeval period. In the
first place, the mediaeval peasant was content
to live in what was little better than a
mud hovel with no windows, no chimney,

^ A form of the land and stock lease is actually in use in
some parts of the United States — e.g., in Wisconsin. See
H. C. Taylor's "Agricultural Economics," p, 278.

56 Rents^ Wages, and Profits in Agriculture

no water, and no sanitation, and the
accommodation of the substantial farmer
was little better. Then, again, there were
no expensive steadings or drains. But in
another respect, there is reason to believe
the mediseval farmer was superior to his
modern representative. Under the old
landlord system of cultivation, most accurate
and detailed accounts were kept, and the
practice was continued when the system
was changed. Rogers gives good reasons
for supposing that, contrary to the popular
idea, in the mediaeval period writing and
accounting were common accomplishments,
and were put to practical use in farming.
As we have seen, there was a careful
enumeration of the stock and an annual
audit and valuation.

Coming back from this digression, we
may notice next the eifect of the enclosures —
that is, the first period from 1470 to 1530.

Agyicultural Capital and Profits 57

The tenant farmers wished to increase their
profits and the landowners their rents, and
the old method of cultivation in common
was a hindrance to both. At the same
time, the change in the relative values of
corn and wool naturally stimulated sheep
farming, and it was with the development
of this industry that land was enclosed,
common rights were taken away, and large
numbers of the rural population displaced.
It is remarkable that under these influences
the old system of cultivation in common
was not displaced to a much greater extent.
It is probable, however, that so late as
the beginning of the eighteenth century
three-fifths of the arable land of the country
was still cultivated in common, and the
second period of enclosures, which finally
got rid of the old system, extended from
1770 to the middle of the nineteenth century.
The aspect of the question — i.e,^ of the

58 Rents, Wages, mid Profits in Agriculture

change from cultivation in common — which
calls for special notice in dealing with capital
and profits, is the effect of the abandonment
of the old customs on the relations of
landlord and tenant. Under the old system
the villein had fixity of tenure — at what
came to be, in time, a moderate quit rent
of a mixed kind — service, produce, and
money. There were no changes in the
methods of cultivation, which indeed were
impossible with cultivation in common.
Under the new system, especially after the
enclosures, as we learn from the work of
Fitzherbert (1523), the tenants in some cases
suffered from insecurity of tenure. The land
was let on short leases, and the landlord
could raise the rents on any improvement
being made. It was calculated that land
that was enclosed even with the old methods
of cultivation yielded 25 per cent, more than
the land in the open fields, and consequently

Agricultural Capital and Profits 59

could pay more rent.^ A rise in rent was
natural, but in some cases it was pushed
too far.

This tendency was increased by the
dissolution of the monasteries and the
partial dispossession of the guilds of their
lands. The confiscated lands found their
way into the hands of the monied classes —
e.g., Sir Thomas Gresham became very
wealthy in this way — and they applied
mercantile ideas with the view of making
a profit from their purchases. The rough
application of mercantile ideas to agricul-
ture has often proved harmful, or at least
painful, though, on the other hand, there
are compensating advantages, as Adam
Smith showed. Rogers, as usual, is very

^ As noticed above, the enclosures of this period were
partly for the sake of the adoption of "convertible
husbandry," and not exclusively for the extension of sheep
farms. See Cunningham's " Growth of English Industry
and Commerce," vol. i., p. 526.

6o Rents, WageSy and Profits in Agriculture

severe in his condemnation of what he
calls the rapacity of the landlords — but
even on his own evidence his judgment
seems overstrained. We must remember
that about the middle of the sixteenth
century, when the first period of enclosures
had reached its term, there began the great
rise in prices. This was at first brought
about by the debasement of the currency —
but after the currency had been restored by
Elizabeth, prices were kept up by the new
silver from America. With the general rise
in prices rents ought also to rise. And as
Rogers himself points out, tenants from a
distance were not to be expected, and
tenants on the spot were very unwilling, to
accept a rise in rents except under strong
compulsion. The difficulty that was felt
in raising rents in a fair proportion to the
rise in prices was specially felt by certain
corporations — e.g., the Oxford and Cam-

Agricultural Capital and Profits 6i

bridge Colleges. To remedy this difficulty
it was enacted in 1576 that the Colleges of
Oxford and Cambridge (including Eton
and Winchester) should receive a third of
their rents in wheat and malt, or rather in
the money value calculated according to
the market prices at a particular time.

Another plan which was generally
adopted was to impose a fme on the re-
newal of a lease. Fines of this kind had
been customary on succession to the villein
holdings either by inheritance or alienation,
and being in conformity with custom, they
were submitted to in the case of leases.

Rogers also points out that there was all
over the country a strong feeling against
overbidding the sitting tenant. Seeing,
then, that there was no effective competition
on the part of possible tenants which would
raise the rents, and the sitting tenants
themselves, naturally, and by the influence

62 Rents, Wages, and Profits in Agriculture

of custom, resisted the rise, the rapacity of
the landlords would at any rate be held
in check.

On the general question of the security
of the tenant's capital at this time, the
opinion of Adam Smith seems much more
in accordance with the facts. He observes
("Wealth of Nations," Book III., chap, ii.)
that " the farmers in England had much
better security than in any other country,
and that with long leases they were
encouraged to make improvements." In
England, as contrasted with other countries,
by an Act of 14, Henry VII., the tenant
under lease was protected against ejectment
by a new purchaser or successor. And in
this respect he says : " The security of the
tenant is equal to that of the proprietor."
He says also that in England a lease for
life of 40S. a year value is a free-
hold, and entitles the lessee to vote for

Agricultural Capital ajid Profits 63

a member of Parliament ; and he continues :
— "As a great part of the yeomanry have
freeholds of this kind, the whole order
becomes respectable to their landlords on
account of the political consideration which
this gives them." And then we have this
very remarkable passage : " There is, I
believe, nowhere in Europe, except in
England, any instance of the tenant
building upon the land of which he had
no lease, and trusting that the honour of
his landlord would take no advantage of
so important an improvement. Those laws
and customs so favourable to the yeomanry
have perhaps contributed more to the
present grandeur of England than all their
boasted regulations of commerce put
together." By contrast, he says that
throughout the greater part of Europe the
yeomanry are regarded as an inferior rank
of people, even to the better sorts of trades-

64 Rents, Wages, and Profits in Agriculture

men and mechanics ; and as a consequence,
in these countries little stock is likely to
go from any other profession to the
improvement of land.

More capital in this way is so diverted
in Great Britain — but even there, he
says, "The great stocks which are some-
times employed in farming have generally
been acquired in farming — the trade, per-
haps, in which of all others, stock is
commonly acquired most slowly." After
small proprietors, however, in Adam Smith's
opinion, rich and great farmers are in every
country the great improvers. The passages
I have quoted are from a general survey of
the progress of agriculture in Europe. And
they show that, in Adam Smith's opinion,
from the end of the mediaeval period — or,
we may say, from the time of the estab-
lishment of the English system of tenant
farming, down to his time (1776) — the

Agricultural Capital and Profits 65

tradition had been to trust to the good
faith of the landlord, and that practically
the security thus afforded to the tenants'
capital had been as great as could be
reasonably expected. The enclosures, the
dissolution of the monasteries, the purchase
of the old acres by new men, the rise in
prices, and the increase of luxury which
mark the beginning of the modern period,
no doubt for a time disturbed the
relations of landlords and tenants, but
before the end of the reign of Elizabeth
the tradition of good fellowship between
landlord and tenant had been thoroughly
established.

Certain it is that during the seventeenth
century agriculture made much progress.
This was partly due to the imitation of
Dutch methods in the rotation of crops
and the cultivation of winter roots. But
as already shown, there was much capital

£

66 Renfs, Wages, and Profits in Agriculture

devoted to drainage and the general
improvement of the land.

The best proof of the progress in agri-
culture is the fact that during the
seventeenth century the population of
England doubled. It could not have been
more than 2 J millions at the end of the
reign of Elizabeth ; it was nearly 5J
at the accession of Queen Anne. — (Rogers.)
As the country was, up to the last quarter
of the eighteenth century, self-supporting,
and, indeed, an exporter on balance of
corn, the rise in population was only
possible with an increase in the agricultural
produce.

Still more, however, is the eighteenth
century marked by improvements in agri-
culture. One chief characteristic was the
use of clover and rye - grass and the
extension of artificial pasture. Writing in
1772, Arthur Young said: "I do not

Agricultural Capital and Profits 6y

imagine above half, or at most two-thirds,
of the nation cultivate clover. It is a
surprising number of years that are necessary
to introduce the culture of a new plant."
He adds : " If gentlemen of the present age
had not assumed a spirit in agriculture
vastly superior to former times, I much
question whether that excellent vegetable,
i.e., the clover, would make its way fairly
through the island in a thousand years."

But agriculture at this time had become
the reigning taste. The pursuit was
universal. The profit was great — from
14 to 20 per cent, on the capital was
common (Rogers). It was a bye-industry
with those who had other callings.
Physicians, lawyers, clergymen, soldiers,
sailors, and merchants were farmers as
well. The farming tribe, says Young, is
now made up of all ranks from a duke to
an apprentice. This fashion continued till

68 Rents, Wages, and Profits in Agriculture

the beginning of the second quarter of the
nineteenth century.

The rise in prices that took place
at the end of the eighteenth century
of course gave a great stimulus to this
experimental farming. And all over,
the progress in improvements was so
great that the farmers who stuck to the
old methods were lost. Under the com-
petition for land that now became effective,
and stimulated by the rise in prices, rents
rose greatly, and whilst the new farmers
paid the high rents and made fortunes, the
old-fashioned were unable, even with the
aid of other bye-industries, to make both
ends meet. No wonder that Young
regarded the payment of a high rent as
the greatest aid to improvements and good
husbandry.

Coincidently with the improvements in
tillage and the adoption of roots and

Agricultural Capital and Profits 69

grasses, there were also great improve-
ments in cattle and sheep. This is shown
directly by the increased weight of the
cattle and sheep, and especially by the high
prices that began to be paid for breeding
stock.

Here, again, the landowners were, accord-
ing to Young, the pioneers of agricultural
progress. Rogers calculates that the pro-
ductiveness of agriculture in the eighteenth
century was four times that of the thirteenth,
both as regards corn and stock.

Young, founding on the evidence of his
tours, calculated that the average rent of
cultivated land all over England, taking
good and poor together, was los. an acre.
He continually urges that the rental,
especially for good land, is too low, and
surely this confirms the injustice of Rogers
as regards the rapacity of landlords.
Young says that on the best land the

^0 Rents, Wages, and Profits in Agriculture

profit to the farmer is 29s. an acre — i.e.,
probably 25 per cent, on the capital — and
over all, the profit of the farmer is, after
all charges are deducted, considerably
more than the rent. On this Rogers
observes : " This rate of profit [presumably
he means calculated per cent, on the
capital employed] is considerably less
than that procured under the ancient
system of capitalist agriculture, or that
which succeeded the land and stock lease,
and even that of the short lease which
followed." But if this is true — again it
must be said it is difficult to understand
where, in the earlier period, the rapacity
of the landlord comes in.

It will be remembered that, according to
Rogers, for centuries in the mediaeval
period — that is, up to the time of the rise
in prices, which is one of the marks of
transition to the modern period — the

Agricultural Capital and Profits ^t

common rent of land was 6d. an acre.
Thus in Young's time rents in money
being los. an acre had risen twentyfold.
A good part of the rise, however, was only
nominal, i.e., due to a change in the value
of money, and Rogers, for purposes of com-
parison in dealing with mediaeval prices,
multiplies by 12 to get the modern equiva-
lent. On this basis the mediaeval rents
expressed on the modern standard would
be 6s. an acre as against los. in the time
of Young. This, considering the great in-
crease in produce — i.e., fourfold — is a very
moderate rise.

The progress of agriculture in the first
half of the nineteenth century has been
admirably described by Porter in one of
the sections of the " Progress of the Nation."
The evidence is partly indirect, but none
the less convincing. In this period (1800-
1850) there was a great increase in popula-

f 2 Rents, Wages, and Profits in Agriculture

tion : the population practically doubled.
At the same time, on the whole, the country,
as regards food supplies, was self-supporting.
It was only in years of exceptional scarcity
that the importation was considerable. In
the first thirty years of the century probably
not 5 per cent, of the people were fed on
foreign corn; from 1831 to 1840 the pro-
portion was at the outside 7 per cent., and
even in the five years preceding the repeal
of the Corn Laws it did not exceed 12 per
cent. On these figures Porter makes the
following comment : '' The foregoing cal-
culations show in how small a degree this
country has hitherto been dependent upon
foreigners in ordinary seasons for a due
supply of our staple article of food. It is
not, however," he continues, " with this view
that these calculations are brought forward,
but rather to prove how exceedingly great
the increase of agricultural production must

Agricultural Capital and Profits 73

have been to have thus effectively kept in
a state of independence a population which
has increased with so great a degree of
rapidity. To show this fact, the one article
of wheat has been selected because it is
that which is most generally consumed in
England ; but the position advanced would
be found to hold equally good were we
to go through the whole list of the con-
sumable products of the earth. The supply
of meat during the years comprised in the
inquiry has certainly kept pace with the
growth of population ; and as regards this
portion of our food our home agriculturalists
have, during almost the whole period — i.e.^
1800- 1846 — enjoyed a strict monopoly." —
(Porter, p. 141.)

As the opinion is of present interest, I
may again refer to Porter's view of the
policy of protection to agriculture during
this period. Great as this increase in

74 Rents, Wages, and Profits in Agriculture

agricultural production has been, he con-
tinues, there is reason to believe that " a
far more profitable result would have
followed from the amount of skill and
enterprise and the application of capital to
which that increase must be ascribed, but
for the restrictions that have been placed
in the supposed interests of our agricul-
turalists upon the importation of articles
of food from other countries." His idea is
that the energies of our farmers had been
restricted to the growth of certain descrip-
tions of food, and that our farmers had
neglected the production of other articles
for which a demand would then have
arisen. There can be little doubt that,
from the point of view of profit, in this
period too much attention was given
to corn ; in some cases old pasture
being broken up, and in others very
inferior land being taken into cultivation.

Agricultural Capital and Profits 75

Still, on the whole, agricultural capital
accumulated and good profits were realised.
As always happens, the farmers who made

the profits were those who first adopted
improvements and scientific methods, and
those who complained most of agri-
cultural distress were those on the margin
of cultivation who stuck to the old
routine. The increased production, says
Porter, came about with a very small
addition to the amount of labour em-
ployed, and resulted mainly from improv-
ing the soil, throwing down fences which
divided the farms into small patches,
better rotation of crops, draining and new
methods of manuring — {e.g.^ use of crushed
bones, and later guano ; in 1841 only seven
ship cargoes of guano were imported — a total
of 1,733 tons — and in 1845 the numbers
had risen to 683 ships and nearly 221,000
tons). Porter calls attention also to the

']6 Rents, Wages, mid Profits in Agriculture

help, even at this date, borrowed from the
men of science — e.g.^ the researches of Davy
undertaken at the instance of the Board
of Agriculture at the beginning of the
century, and later the investigations of
Liebig. One effect of the nevvr methods
v^as to make land which had formerly
been considered poor as productive as the
better land, and wheat was grown on
land which had formerly been devoted
entirely to oats. The improvement in
agricultural production generally, and the
increase in the gross profits from land, is
also shown by the fact that from 1790 to
1845 rents, on the average, more than
doubled. The rise was even greater during
the high prices of the great war, but even
with the moderate level of prices after the
war, rents had doubled. The prosperity of
agriculture was also shown by the growth in
wealth of the towns dependent on agriculture.

Agricultural Capital and Profits y7

There were, no doubt, during this period
(1800- 1 850) years of general agricultural
depression, especially between 18 19 and
1838, and the principal cause then, as now,
was the relative fall in prices. During the
first twenty years of the century the price
of wheat averaged 88s. a quarter, during the
next five years it fell to 57s. 2d., in 1822
it was 44s. 7d., and in 1835 only 39s. 4d.
But on the whole, during the half century,
as Porter shows, there was progress, and
agricultural capital increased.

During the thirty years that followed
the repeal of the Corn Laws there was
great prosperity in agriculture, especially
after 1858. From 1850 to 1878 the rent
of cultivated land in England increased
from 27s. to 30S. per acre (Caird), whilst in
1770 it was only 13s. With the rise in
rent, and the anticipation of a further
rise, there was a still greater rise in the

78 Rents, Wages, and Profits in Agriculture

capital value of land, and in the early
seventies there v^as a great demand for
land by small occupiers. In Norfolk,
Suffolk, and Lincoln, for example, we are
told in the Report of the last Royal Com-
mission on Agriculture (1897) ^^at at this
time many farmers bought their land at

the high prices that then prevailed. In
most cases a large part of the purchase
money v^as borrowed on mortgage.

In 1879 the Richmond Commission was
appointed to inquire into the depressed
condition of agriculture, and from that
time there has been little real recovery.
This Commission reported in 1882 that
the depression was mainly due to bad
seasons ; and foreign competition was only
mentioned as a secondary cause. The next
Commission was appointed in 1893, and
reported in 1897. It is stated at the be-
ginning of this report that since 1882 the

Agricultural Capital and Profits 79

seasons have, with a few exceptions, been
satisfactory from the agricultural point of
view, and the evidence before us shows
that the existing depression is mainly due
to the fall in the prices of farm produce.
The fall had been most marked in grain,
but at the time wool had also fallen
heavily, though since there has been a
great recovery.

In this general survey it does not seem
desirable to carry the inquiry beyond the
report of 1897, which is one of the most
instructive Blue Books ever issued.

With regard to the special subject of
this chapter, namely, capital and profits,
the most noticeable points in recent years
are as follows : Farmers' profits since 1875
have fallen greatly. Taking representative
farmers' accounts, it is calculated that in
the twenty years, from 1875 to 1894, ^^^
average profit was only 60 per cent, of the

8o Rents^ Wages, and Profits in Agriailture

sum which in past days was considered
an ordinary or average profit. This is, of
course, a very rough and very general
estimate.

Arable land has suffered most ; there
are, of course, variations from district to
district, and still more from individual to
individual. Some farmers have prospered,
and we are told that in some parts of the
country there is competition for farms of
good quality and favourably situated.
Farmers are more ready to pay high rents
for good, than low rents for bad farms,
and it is said that the continuance of this
competition seems to show that this is no
miscalculation. We are forcibly reminded
of Arthur Young's saying that there is
a proverb amongst farmers that a man
cannot pay too much for good land, or
too little for bad.

In the process of adjustment to the fall

Agricultural Capital and Profits 8 1

in prices, there is no doubt (from the evi-
dence) that there has been a great loss in
many cases of farmers' capital ; but it is
impossible to estimate the amount.

The Commissioners, however, report that
they do not find any evidence that any
judicial interference is desirable, or is even
desired in the readjustment of rents. There
seems to be no doubt that the brunt of
the loss fell on the landlords to begin
with. In the districts subject to the most
severe depression, it is said that the farmers
do not pay more for the land than the
equivalent of what is required for the up-
keep of the farm and the public charges,
and in some cases they pay less. In the
most depressed parts of England, we are
told, the fall in rent has been, on the
average, 50 per cent., and in some cases
as much as 80 per cent.

The principle of security for the tenant's

F

82 Rents ^ Wages, and Profits in Agriculture

capital has been very generally adopted in
recent legislation, and if the Agricultural
Holdings Acts have failed, it is rather owing
to the practical difficulty of working than
to any bias being retained in favour of the
landlord. It is true that at the present time
there is some demand for a further extension
of the powers of the tenant. It is beyond
the scope of this inquiry to express an
opinion on the actual merits of the present
proposals, but the bearing of the general
results of this broad historical survey may
be found to have some interest. In con-
clusion, to summarise the main results :
taking the history of the relations of
landlord and tenant in England from the
time of the establishment of tenant farming,
the rents obtained seem to have been very
reasonable compared with the profits of the
farmer. No doubt on occasions, and in
exceptional times of transition, there may

Agricultural Capital and Profits 83

have been inequitable exactions on the
part of some owners of land — especially
new mercantile owners — but on the whole,
there has never been in England any general
system of rack-renting. On the contrary,
it would be much more true to say that
for long periods rents were below the
natural competition level.

Similarly, as regards the security of the
farmer's capital, for a long time no doubt
the law — that is, the technical law — was
altogether in favour of the landlord, e.g.^
the law of fixtures, the law of distress, etc.
But in dealing with English economic
history, even more perhaps than in the
similar case of constitutional history, we
must always distinguish between the letter
of the law and the spirit in which, as a
matter of fact, it was carried out. Adam
Smith was a great admirer of peasant
properties, and he made general reflections

84 Rents, Wages, and Profits in Agricnlture

on property in land, which, taken without
the context of his sound common-sense, may
even now be regarded as revolutionary —
Adam Smith was no defender of the great
landlords — in some respects he is less than
just to them ; but as I pointed out, he is
constrained to admit that England is the
only country in which the tenant would
take the risk of fixing capital in the land
without any other guarantee than good
faith in his landlord.

Again, in the recent and still prevailing
depression the landlords have made re-
missions and written off arrears, and in
general taken the first share in bearing
the loss.

It would be a great misfortune for
English agriculture if an attempt to make
the letter of the law more favourable
to the tenant were to destroy or injure
the good relations that have hitherto

Agricultural Capital and Profits 85

subsisted ; or, on the other hand, to induce
the owners to take land into their own
hands or to sell it on purely mercantile
principles.

The English system of landlord and
tenant, in the light of this history, is seen to
have played a great part in the development
of English agriculture, and the essence of
the S37stem has been the mutual confidence
between landlord and tenant. In the words
of the latest American authority ^ : "In spite
of the fact that tenancy is the rule, the
agriculture of England is, in many ways,
worthy of our emulation, and this advanced

1 Henry C. Taylor : "Agricultural Economics" (p. 321).
Macmillan & Co., 1905. The writer shows (p. 241) that
in the United States there has been a decline in the
percentage of farn\s "operated" by the owners from 74-5
in 1880 to 647 in 1900 — the "cash" tenants having
increased from 8-o per cent, to 13*1, and the "share"
tenants from i7"5 per cent, to 22-2. The growth of the
" share " tenants is interesting in view of what is said
above on the " land and stock " lease.

S6 Rents, Wages, and Profits in Agriculture

position of English agriculture is due, in
a great measure, to an excellent system of
adjusting the relations between landlords
and tenants."

CHAPTER III

AGRICULTURAL WAGES

In dealing with wages in agricultural

employment I propose to take a broad

historical survey, and to begin, as in the

case of rents and profits, with the mediseval

period, or more particularly the period from

the Norman Conquest to the end of the

fifteenth century or the beginning of the

Tudor period.

Rogers has declared emphatically that

the fifteenth century was the golden age

of English labour, and as at that time the

greater part of the labour was employed

in agriculture, this means that it was in

his opinion the golden age of agricultural

83

Agricultural Wages 89

labour. No doubt if we compare that
period with quite recent times — say the last
quarter of a century, and take account of
everything that enters into real wages, that
opinion might be questioned, but if we
measure, as Rogers does, by the amount of
necessaries obtainable, especially the amount
of wheat, no doubt the fifteenth century
stands out prominently as compared with
any other century as being advantageous
to agricultural labour.

It is, however, of still greater interest to
notice that the economic progress of the
agricultural labouring classes was relatively
much greater in the mediaeval period than
in the modern period from the reign of
Elizabeth down to our own times.

This vast improvement in the mediaeval
period again, is, as we shall see, largely
due to the action of economic forces — the
natural action of these forces being

90 Rents, Wages^ and Profits in Agriculture

intensified and hastened by the occurrence
of the great plague.

The essential facts in this mediaeval pro-
gress have already been brought out in
dealing v^ith rent and profits.

We may now look at the same facts from
the point of view of labour.

In the first place, then, we have the
immense progress implied in the abolition
of slavery and serfdom. In order to realise
the economic progress in this direction, it
is best to leave on one side the purely
legal controversies as to the personal status
of the labourers and look only to the
elements of economic freedom. At the
Conquest the Normans took over the over-
lordship of the manors of which they dis-
possessed the Saxons, and with the estates
they naturally took over the slaves and
the serfs with which they were stocked.
They would no more think of destroying

Agricultural Wages 91

the serfs than of destroying the oxen. No
doubt at that time the bulk of the
ordinary people were in a state of unfree-
dom, though they were unfree in various
degrees. Some were absolute slaves liable
to be sold and exported to foreign countries,
and there was, for example, a large export
of slaves from Bristol to Ireland. Some
were not slaves in this sense, but were
serfs attached to the land, the real bond
of attachment being the force of custom
which varied to some extent from manor
to manor ; they occupied holdings of
different kinds, and in return they were
obliged to render very heavy labour 'rents,
to work with their ploughs and oxen, and
to give up also certain parts of the pro-
duce of their common land. If we look
at it from the point of view of wages, we
may say that under this system the real
wages of labour was a bare subsistence

92 Rents, Wages, and Profits in Agriculiiire

minimum ; the lord of the manor exacted
all the labour that he could use, and in
return allowed 'only what was necessary to
keep the workers in a condition to per-
form their duties and keep up their
numbers. More than two centuries after
the Conquest we find in a work, that has
been well described as a landlord's manual
or handbook, that the steward of a great
estate is to report as regards the servile
tenants — these are the words : " How much
each of them has, and what he is worth,
and to what amount they can be tallaged
without reducing them to poverty and
ruin." Surely the idea of a bare minimum,
subsistence wage could hardly be expressed
with greater clearness or ferocity. And not
only was the natural rate of wages in the
sense of the real return to labour reduced
in this way to starvation point, but in
all sorts of ways the personal freedom of

Agricultural Wages 93

the serfs was curtailed. The leading idea
is that the estate required a stock of men,
and accordingly the men were not allowed
to leave the estate, their children were not
allowed to be trained for the Church, the
great refuge of the Middle Ages ; they
were not allowed to give their daughters
in marriage — none of these things could
be done without the licence of the lord of
the manor. When the customs and the
regulations of the estates failed, the law
of the land was appealed to, and all sorts
of restrictions were imposed on this natural
migration of labour.

And yet, in spite of these restraints, even
before the Black Death, a certain amount
of progress was made in the direction of
freedom. There were various influences at
work favourable to this end ; the towns, as
they grew in strength, were jealous of their
hardly acquired privileges, and residence of

94 Rents, Wages, and Profits in Agriailture

a year and a day in a town gave personal
freedom to the fugitive. The Church was
essentially democratic, and children of the
peasantry often rose to the highest offices.
As soon as the institution of scutage led
to the enrolment of mercenaries, the sons
of the villeins had a chance of rising to
high military command, and there are one
or two notable cases of knighthood, e.g.^
Sir Robert Sale. But the great agent in
the progress of labour was the growth of
the money power, and the commutation of
labour dues into money payments.

This process of commutation was greatly
furthered by the occurrence of the Black
Death. As already shown, the natural
price of labour rose greatly, and in the
end the great bulk of the villeins became
either yeomen proprietors or tenant farmers.
No doubt there were exceptions, and there
is a remarkable passage in Fitzherbert's

I

Agricultural Wages 95

Book of Surveying (1523), condemning
serfdom as it then existed as contrary to
Christianity. There had arisen also the
class of free labourers who had taken the
place of the old cottagers or bordars, who
correspond more nearly to the modern
agricultural labourer.

This differentiation of classes, it must be
remarked, is itself one of the best signs of
economic progress. At the end of the
fifteenth century there was still a class
who were economically little better than
serfs, but a considerable part of the old
servile population had now been replaced
by substantial yeomen. There was also a
good demand for agricultural labour, and
wages were relatively high. Rogers has
made an interesting comparison of the
wages obtained by an agricultural family
at the end of the eighteenth century (in
the time of Arthur Young) with the wages

96 Rents, Wages^ and Profits in Agriculture

of a corresponding family for a similar
amount of work at the end of the
fifteenth.

In actual money the amount earned in
the earlier period, according to a statute
of 1495, was about £i\ los., or about
one - half of the money earned in 1770,
viz., £^\ 8s. But when we look to the
corresponding real wages, we find that in
1495 the 4-lb. loaf was worth only J-d.,
as against 5d. in 1770, butter was id.
against 7d., cheese Jd. against 4d., and
meat also id. against 4d. On the whole,
then, Rogers calculates that the family of
the agricultural labourer in Young's time
ought to have received in money, so as to
get the same real wages, not simply double,
as was the case, but seven and a half times
as much. Or putting it otherwise, the
family earnings in Young's time ought to
have been more than three times as high

Agricultural Wages 97

as they were, in order that they might
be in the same position, as consumers, as
the family of the end of the mediaeval
period. Bad as this position was in 1770,
it was soon to become much worse, and
even in 1870 the agricultural labourer
could not obtain the same amount of
bread for his money wages as he could
four centuries before.

It may be convenient at this point to
call attention to the relative amounts of
rent, profit, and wages, taking for the
purpose a farm of ^00 acres.

The labour bill was, according to Young's
estimate, ;f335> the rent was ;f 250, and the
profit was, roughly, ^400. In the fifteenth
century the rent would have been only
£\2 I OS., the profit of the farmer about
^40, and the labour bill about ;£"i5o, if
the same amount of labour was required,

G

98 Rents y Wages, and Profits in Agriculture

though most likely more was needed in
the earlier period.

Thus in money, rent had risen twenty
times, profit (aggregate) ten times, and
wages only two - fold. After 1770 there
was a very great increase in both rent
and profit, but real wages fell.

The position of the labourer had thus
become relatively less prosperous, compared
with the two other parties interested in
land, and, as we have already seen, also
absolutely worse reckoned in food.

During these four centuries there had
been great national progress. In spite of
this, however, not only had the condition
of the labourer, as a food consumer,
become worse, but apparently also he had
lost in various social utilities (to use the
general economic term), which are not so
easy of expression in measurable quantities.

Adam Smith, writing about the same

Agricultural Wages 99

time as Young, speaks of the ill-contrived
laws of settlement which prevented the
natural migration of labour to its best
markets. There was scarce any man of
forty, he declared, who had not suffered
from these laws. But in their essence
these laws of settlement really brought
back one of the characteristics of mediaeval
serfdom. People were ascript to their
parishes, lest they should become chargeable
to some other for poor relief.

In the mediaeval period, the anxiety of
the landowners was lest a valuable piece of
living capital should escape ; the serfs, or the
"souls," on the manor were too valuable
to lose. As soon as the modern period had
been well started under Elizabeth, it was
necessary to form an elaborate poor - law,
and also a great statute regulating the
employment and wages of labour. The
Elizabethan Poor-Law (1601) and the

100 Rents^ Wages, and Profits in Agriculture

Statute of Apprenticeship (1563) dominated
the organisation of industry up to the
industrial revolution at the end of the
eighteenth century, and the laws of settle-
ment were added so as to insure any
one parish against the danger of having
to support the paupers of another. Time
will not permit, in this broad survey, of
entering at any length into the eEects
of the Poor-Law and of the regulation of
wages by the justices so long as it pre-
vailed. It may be admitted, having regard
to the original words of the statutes, and
to the original practice, that the main
object in both cases was to relieve the
poor and to prevent the extension of
pauperism. The regulation of wages was
of the nature of an official arbitration —
or so at least it was intended to be. To
a dispassionate reader, there seems to be
no evidence of anything like a conspiracy

Agricultural Wages lOl

on the part of the landowners and the
farmers to depress the agricultural labourers
for their own gain. The freedom of labour
had brought with it the separation of
labour from the land. The wages of
labour began to be determined more and
more by demand and supply, and not by
customary relations of land and labour.
The legislation begun by Elizabeth was
intended to meet the evils of destitution
and of unemployment. The poor in very
deed — too feeble to work — were treated with
charity ; the sturdy rogues and vagabonds,
and even the unemployed who were capable
of work, were treated with what we should
consider ferocity.

But the whole effect of the system was
to take away a great part of the economic
freedom that had been acquired before the
end of the mediaeval period. The effects
of the Poor - Law were aggravated in the

102 Rents ^ Wages, and Profits in Agrictdture

early part of the nineteenth century, and
the evils led to the well-known Amendment
Act of 1834. Before this reform, the wages
of agricultural labour, except in some of
the Northern counties, were paid partially
or wholly out of the poor-rates. We are
told in the report of the Select Committee
on labourers' wages in 1824, that able-
bodied labourers were sent round to the
farmers, and received a part, and in some
cases, the whole of their subsistence, from
the parish whilst working on the land of
individuals. People who had no need of
farm labour were obliged to contribute to
the payment of work done for others. The
idea was to provide what we should now
call a living wage, and the unit taken was
the family in the natural sense, relief being
given according to the number of children,
whether legitimate or not. Very often the
farmers agreed to pay low rates of wages

Agricultural Wages 103

SO that the men might get something by
way of aid from the parish. The labourers,
of course, did not exert themselves over
their work, or even over finding employ-
ment, as they were sure of much the same
subsistence in any case.

Sometimes, indeed, they were actually
better off if they received the whole of
their pay from the parish. The system was
really based on the communistic idea, that
regard should be paid to the wants and
necessities of the workers and not to the
value of the work done. In Buckingham-
shire it was reported that wages, considered
as the result of a bargain between the
capitalist and the labourer for the advantage
of both, could hardly be said to exist. The
farmer, like the parish, commonly paid
every man according to the wants of
himself and his family, and then got what
work he could out of him.

104 Rents ^ Wages^ and Profits in Agriculture

Even after the Act of 1834 had abolished
the allowance system, the roundsman system,
and the labour rate system, the ideas at
the root of the old Poor-Law still pre-
vailed to a great extent. A report of 1839
says that various contrivances had enabled
the predominant interest in each locality
to contribute to a common fund from
which they did not derive an equal benefit.
Very commonly, however, the farmers them-
selves, in the forties, gave partial w^ork to
men for whom they had no real need, and
kept up a surplus supply of labour at low
wages, simply to keep the men off the
rates. It is definitely stated in the Report
on the Burdens on Land in 1846 that in
order to reduce the poor-rate the farmers
in many parishes employ more hands than
the economical working of the land requires.
Farmers on large holdings gave evidence
before this Committee that they found it

Agricultural Wages 105

cheaper to give some employment on the
land rather than leave the families of the
men to come on the rates. Consequently,
preference was given to the men with large
families, partly, no doubt, because some
work was got out of the children, but
mainly on account of the saving to the
rates. In the same way some of the farmers
refrained from using new labour-saving
machinery, and threshing with the flail
was continued simply to give employment.
We also read that this employment of
surplus labour was in part regarded as an
insurance against rick-burning, at that time
the popular method of forcible persuasion.
Caird describes a similar state of things in
the English agriculture of 1 850-1. In some
districts, he says, the farmers divided up
the surplus labour. In Wiltshire, in which
the wages have always been very low,
Caird says that both farmers and labourers

Io6 Rents^ Wages^ and Profits in Agriculture

suffered from the over-supply of labour. The
farmer was compelled to employ more men
than his present mode of operations required,
and to save himself he paid a lovv^er rate
of v^ages than was sufficient to give the
physical power necessary for the per-
formance of a fair day's work. We have,
in fact, an illustration of the opposite
principle to that now known as the
economy of high wages. Partly under
social pressure, and to avoid the losses by
poor-rates, the farmers were obliged to resort
to the economy of low wages. Even down
to our own times, we find it was quite
common for farmers to employ men to an
extreme old age rather than that they
should go to the workhouse, and labour
was considered to have a certain claim on
the land for employment. It cannot, how-
ever, be said that the recognition of this
claim was of advantage to labour, if we

Agricultural Wages 1O7

are to judge by the general level of
earnings.

In recent years wages in agriculture have
risen in spite of the falling off of profits
and rents consequent on the fall in prices.
And the rise in wages can only be ascribed
to the check to the supply, by the greater
migration to the towns, and the cessation
of the social causes which formerly induced
the surplus to remain in the country.

Although, as just pointed out, in many
cases the farmers kept up a surplus supply
of labour, in some cases the landlords
refused to keep up the cottages on the
farms, and in order to avoid the rates,
forced the labour to go to some parish
where these restrictions in building were
not in use — the open villages, as they were
called. Here the rents were high, and the
cottages very bad, and the labourers had
to walk considerable distances to their

io8 Rents, Wages, and Profits in Agriculture

work. It may be noted that the same
method of keeping down poor - rates was
practised in the beginning of the eighteenth
century. The adoption of the union of
parishes for relief checked this evil, and
now the cottage accommodation is much
better and there is less overcrowding.

The old open villages, with their over-
crowded and insanitary dwellings, were
also associated with the " gang " system.
Gangs of men, women, lads, girls, and
children, were formed by a gang - master
who contracted with a farmer to do
certain operations. He was very often a
sweater of the worst kind, paying the
lowest wages possible, and making them
really less by selling necessaries to the
members of the gang. These gangs were
worse than degrading to the women and
children concerned, and by the Agricultural
Gangs Act of 1867 children under eight

Agricultural Wages 109

were prohibited from working in gangs,
and since then mixed gangs of men and
women have been prohibited from work-
ing in gangs, and the gang - master for
men - gangs and the women overseers for
women - gangs had to obtain licences.

During the last fifty years, i.e.^ since 1850,
the position of the agricultural labourers
has improved in every way. According to
the general summary in Mr. Wilson Fox's
able paper, earnings are greater — the rate of
pay being higher, and also the employment
more regular. The hours of labour are
less, and the work is less arduous owing
to the use of machinery. The chief things
on which the wages are spent have fallen
in price ; even house rents in the country
are not generally higher, whilst the cottage
accommodation, though still in need of
improvement in some parts, is, on the
average, far better than in the fifties. The

no Rents, Wages, and Profits in Agriculture

decrease of the rural population has reduced
overcrowding, and left the worst cottages
empty. Education is free, sanitation and
water supplies are better, there are more
opportunities for allotments, and compen-
sation for accidents in the course of
the employment is obtainable. — (Statistical
Journal^ June, 1903.)

As already observed, one of the best signs
of progress is in the differentiation of classes
within an industrial group. In the early
mediaeval period the great body of agri-
cultural workers were in a state of
serfdom ; by the end of that period there
had emerged out of the masses important
classes of peasant proprietors, substantial
tenant farmers, and well-paid free labourers.
In the course of time the small proprietors,
e.g.^ the statesmen of Cumberland and
Westmoreland, to a great extent dis-
appeared, but the tenant farmers have

Agricultural Wages in

always remained, and in relation to the
landlord, have improved their position.

If we apply this test of differentiation to
agricultural labour during the last fifty
years we find a notable advance. In
England and Wales the regular employment
of women in agriculture has practically
ceased ; the children who formerly began
to work at six or seven, and sometimes in
" gangs," are now at school up to double
that age ; of the men we have higher and
lower classes, according to capacity ; those
in charge of animals and machinery have
increased relatively, and they obtain higher
wages. As regards the lowest classes, there
is no longer a superabundance of cheap
labour fed on the rates and only fully
employed in times of exceptional pressure.
In many districts agricultural labour is
relatively scarce, instead of being in all
superabundant. It is owing to this relative

112 Rents, Wages, and Profits in Agriculture

scarcit}^, in a great measure, that the lise
in real wages is due, as will appear more
clearly when we proceed to trace the
general course of agricultural wages, com-
pared with that of other employments. The
bearing on rural depopulation is discussed
in the next chapter, and here it is only
necessary to emphasise one point. Since
1850 the number of male agricultural
labourers has diminished by some 40 per
cent — and women and young children are
practically no longer employed. At first
sight this falling off in the numbers
employed on the land seems a matter for
national regret. But a good deal of this
regret is based on sentimental, a priori
considerations, of what agricultural labour
ought to be, and not on the actual facts
of history. Between the twenties and
fifties, except in the Northern counties,
where there were other fields of employment

Agricultural Wages 113

in mining and manLiactures, the rural
population was so abundant that there was
not enough work to go round ; the land-
owners and farmers had to support large
numbers of able - bodied men and their
families, and were nearly ruined in extreme
cases by the rates. In 1851 Caird tells us
that in the Southern counties, whilst the
agricultural labourer gained only a scanty
subsistence, he was everywhere felt as a
burden and not a benefit to his employer.
The degradation of village life was often
as low as in the slums of the great cities,
and on the whole, the work performed by
the women and children was almost as bad
as that in the mines, from which also it has
disappeared. Consider the " gang " system ;
look at the crowding in the open villages ;
think that all the earnings of all the
members of the family were not sufficient
to provide a living wage, and had to be

H

1 14 Rents ^ Wages, and Profits in Agriculture

supplemented by legal or customary charity,
and you will agree that, from one point of
view, the falling off in the numbers em-
ployed in agriculture is a sign of national
progress and of great improvement in the
classes concerned.

We may now consider how it is that this
improvement in the condition of agricultural
labour was so long retarded, and why it is
that the greatest improvement, for four
centuries at least, has taken place during
the last quarter of a century, which,
curiously enough, as regards agricultural
industry in general, has been a period of
profound depression, in which rents and
profits on the average have reached a
minimum.

One of the most remarkable results
obtained from the application of inductive
and historical methods to economics is
that wages in agriculture are generally

Agricultural Wages 1 1 5

lower than wages in other industries that
involve similar hardships and require
similar skill. So universal is this relative
depression of agricultural wages, that in the
matter of economic laws or tendencies it
ought to take the first place. The tendency
to depressed wages in agriculture is
certainly much less liable to be counter-
acted, than the celebrated tendency to
diminisliing return in agricultural pro-
duction.

I will quote a few significant facts from
the history of wages in England over a
period of more than six centuries. It must
be borne in mind that when we are dealing
with wages over very long periods there
are several difficulties to be overcome.
Money wages, especially in the earlier
centuries, are only part earnings. Rogers,
in his great work, and in his popular
exposition of the more important results,

ii6 Rents, WageSy and Profits in Agriculture

has brought out this point very clearly.
We must take account of the perquisites,
the common rights, the food and drink,
the bit of land, and so on, and add so
much to the money wage. Then, again,
as regards the money wages actually paid,
they are often quoted by the unit of
work done, e.g.^ threshing of various kinds
of grain at so much per quarter, reaping,
mowing, etc., at so much per acre, and so
on for other kinds of work. But if we
wish to compare agricultural wages with
wages in quite different occupations, we
must obviously take a unit of time as the
basis. In the agricultural records time
wages, when quoted as such, or estimated
from piece-work, are generally estimated
by the day, but earnings (as indicating the
standard of comfort) are generally estimated
by the year. If, then, the wages are quoted
by the day, we must take account of the

Agricultural Wages 117

regularity of the employment. It is im-
possible on this occasion to go into these
difficulties of comparison, and I only
mention them to show that in the calcula-
tions made they have not been overlooked
or forgotten.

Again, in comparing agricultural wages
with other wages, over long periods, we
have to take account of changes in the
nature of the occupations. In agriculture,
for centuries the kinds of work remain the
same. Down to quite recent times, in
some parts, men and women might be
seen reaping wheat with the sickle and
cutting the corn high on the stalk exactly
as Rogers describes the work in the Middle
Ages, and similarly there was threshing
with the flail, and so on. But in other
industries there have been revolutionary
changes in all departments. But even in
the non-agricultural industries there are

1 1 8 Rents, Wages, and Profits in Agriculture

certain types of a representative kind that
are fairly steady and enduring in their chief
characteristics. In a calculation I made
for another purpose/ a few years ago, I
took as the type of non-agricultural
employment the carpenter. Vicomte
d'Avenel, who has done for the history of
wages in France what Rogers did for
England, takes as the type for comparison
the labour of the mason. As it happens,
whether we take France or England, there
is in general little difference between the
wages of the carpenter and the mason.
Suppose, then, we compare the wages of
the ordinary carpenter with the wages of
a first-class hand in agriculture — one who
is required to do the most skilled and
responsible work. Now, if we consider that
the work is to be done throughout the

^ "Principles of Political Economy," vol. iii., Book IV.,
chap. vii.

Agricultural Wages 119

year, through the long, stormy winter as
well as the pleasant days of early summer,
I think there is no question that from the
point of view of the conditions of the
work — the disutility involved — the labour
in agriculture is harder — it involves more
disutility, e.g., the exposure doubles a man
up with rheumatism. Then, again, as
regards the skill required, Adam Smith, in
a famous passage, has shown how much
more mental strain is required for the
proper management of animals compared
with ordinary mechanical operations. The
first-class hand, then, in agriculture may
be well compared with the carpenter, and
whether we consider the hardship involved
in the work, or the skill and judgment,
the wages of the former (the agriculturalist)
ought to be at least as high as those of
the carpenter.

Now, in fact, we find that the wages of

120 Rents, Wages, and Profits in Agriculture

the carpenter are in general fairly repre-
sentative of most ordinary skilled labour,
e.g.^ the mason, the tiler, the sawyer, the
plumber, the bricklayer, etc. But as soon
as we turn to agriculture there is a
difference, and generally a great difference.
Time will not permit of my giving the
results of the inquiry in detail, but one or
two instances may be taken. In England,
in the century before the Black Death, the
wages of the carpenter were at least 50
per cent., and probably nearer 100 per cent.,
higher than those of the first-class hand in
agriculture.

In the fifty years after the Black Death,
when all wages rose, practically the same
proportions remained : the carpenter re*
ceived double, or at least half as much
again as the agriculturalist. Down to the
middle of the seventeenth century the same
proportions on the average hold good, and

Agricultural Wages 121

in the period from 1642 to 1702 there is
the beginning of a striking change that
is still more adverse to agriculture. At
this time the best agricultural labour begins
to receive less than the ordinary unskilled
labour in the tov^ns in other occupations ;
e.g., the hedger and ditcher gets less than
the labourer or the artisan. In the eight-
eenth century the carpenter receives more
than double the agricultural labourer, and
common, unskilled labour also obtains
nearly 50 per cent, more than the best
agricultural labour, and during the nine-
teenth century practically the same results
are found. That is to say, in the course
of some six centuries in England, the
relative depression in the wages of
agriculture is considerable and continuous.
The experience of other countries gives
similar results. One more example may be
given. The Massachussets Bureau of Labour

122 Rents, Wages, attd Profits in Agriculture

Statistics issued in 1885 a report on wages
in the United States from 1760 to 1883.
It may be calculated from these figures
that from 1780 to 1850 the average wages
of the agricultural labourer are in pro-
portion to those of the carpenter, as 100
to 147, whilst from i860 to 1883 the
proportion is as 100 to 188. Since 1883
the movement has been in favour of the
carpenter, his average wages being more
than double those of the agricultural
labourer.

Besides the general law that agricultural
wages are in general lower than the wages
in the towns, it appears also that the more
purely any district is agricultural so much
lower are the wages. Conversely, if any
district has other important industries, e.g.^
mining or manufactures, the rate of rural
wages is also higher. Rogers has remarked,
that for a long period the rate of wages

Agricultural Wages 123

in London has been higher than in the
provincial towns which are in closer
connection with agriculture.

Another general result is also of interest.
Low as were the wages of men, the wages
of women in agriculture were still lower.
Thorold Rogers shows that from 1260 to
1702 the wages paid to women in agri-
culture were about half the wages paid to
the men.

The researches of Vicomte d'Avenel have
made available still more ample material
for the history of the wages of women in
France, and he has drawn some very
interesting conclusions. It is well known
that the poorer the masses of the people
so much the more necessary is it for women
to engage in work for wages. By the
influence of custom also — the custom in
the last resort being due to the superior
economic strength of the men — most of the

124 Rents y Wages^ and Profits in Agriculture

most gainful occupations or branches of
employment have been restricted to men.
Even in agriculture, certain operations have
generally been confined to men.

In the last census (1901), out of some
12,000 women still employed in agriculture
in England and Wales, only 5 women
are returned as in charge of horses, and
one of them is a girl under fifteen years
of age. Only 12 are returned as shepherds,
and only i as a woodman. Of farm
bailiffs or foremen, there are 39 women
as against nearly 27,000 men. And history
shows that in the past, in agriculture, the
women were pressed into the least gainful
branches of the service.

The greater the misery of the people so
much the m.ore are the wages of women
depressed, simply because there are more
seeking for employment. D'Avenel accounts
for the relative fall in the wages of women

Agricultural Wages 125

in France in the course of four centuries
(1400- 1 800) by the general impoverishment
of the labouring classes, which made it
necessary for more women to seek employ-
ment. And conversely, it may be said that
the great improvement in the prosperity
of the labouring classes in England in the
present generation is partly indicated by
the great decline in the numbers of women
engaged in agriculture.

The employment of children tells the
same tale. The wages of children in agri-
culture have always been very low. In
agriculture, as in the domestic industries,
the parents of the children often proved to
be the worst tyrants. The abolition of
the employment of young children, and the
great falling off in the employment of the
older children in agriculture, in the present
generation, although not comfortable for
the employer, is undoubtedly a sign of

126 Rents^ Wages^ and Profits in Agriculture

increasing prosperity. Even from 1891 to
1 901 in England and Wales the number
of males under fifteen employed in agri-
culture has diminished by nearly one-half,
and the number of girls in 1901 is less
than one-fourth the total number of girls
under fifteen employed in agriculture in
1891, the total being now only 385, i.e.,
for all England and Wales.

These movements in wages and employ-
ment are easily explained by reference to
fundamental economic principles. Once a
country is fairly well peopled, and most of
its available lands cultivated, there is little
room for the extensive increase of agri-
culture. And as regards the increase of
intensive cultivation, many of the improve-
ments that take place are such as to
demand less labour. On the whole, then,
there is no natural expansion in the demand
for agricultural labour, but rather the

Agricultural Wages 127

reverse. On the other hand, under normal
conditions the supply of labour in the
country districts increases, even when it is
not unduly stimulated by the lax adminis-
tration of an injudicious poor-law.

We find even at the present time in
some parts of Ireland and of the High-
lands of Scotland, examples of congested
areas. In the past the natural tendency of
the supply of agricultural labour to outstrip
the demand was intensified by the action
both of accumulated custom and direct
legislation.

It is only quite recently in England
that the natural over-supply of labour has
been checked, and that we find complaints
of the scarcity of labour in some agri-
cultural districts. As already shown,
till well on in the nineteenth century,
there was always a glut of agricultural
labour.

128 Rents, Wages, and Profits in Agriculture

In conclusion, it may be observed that in
spite of the improvement in the condition
of the agricultural labourers as a v^hole,
it may be doubted if relatively to other
employments the improvement has been
sufficient to check the natural flow of
labour to the towns. The rise in the price
of labour, when otherwise agricultural
industry is depressed, leads to a lessened
demand on the part of employers ; but
even allowing for this, there is, compared
with former periods, a relative scarcity of
labour. The farmer has to compete with
other employers, instead of having a
practical monopoly in his district, and he
can no longer obtain the cheap labour of
women and children. One remedy, from
the farmers' point of view, seems to be the
recognition of the principle of the economy
of high wages, and of the allied principle
that the more men are interested in the

Agricultural Wages 1 29

results of their work, so much the more
efficient is their labour likely to be. In
the near future, however, the rate of agri-
cultural wages is much more likely to
rise than to fall.

CHAPTER IV

RURAL DEPOPULATION

At the present time there is perhaps no
subject connected with agriculture to
which popular attention is so much
directed as what is called rural depopula-
tion ; and perhaps there is no subject to
which it is more necessary to apply
scientific analysis, whether we consider
the nature and extent of the alleged evil,
the causes assigned, or the remedies pro-
posed.

With regard to the nature and the
extent of rural depopulation in England, we
may begin with the evidence of the last
census (1901), the general report on which

was issued in 1904.

131

132 Rents ^ Wages, and Profits in Agriculture

In 1 88 1 the persons enumerated in urban
districts were in proportion to those in the
rural districts as 212 to 100; in 1891 the
proportions had risen to 258 to 100 in
favour of the urban districts, and in the
last census — 1901 — the proportion had still
further increased to 335 to 100. At first
sight these figures seem to confirm the
popular view that the country is becoming
rapidly desolate, but several important
corrections have to be made before this
view can be maintained.

In the first place, the increase in the
proportion of the urban districts is partly
due to an actual growth of the population
enumerated in the preceding censuses in
those areas, but partly also to the inclusion
in the urban areas of some which had
formerly been classed as rural.

In the census of 1891 attention was drawn
in the General Report to the fact that a

Rural Depopulation 133

considerable number of the so-called urban
districts, though technically urban, were
distinctly rural in character, being in many
cases small towns in the midst of agricultural
areas, on which they are dependent for
their maintenance as business centres.

In the present 1901 census there are 1,122
urban districts as against 664 rural districts.
But of these urban districts as many as
215 had populations below 3,000; 211 had
populations between 3,000 and 5,000 ; and
260 had populations between 5,000 and
1 0,000.

In popular discourse, when urban popu-
lations are spoken of, the general implication
is that we are dealing with large cities,
and not with good-sized villages and small
country towns. Accordingly, it is useful to
follow the census authorities in 1891 and
in 1 901 in estimating the growth or decrease
of the rural population if we include with

134 Rents, Wages, and Profits in Agriculture

the rural districts — first, all those which are
below 10,000 ; and secondly, all those below
5,000. In the first case, i.e., when w^e include
in the rural districts the small towns below
10,000 people, we find that, comparing igoi
with 1 89 1, there has been an actual increase
of 5*3 per cent., the population having risen
from about 10 millions to about loj
millions. It is true that the rate of increase
in the urban districts proper is greater, being
indeed 15*8 per cent. ; but still the fact
remains that the rural districts, as so
interpreted, have gained in absolute numbers
half a million.

If we include with the rural districts only
those with populations below 5,000, we find
the rural population with this interpretation
has increased by 3*5 per cent., or absolutely
by some 300,000, as against 157 for the
urban districts as a whole, and some
3,000,000 absolutely.

Rural Depopulation 135

Even when we adopt the technical
division of the last census, and take rural
in a very restricted sense, we still find that
there has been an increase of 2*9 per cent.,
and absolutely of some 200,000 ; against an
urban rate of increase of 15*2, and an absolute
increase of about 4I millions.

Finally, we may take districts in which
there are absolutely no urban districts or
parts of districts, of which there were 112
in the last census. A very interesting table
is given in the Report, giving the figures
in every census from 1801 to the last
(1901) ; that is just 100 years. In the
first half of the century there was an
increase in these purely rural districts in
every decennium, but at a gradually
diminishing rate, except for the unusually
rapid increase in the decennium 181 1 to
182 1, where, as almost always happens

136 Rents, Wages, and Profits in Agriculture

after a great war, the rate of increase
was more than doubled.

From 1 85 1 to 1891 there was a tendency
in these districts to a decrease in population,
the rate of decrease, however, being very
slight — varying between 0*67 and 0*04 —
whilst the absolute loss over the forty
years was only 20,000 out of 1,324,528.

In the last ten years, however — 1891 to
1901 — in these 112 areas there has been
an increase of 1*9 per cent., and an absolute
increase of more than 25,000 This increase
has wiped out the losses that had taken
place since 1851, and the census of 1901
records in these districts actually the
highest population of any census since
1 80 1. Not only so, but the increase since
1 801 is nearly 43 per cent. ; and absolutely
the population in these districts rose from
932,000 to 1,330.319-

I have dwelt on this point at sorne

Rural Depopulation 137

length, because it is important to distin-
guish between rural depopulation in the
sense of an absolute falling off of the
numbers in what is called the country,
and a low rate of increase compared with
the towns.

There are, of course, as is pointed out
in the Census Report, many rural parts in
which actual depopulation has occurred
during the last ten years — in some cases
considerable — but even in these cases it is
to be observed that the rate of decrease is
less than in the preceding decennium. In
1881-91 the maximum rate of decrease
was 1 1 '68, whilst in 1891-1901 the maxi-
mum was 5*35 per cent., and there were
only two counties in which the decrease
was over 5 per cent., as against 7 per cent,
in the preceding decennium.

It is worth noting, incidentally, that the
popular idea that the rate of increase in

138 Rents, Wages, and Profits in Agriculture

the population is greatest in the large
cities is not borne out by the facts. It
is found that, taking urban districts, those
above 100,000 show a less rate of increase
than those below ; e.g.^ the rate of increase
in London (considered as one district, with
a population of over 4I- millions) is only
7*3 per cent., whilst in 211 districts, with
populations between 3,000 and 5,000, the
rate of increase is 8*6. The maximum rate
of increase is, in the moderate-sized towns,
between 50,000 and 100,000,^ viz., 23*2 per
cent. Between 20,000 and 50,000 the rate
is 20*3, between 10,000 and 20,000 it is
i8*4, and between 5,000 and 10,000 it is
i4'4 per cent.

These figures seem to show that there
is a certain process of decentralisation going
on, and it seems probable that in the course

^ It is usual to take 100,000 as the minimum, to rank as
a city.

Rural Depopulation 139

of time, with improvements in communica-
tion and the adoption of different methods
of manufacture, this process may be
intensified.

The bearing on agriculture, and on the
condition of the strictly rural population,
is important, as better markets are afforded
to the bye-products of agriculture by the
growth of the moderate-sized towns.

Here, however, it is necessary to point
out that the occupations of the rural
population are not entirely agricultural,
nor directly dependent on agriculture. In
some country districts, to take but one
example, there is a good deal of min-
ing, and there are residents who derive
their incomes from non - agricultural
sources.

We may now consider the numbers of
those employed in agriculture in the census
meaning of the term. They are divided

140 Rents, Wages, and Profits in Agriculture

into different classes. The first class
consists of the farmers and graziers, most
of whom are employers of labour. The
figures are given for each census since 1851
(inclusive), but it is observed that up to
1 88 1 the numbers include those who are
described as retired, whilst in the later
censuses they are excluded. The general
conclusion is that the number of holders
of farms has not materially declined during
the half century, and it is specially note-
worthy that in the period 1891 to 1901
there has been an actual increase w^hich
has more than balanced the slight falling
off between 1881-1891. Here again, how-
ever, the figures are not strictly comparable,
as the poultry farmers in 1891 were included
under a different heading, and when this
allowance is made there may be a small
decrease. In many of the agricultural
counties, also, there is (even not allowing

Rural Depopulation 141

for the poultry farmers), a decrease in the
number of the farmers.

On the whole, however, as stated before,
there Is little falling off in the numbers
of the farmers during the last half century.

But quite the opposite is the case when
we consider the number of the workers on
the farms. Here we have from 185 1 a
continuous and considerable decrease, both
proportional and absolute. In 1851, of
every 100 males over ten years of age, 19
were workers on farms, whilst in 1901 the
proportion was only 6 in the 100. When
we refer to the absolute numbers we find
that, compared with 1851, in 1901 there
were little more than half the numbers
employed, strictly 58 per cent., viz., a fall
from about \\ millions to f of a million
(1,232,576 to 715,138). The reduction in
female agricultural labour is still more
remarkable, being no less than 91 '5 per

142 Rents, Wages, and Profits in Agriculttire

cent, in the last fifty years — the liighest
rate of decline being during the last
decennium. At present the total number
of women employed in England and Wales
is only 12,000 as against 143,475 in 1851.

On the other hand, however, there has
been a very great increase in the number
of gardeners, florists, nurserymen, etc., and
also in the numbers of those employed about
agricultural machinery. There is also an
increase in the number of woodmen. Since
the former census the agricultural machine
attendants have increased 40 per cent.,
the woodmen 27*4 per cent., and the
gardeners 20*5 per cent. These classes
together are now equal to about one-third
of the workers on farms.

The decline in the numbers of those
engaged on farms is partly accounted for
by the large amount of arable land that
has gone out of cultivation. In the period

Rural Depoptilation 143

of the last census, i.e.^ 1891-1901, there has
been a diminution of 6*i per cent, in the
total arable land, and an increase of 2 per
cent, in the permanent pasture. Taking
arable and permanent pasture together,
there has been a diminution of 17 per
cent., or nearly half a million of acres.

It is rather remarkable that, if we take
the period of the whole century, according to
the tables given in Porter's " Progress," we
find that in 1827, under arable and gardens,
there were 1,000,000 less acres than in
1901 ; and if we go back to the beginning
of the century, the amount of arable was
still less, as in the first twenty years of the
century there were a large number of
enclosures, and part, at any rate, of the
newly - enclosed land had before been
uncultivated.

We are now in a position to see that
the popular idea of the depopulation

144 Rents, Wages^ and Profits in Agriculture

of the rural districts, and of the
abandonment of cultivated land, is to a
great extent ill-founded and exaggerated.

It is worth while also examining the
popular idea that the percentage falling ofE
in the numbers employed in agriculture,
compared with those in other pursuits, is
something new in England and peculiar
to the present age.

Between 1811 and 183 1 (when the census
of occupations took account of families
and not of individuals) it was found that,
whilst the total number of families in
Great Britain increased by 34 per cent.,
the number of those employed in agriculture
increased only 7^ per cent.

Again, if we compare 1831 with 1841,
we find that although the population
had increased on the whole by over
2,000,000, the number of adult males
employed in agriculture had actually

Rural Depopulation 1 45

diminished by 35,000 persons. And yet,
as explained in the last chapter, in this
period there was a constant glut of
agricultural labour, partly because this
falling off in the numbers employed had
been accompanied by a great increase
in productive power ; and roughly, it may
be said that whilst in 1831 1,000
persons provided food for 3,000 persons,
including themselves, in 1841 1,000
persons provided food for 4,000 persons,
including themselves.

The cry that the cultivation of the soil
was being abandoned was as loud in the
palmy days of the Corn Laws as it is at
present. A sentence may be quoted from
Earl Fitzwilliam in an address to the land-
owners of England in 1835 on the Corn
Laws : "It is somewhere about twenty
years since we began to hear pro-
phetic annunciations of this approaching

K

146 Rents, Wages, and Profits in Agriculture

abandonment of the soil," and he
shows how ill - founded the opinion

was.

We may, however, go further back for
illustrations from the history of England
of the disproportionate growth of the
towns at the expense of the country. For
centuries the growth of London was
regarded with alarm, and we have com-
plaints of overcrowding of dwellings and
want of employment, whilst at the same
time it is said that the country districts
were suffering from want of labour, and the
country towns going to decay. As early
as 1580 Elizabeth issued a proclamation
in regard to the overcrowding of London
houses, and all manner of persons were
commanded to desist from building any
new house or tenement in London itself
or within three miles of the city gates ;
people were forbidden to sublet their

Rural Depopulation 147

rooms to more than one family, and the
" undersitters " were to be turned out and
sent into the decayed parts of the country.
A similar proclamation was issued in 1593,
calling attention again to the overcrowd-
ing in tenements, and the dangers of the
plague, through the insanitary conditions.
Up to the great fire in 1666 we find
constant efforts made by proclamations and
statutes directly to check the growth of
building in London. For example, by an
Act of 1656 a fine of one year's rent was
imposed on all houses with less than four
acres of ground which had been erected
in London, or within ten miles of it, since
1620; and a fine of ;fioo to the State and
£iQ per month to the poor was imposed
on all houses erected on new foundations
after 1657.

In a few years after the great fire the
city was larger than ever, and the same

148 Rents ^ Wages^ and Profits in Agriculture

complaints arose as to the overgrowth of
head compared with the body, according
to the favourite simile.

Not only do we find, as far back as the
sixteenth century, complaints of the exces-
sive growth of London, but also we find
complaints equally emphatic of the de-
population of the country. This was most
noticeable in the first period of the great
enclosures, 1470 to 1530, which were, as
already pointed out, to a great extent
undertaken in connection with the develop-
ment of sheep farming. The creation of
sheep farms involved to a great extent the
conversion of arable into pasture. The
complaint made by " W. S." (for a long time
erroneously supposed to be Shakespeare)
summarises the popular view. "Those
sheepe is the cause of all these mischiefs,
for they have driven husbandry out of the
country by the which was increased before

Riiral Depopulation I49

all kinds of foods, but now only sheepe,
sheepe, sheepe."

But apart from this cause of rural de-
population, there was at this time {i.e.^
sixteenth century) another cause more
analogous to that at work in later times
— that is to say, there was a method of
enclosing resorted to with the view of
increasing the productiveness of the arable
land, just as in the second period of
enclosures at the end of the eighteenth
century. The idea was to consolidate and
rearrange the strips or long acres in the
common fields, so that each farmer should
have his land more together and divided
only into a number of closes, which is
simply the contracted form of enclosure.

Fitzherbert (the author already quoted),
in his Book of Surveying, shows that
land worth 6d. an acre — the old customary
rent — may be made to yield 8d. an acre

150 Rents^ Wages, and Profits in Agriculture

by this method, and the farmer also be
able to save a certain amount of wages
of labour. The superior profit of such
enclosed land was also extolled by Tusser
in his famous poem, 1573, entitled " Five
Hundred Points of Good Husbandry " ; he
specially insists on the advantage of the
several or enclosed farms over the champion
or open field husbandry. In a tract pub-
lished about 1630 it is complained that
there were in Oxfordshire forty ploughs
fewer than there were twenty years before,
and the writer calculates that there were
twelve score less people employed than
under the old system.

Enclosures, however, for convertible
husbandry would not have anything like
the same effect in diminishing the rural
population as the enclosures for sheep and
the creation of sheep-runs on a large scale.

At the beginning of the sixteenth century

Rural Depopulation \%\

the rural depopulation, due to the extension
of sheep farming, was considered to be a
source of political danger. It is said, e.g.^
that the Isle of Wight was entirely taken
up by a few large sheep - runs, and that
the towns and villages had been let down,
and there was no effective force to defend
the coast against the French. Accordingly,
it was decreed that no one was to rent
more than one farm, and the rent was not
to exceed ten marks, which, at the old
rate of 6d. an acre, would be about 270
acres. In 15 17 a Royal Commission was
appointed to inquire on the spot as to
the area that had been enclosed since
1488, as well as the number of ploughs
let down, of houses decayed, and other
evidences of depopulation. The accounts
for many counties survive, and have been
carefully examined.

In 1534 an Act was passed forbidding

152 Rents, VVages^ and Profits in Agriculture

any grazier to have more than 2,000 sheep,
and in 1536 the king was to have the
moiety of the lands decayed, since the pass-
ing of the last statute, until the owners
rebuilt the houses of husbandry again.

The dissolution of the monasteries and
the confiscation of the Church lands led to
a change of ownership of a large amount
of land, and the new owners were apt to
put in practice the new and profitable
methods regardless of the interests of the
resident cultivators and of their old
common rights. In many cases also they
were absentees, and in that way neglected
their local duties, and also drew the
proceeds of the rents for expenditure in
the towns, and especially in London.
Accordingly, we find special regulations
against absentees, which later on were
renewed by James I.

All the efforts of the legislator, however.

Rural Depopulation i53

were of little avail ; but in time the evils
were redressed to a great extent by the
action of economic forces. The growth of
the towns led in time to a greater demand
for corn, and as, for long, the country was
self-supporting, the growth of population
inevitably caused an increase in the
production of the staple food.

It is, indeed, obvious that so long as the
country was self-supporting the growth of
the towns and cities, and what is the same
thing, the extension of trade and manu-
factures, was only possible if the needs of
the new forms of labour as regards food
were met by fresh surplus from the country,
and that means that a smaller number of
hands were required to raise a given
amount of food. This again means that
the general increase of population could
only go on with a relative or proportionate
diminution in the agricultural population.

154 Rents, Wages, ajid Profits in Agriculture

In the mediaeval period the yield of wheat
was only about eight bushels an acre, and
one-third of the arable land was always
fallow, and another third was devoted to
barley for beer, and to other grain or beans
for cattle and horses. Accordingly, a typical
virgate or yard-land of thirty acres would
yield ten quarters of wheat. Of this one-
fourth would be required for seed, so that
allowing one quarter per head of popula-
tion (the estimate of Rogers when wheat is
the principal food), and taking five to a
family, we may say that of the wheat
produced, after the requirements of the
cultivators were met, only about one-fourth
remained as a surplus available for a
non-agricultural population.

Some of the holdings were, of course,
much smaller, and the surplus (if any)
would be still less ; but on the other
hand, the demesne land of the lord of

Rural Depopulation 155

the manor would enable him to support
a large number of retainers and to make
considerable purchases in the markets and
fairs.

By 1770 (we may say the time of Arthur
Young), the yield of wheat had increased
from eight to twenty-four bushels, and less
labour was required in the cultivation.
The produce was three or four times as
great, and the population also was three
or four times as great, and the greater
part of the increase in the population was
of necessity non-agricultural.

If we take a broad, historical survey and
consider the progress of agriculture in
England over centuries, we see at once
that of necessity it has involved a propor-
tionate diminution of the rural population.
This was the case even when the country
was, as regards the great bulk of its food
supplies, self-supporting. But during the

156 Rents, Wages, and Profits in Agriculture

last half century, and especially during the
last thirty years (or we may say the present
generation), England has become more and
more an importer of food of all kinds. It
is not necessary to repeat the familiar
figures. It follows, however, that so long
as agricultural improvements continue, not
only in this country but in others, and
so long as in the food-producing countries
the supplies increase faster than the surplus
population, as in Canada and Argentina,
so long we must expect that, as regards
the great food staples, there will be a
decrease in the employment of agricultural
labour in this country. The fundamental
fact we have to face is that more and
more in the course of progress, agriculture
produces a greater amount of food at a
less expenditure of labour. No doubt, if
we take a limited amount of land, and
try with the same methods to increase the

Rural Depopulation 157

food supply, we soon come to the point of
what is called diminishing return to land.
For a short time at the beginning of the
nineteenth century, as regards the whole
corn area of England, it may be said these
conditions had been realised — that is to say,
the corn could only be increased by taking
into cultivation inferior land, or by applying
more costly methods.

But even then improvements were being
continually made, so that we find the price
of corn falling and the numbers of those
employed in agriculture diminishing. And
under present conditions, what we must
expect for apparently a considerable time
is not diminishing, but increasing return,
i.e., less labour for a given amount of
produce.

That the relative increase of the urban
population is due to some wide-reaching
economic causes, and not to any peculiarities

158 RentSy Wages, arid Profits in Agriculture

of land tenure or systems of cultivation or
property, is shown by the recognised fact
that this increase is universal all the world
over. The facts have recently been forcibly
stated in the able inaugural address of
Major Craigie to the Royal Statistical
Society [Journal^ Dec, 1902).

In France and in Germany an urban
district is any town with 2,000 persons and
upwards. With this definition, in Germany
in the last thirty years the urban districts
have increased by 105 per cent., whilst the
rural have decreased by 2 per cent. In
France, during the last thirty years, the
urban population has increased by 34 per
cent., whilst the rural has decreased by
nearly 5 per cent, {lit., 4. 8).

The proportionate increases are still more
remarkable. In Germany, about 1870, only
36 per cent, were classed as urban, but in
1900 this figure had risen to 54 per cent.

Rural Depopulation 159

In France the rise has been from 31 per cent,
urban to 39 per cent, urban, but in absolute
figures the rural had diminished by over
a million since 1870, and the urban had
increased by over 3J- millions. In Germany
the rural population had diminished by
about half a million, but the urban had
increased by 16,000,000. Even in the
United States, where there is still much
unoccupied country to attract population,
the numbers in towns of over 8,000 people
had increased by 209 per cent., and in the
rest of the country by only 71 per cent.

In Denmark, between 1880 and 1901, the
urban population had nearly doubled, whilst
the rural had only increased by 6'8 per
cent. In Canada, where 4,000 is taken as
the mark of the urban district, between 1891
and 1901 the proportion of urban to rural
had increased from 227 to 26*12. In
Australia we find two -thirds of the total

i6o Rents, Wages, and Profits in Agriculture

population located in the old colonies of
New South Wales and Victoria, where the
urban population is half as great again as
the rural, and is a much greater proportion
than is the case in such old countries as
France and Germany.

Taking the total of Australasia, including
New Zealand, in 1901, the urban population
exceeded the rural.

It seems, then, to be the case that under
present conditions, both in old and in new
countries, in those with already a dense
population, and in those with a relatively
sparse population, the urban population is
increasing very greatly in proportion to the
rural, and in many cases there is an absolute
decline in the rural.

When the movement is so widespread
and so marked, as already observed, it can
only be due to some very general cause, or
set of causes. Such a general cause, or

Rural Depopulation i6i

group of causes, is found in the fact already
noted in regard to wages, that having
regard to the disutilities of the employment,
wages in agriculture are lower than in the
case of similar employments in the towns
in other occupations, e.g.^ transport. Labour
is, then, naturally attracted from agri-
culture. And the labour that is so with-
drawn is also naturally the best and not
the worst. In considering the influence of
wages we must of course understand real
wages, looked at from the point of view
of the people themselves. In this sense we
must include the opportunities for amuse-
ments, and the general attractiveness of
the towns. From the point of view of the
perfectly wise man, a large discount would
no doubt be taken from the pleasures of
the towns, and a premium added to the
delights of the country, but we must
estimate the power of attraction from the

L

1 62 Rents, Wages, and Profits in Agriculture

standpoint of the persons attracted. The
term, real wages, is a convenient expression,
but a complete analysis would involve a
complete social study of town and rural
life as realised by the masses of the people.
The facts seem to show that with the
increase of education and the improvements
in the mobility of labour the inflow to the
towns has increased. The term, mobility
of labour, again, is an expression that
summarises a number of causes and con-
ditions ; it involves not only improvements
in the transport of the most difficult of all
baggage to be transported — namely, man —
but also improvements in the knowledge
of the labour market. As regards education,
it is admitted that if children are kept at
school till fourteen years of age they find
farm work unattractive, and the education
fits them rather for other callings.

On the whole, then, so far as the

Rural Depopulation 163

interests of the labourers themselves are
concerned, it is probable that a considerable
rise in money wages would be insufficient
to induce them to prefer the country.

If, on the other hand, we look at the
question from the point of view of capital,
there is every inducement to resort to
economies of labour. With the present
range of prices of produce, and the rise in
wages of labour, the tendency is for less
land to be ploughed, and more kept in
grass, less labour is employed on draining
and cleaning the land in many cases — that
is, generally the farming is less intensive ;
and all sorts of labour-saving machinery
have multiplied.

On the whole, it is to the interest of
capital to employ less and less labour
directly on the land.

Finally, as regards the landlords, history
shows that with falling profits in agriculture

164 Rents ^ Wages, and Profits in Agriculture

encouragement may be given to the creation
of small holdings. This was the landlords'
remedy after the Black Death, and the
consequent rise in wages and fall in profits.
But as already indicated, the difficulty is in
the provision of the necessary capital. From
the point of view of the fixed capital
required, in the form of buildings, farm
roads, fences, etc., it is more economical to
throw holdings together than to break
them up. Otherwise, so far, some form of
the land and stock lease, or of the metayer
system, or the American " share " method,
might get over the difficulty.

To the small holder, the profit on the
capital is in itself of minor importance
compared with the wages of labour : or
wages and profits are mixed together in the
general return to the industry of the small
farmer. In countries of peasant proprietors,
the people are content with what in this

Rural Depopulation 165

country would be regarded as a low living
wage.

Another point to be considered is that
certain kinds of produce are best adapted
for small holdings. It is possible that in
time, in this country also, land may be used
for special purposes on a small scale.
Attention has recently been attracted to the
experiment in fruit culture at Blairgowrie
in Perthshire.^ An estate of 450 acres was
made into small holdings for fruit culture,
and all the land was taken up, and good
profits obtained with higher rent. The
district, however, seems to be specially
adapted to raspberries.

It will be remembered that by the analysis
of the occupations of persons engaged
in agriculture in the extended sense of
the term, there has of late years been an

■^ See E. A. Pratt's " Transition in Agriculture," chaps,
xx.-xxiv., for similar cases in England.

1 66 Rents, Wages, and Profits in Agriculture

increase in the number of gardeners of all
kinds.

It is also possible that in other things,
e.g., poultry, dairy -farming with co-opera-
tion, etc., there may be openings for the
small occupier of land. But under present
conditions, as regards the great staple
products of agriculture, any extensive
creation of small holdings seems unlikely
to succeed. There are the dangers of
climate and the dangers of mortgages ;
there are the absence of scientific know-
ledge, and all the other familiar drawbacks
to be considered. And whilst co-operation
may do something to get rid of some of
the common objections, as the case of
Ireland shows, the new age has brought
its own difficulties. The census shows
that in this country women have been
practically withdrawn from regular agri-
cultural occupations ; during the last

Rural Depopulation 167

twenty years the decline has been par-
ticularly rapid. But in the countries in
which small holdings are very common,
the women work equally with the men —
in fact, the holdings are practically family
holdings.

In Germany, for example, if we compare
the year 1895 with 1882 we find that the
number of women employed in agriculture
has actually increased by over 200,000, the
total now employed being over 2J millions.
During the same time the number of men
agriculturists diminished. The total number
of men employed in agriculture in Germany
is, however, still double that of the women.

In Austria the number of women em-
ployed in agriculture is actually greater
than the number of men, by about 40,000,
the total number of women so employed
being over 4,000,000 In Austria, however,
since the last census, the number of women

1 68 Rents, Wages, and Profits in Agriculture

in agriculture have decreased more than the
men.

Generally, it may be said that in countries
in which small holdings prevail the wife
and children share in the cultivation. If,
however, any extensive movement for bring-
ing people back to the land means that
women are again to be extensively em-
ployed in agriculture, so far as England
is concerned, in the light of history, it
would be a retrograde movement.

The question of small holdings is large
and complex, and much has been written
on every part of it. The broad results of
this historical survey on the relations of
land, labour, and capital have, it is true,
only an indirect bearing on the general
question of small holdings and the still
wider question of rural depopulation — but
they are worthy of consideration. The
recent changes in education and in the

Rural Depopulation I69

mobility of labour on the one side, and
on the other, the changes in the character
of agricultural production and in the trans-
port of agricultural produce from foreign
parts, mark the end of the nineteenth
century as a period of transition. And in
the past, as we have seen, there have been
similar transitions even more sudden and
revolutionary in character. In such periods
of transition, the distress has only been
increased by attempts to cling to old
methods and worn-out traditions. The
first requisite is to understand the trend
of the economic forces of the age. From
the time of the Black Death economic
forces have dominated the progress of
agriculture.

In the course of this progress in this
country the functions of landlord, tenant,
and labourer have become more and more
sharply differentiated. As regards the

J70 Rents, Wages, mid Profits in Agriculture

classes of landlord and tenant farmer,
there can be no doubt as to the advantages
to the people concerned ; nor, again, as to
the progress of agriculture under the
system. In the normal case, the farmer can
much more advantageously employ his
capital in farming than in the purchase
of land. In fact, under the " English "
system the farmer is able to borrow
the land at an extremely low rate
— far more cheaply than would be
possible under the most advantageous
mortgage. A reference to other countries
shows at once the importance of this con-
sideration. In all of them the occupying
owners are burdened more or less with a
weight of interest on mortgages. Take
the case of Denmark. Nominally, the
peasant proprietors are freeholders, but
they are saddled with a mortgage debt of
;f6o,ooo,ooo, which represents ^^ per cent.

Rural Depopulation 17 1

of the value of their farms, with buildings
stock and improvements. In every age,
and in every country, the mortgage has
been the curse of the peasant holder. The
interest is much more than the rent would
be under English conditions, and the
relations between the money - lender and
the peasant are infinitely worse than
those between the tenant and the landlord.
In England, from the mediaeval period
onwards, tlie landlord has been accustomed
to undertake the improvements of a more
permanent character, which still further
liberates the capital of the farmer. In the
past, on the whole, the relations have been
dominated by good feeling and good faith ;
although sometimes the admixture of new
blood, and sometimes the change in con-
ditions, brought about evils which led to
the intervention of the law. Broadly
speaking, the progress of legislation in this

1/2 Rents, Wages, and Profits in Agriculture

matter has been to give still greater
security to the tenant for the investment
of his capital, and greater opportunities
for freedom of enterprise. More and more
the old legal presumptions in favour of the
landlord have been abandoned, and in no
country except in Ireland is the law now
so much in favour of the tenant as in
Great Britain. It is quite possible that
amendments in the law are still desirable,
and, still more, improvements in administra-
tion— but there is the danger that if an
attempt is made to confer much more favour
on the tenant the present landlord may
find his remedy either in a sale to those
who will be governed entirely by mercan-
tile interests, or will himself try to farm
his land under bailiff supervision. In either
case, the peculiar advantage of the present
system will be lost. In Ireland, as we
know, the tenant was given so much that

Rural Depopulation I73

in the end it became necessary to make
him the owner of the land.

But in Ireland, on the average, and
looking to history, the landlord had been
more like an absentee money-lender than
an English landlord — though, of course,
there were notable exceptions.

In this development of the English system
the landowner, it is true, also had his
advantage. On the whole, he got better
rents out of his estates by letting them in
farms than by farming them himself. At
the same time, the typical English landlord
took an active part in the permanent
improvements of the estate, and in the
selection of tenants and the adoption of
general rules of management. He found
his reward not only in the rent which was
in general lower than the true competition
rent, but in the various social amenities
connected with the ownership of land.

174 Rents ^ Wages^ and Profits m Agriculture

Look at the progress of English agri-
culture over six centuries. The face of the
country shows what has been accomplished,
and the amount of the tenant's capital
employed in agriculture shows also the
moderate character of the rents.

When we turn, however, to the case of
the agricultural labourer, the broad his-
torical survey is not so pleasing. It is
true that the ancestors of the present race
of substantial farmers were serfs, and the
representatives in the social scale of the
present agricultural labourers were practi-
cally slaves. But the mediaeval period
itself saw the break-up of this system,
which in other civilised countries, e.g.^
Germany and Russia, lasted down to the
nineteenth century in its essential features.
From the beginning of the reign of Eliza-
beth, however, — that is, the beginning of
the modern era, — to the middle . of the

Rural Depopulation 175

reign of Victoria, there was relatively little
improvement in the condition of the ordin-
ary agricultural labourer. His wages were
low, and in many ways his life was de-
graded. But in the present generation a
great advance has been made, and the
most remarkable feature in this advance
is that it has been made in spite of the
depression of agriculture from the point of
view of the landlord and the capitalist
farmer. In former ages there would have
been, under the same conditions, a great
fall in wages, supposing that wages were
sufficiently above the minimum of bare
subsistence to admit of a fall. There is
still, no doubt, much room for improve-
ment before the agricultural labourer is on
a level with the skilled artisan. If, how-
ever, agriculture in England passes, as
before, with success through the period of
transition — and there are signs that the

176 Rents, Wages, and Profits in Agriculture

more enterprising farmers are adapting
themselves to the new conditions — if agri-
cultm-e again becomes prosperous we may
expect that the labourer will share much
more than ever before in that prosperity.
And under the new conditions it will pay
the farmer to have labourers of a higher
standard. On the whole, the skilled
artisan in the towns is much better off
than his prototype, the independent small
master, who employed himself and his
family in domestic industry; and even
under present conditions, it is probable
that the agricultural labourer in England is
much better off than the peasant owner in
any continental country. If, in the course
of economic progress, his position should
be still further improved, the English
system of landlord, tenant, and labourer
would be far better, from the social and
national point of view, than any system of
occupying ownership on a small scale.

BY THE SAME AUTHOR.

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