A Short History of English Agriculture Part 32

The increased variety of sheep was also striking; Leicesters, Cotswolds, Lincolns, Oxford Downs, Shropshires, Southdowns, Hampshire Downs, Suffolks, Border Leicesters, Clun Forest, and Welsh Mountain.

Pigs were divided into Large, Middle, and Small white Berkshires, any other black breed, and Tamworths.

Altogether the total number of stock exhibited was 1,858, and the number of implements was 5,430.

In 1840 appeared Liebig's _Chemistry in its Application to Agriculture and Physiology_, tracing the relations between the nutrition of plants and the composition of the soil, a book which was received with enthusiasm, and completely changed the att.i.tude which agriculturists generally had maintained towards chemistry; one of contempt, founded on ignorance.

But, as Mr. Prothero has said,[621] 'if the new agriculture was born in the laboratory of Glissen, it grew into strength at the experimental station of Rothamsted.' There, for more than half a century, Lawes and Gilbert conducted experiments, of vast benefit to agriculture, in the objects, method, and effect of manuring; the scientific bases for the rotation of crops, and the results of various foods on animals in the production of meat, milk, and manure.

The use of artificial manures now spread rapidly; bones, used long before uncrushed, are said to have been first crushed in 1772, and their value was realized by c.o.ke of Holkham, but for long they were crushed by hammer or horse mill, and their use was consequently limited. Then iron rollers worked by steam ground them cheaply and effectively, and their use soon spread, though it was not till about 1840 that it can be said to have become general. Its effects were often described as wonderful. In Cheshire, cheese-making had exhausted the soil, and it was said that by boning and draining an additional cow could be kept for every 4 acres, and tenants readily paid 7 per cent. to their landlords for expenditure in bone manure.

Its use had indeed raised many struggling farmers to comparative independence.[622] A very large quant.i.ty of the bones used came from South America.[623] Porter also noticed that 'since 1840 an extensive trade has been carried on in an article called Guano', the guana of Davy, 'from the islands of the Pacific and off the coast of Africa'.

Nitrate of soda was just coming in, but was not much used till some years later. In 1840 Liebig suggested the treatment of bones with sulphuric acid, and in 1843 Lawes patented the process and set up his works at Deptford.[624]

Italian rye gra.s.s, not to be confounded with the old English ray gra.s.s, had been introduced by Thomson of Banchory, in 1834, from Munich;[625] and though the swede was known at the end of the eighteenth century, in many parts it had only just become common. In Notts it was in 1844 described as having recently become 'the sheet-anchor of the farmer'.[626] In Cheshire a writer at the same date said, 'in the year 1814 there were not 5 acres of Swedish turnips grown in the parish where I reside; now there are from 60 to 80, and in many parts of the county the increase has been in a much greater ratio.'[627]

About this time a remedy was found in the south for leaving the land idle during the nine months between harvesting the corn crop in August, and sowing the turnip crop in the following June, by sowing rye, which was eaten green by the sheep in May, a good preparation for the succeeding winter crop. Turnip cutters were at last being used, and corn and cake crushers soon followed.

The seasons from 1838 to 1841 were bad, and must be characterized as a period of dearth, wheat keeping at a good price.[628] That of 1844-5 was remarkable for the first general appearance of the potato disease, not only in these islands but on the continent of Europe.[629] In August, 1846, the worst apprehensions of the failure of the crop were more than realized, and the terrible results in Ireland are well known. In the early part of 1847 there was a fear of scarcity in corn, and the price of wheat rose to 102s. 5d. in spite of an importation of 4,500,000 quarters, but this was largely owing to the absence of any reliable agricultural statistics, which were not furnished till 1866, and the price soon fell.[630]

We have now reached the period of free trade, when the Corn Laws, which had protected agriculture more or less effectually for so long, were definitely abandoned. That they had failed to prevent great fluctuations in the price of corn is abundantly evident, it is also equally evident that they kept up the average price; in the ten years from 1837 to 1846, the average price of wheat was 58s. 7d. a quarter, in the seven years from 1848 to 1853, the average price was 48s.

2d.[631]

The average imports of wheat and flour for the same period were 2,161,813 and 4,401,000 quarters respectively. But to obtain the real effect of free trade on prices, the prices for the period between 1815 and 1846 must be compared with those between 1846 and the present day, when the fall is enormous.

The Act of 1815, which Tooke said had failed to secure any one of the objects aimed at by its promoters, had received two important alterations. In 1828 (9 Geo. IV, c. 60) a duty of 36s. 8d. was imposed when the price was 50s., decreasing to 1s. when it was 73s.

In 1843 (5 Vict. c. 14) a duty of 20s. was imposed when the price was 50s., and the duty became 7s. when the price reached 65s.

A contemporary writer denies that these duties benefited the farmer at all: 'if the present shifting scale of duty was intended to protect the farmer, keep the prices of corn steady, insure a supply to the consumer at a moderate price, and benefit the revenue, it has signally failed. During the continuation of the Corn Laws the farmers have suffered the greatest privations. The variations in price have been extreme, and when a supply of foreign corn has been required it has only reached the consumer at a high price, and benefited the revenue little.'[632] Rents of farms were often calculated not on the market price of wheat, but on the price thought to be fixed by the duties, which was occasionally much higher.[633]

It was also said that but for the restrictions that had been imposed in the supposed interests of agriculture, the skill and enterprise of farmers would have been better directed than it had been. By means of these restrictions and the consequent enhancement of the cost of living, the cultivation of the land had been injuriously restricted, for the energies of farmers had been limited to producing certain descriptions of food, and they had neglected others which would have been far[634] more profitable. The landlord had profited by higher rents, but, according to Caird, a most competent observer, had generally speaking been induced by a reliance on protection to neglect his duty to his estates, so that buildings were poor, and drainage neglected. The labourer was little if any better off than eighty years before. It was a mystery even to farmers how they lived in many parts of the country; 'our common drink,' said one, 'is burnt crust tea, we never know what it is to get enough to eat.'[635] Against these disadvantages can only be put the fact that protection had kept up the price of corn, a calamity for the ma.s.s of the people.

The amount of wheat imported into England before the era of Corn Law repeal was inconsiderable. Mr. Porter has shown[636] how very small a proportion of wheat used in this country was imported from 1801-44.

From 1801 to 1810 the average annual import of wheat into the kingdom was 600,946 quarters, or a little over a peck annually per head, the average annual consumption per head being about eight bushels. Between 1811 and 1820 the average importation was 458,578 quarters, or for the increased population a gallon-and-a-half per head, and the same share for each person was imported in the next decade 1821-30. From 1831-40 the average imports arose to 607,638 quarters, or two-and-a-quarter gallons per head, and in 1841-4 an average import of 1,901,495 quarters raised the average supply to four-and-a-half gallons per person, still a very small proportion of the amount consumed.

In 1836 a small a.s.sociation had been formed in London for advocating the repeal of the Corn Laws, and in 1838 a similar a.s.sociation was formed in Manchester.[637] At one of its earliest meetings appeared Richard Cobden, under whose guidance the a.s.sociation became the Anti-Corn Law League, and at whose invitation John Bright joined the League. Under these two men the Anti-Corn Law League commenced its great agitation, its object being 'to convince the manufacturer that the Corn Laws were interfering with the growth of trade, to persuade the people that they were raising the price of food, to teach the agriculturist that they had not even the solitary merit of securing a fixed price for corn'. The country was deluged with pamphlets, backed up by constant public meetings; and these efforts, aided by unfavourable seasons, convinced many of the errors of protection. In 1840 the League spent 5,700 in distributing 160,000 circulars and 150,000 pamphlets, and in delivering 400 lectures to 800,000 people.

Bakers were persuaded to bake taxed and untaxed shilling loaves, and, on the purchaser choosing the larger, to demand the tax from the landlord; in 1843 the League collected 50,000, next year 100,000, and in 1845 250,000 in support of their agitation.

Yet for some years they had little success in Parliament; even in 1842 Peel only amended the laws; and it was not until 1846 that, convinced by the League's arguments, as he himself confessed, and stimulated by the famine in Ireland, he introduced the famous Act, 9 & 10 Vict. c.

22.

By this the maximum duty on imported wheat was at once to be reduced to 10s. a quarter when the price was under 48s., to 5s. on barley when the price was under 26s., and to 4s. on oats when the price was under 18s., with lower duties as prices rose above these figures, but the most important part of the Act was that on February 1, 1849, these duties were to cease, and only a nominal duty of 1s. a quarter on foreign corn be retained, which was abolished in 1860.

By 9 and 10 Vict. c. 23 the duties on live stock were also abolished entirely. Down to 1842 the importation of horned cattle, sheep, hogs, and other animals used as food was strictly prohibited,[638] but in that year the prohibition was withdrawn and they were allowed to enter the country on a payment of 20s. a head on oxen and bulls, 15s. on cows, 3s. on sheep, 5s. on hogs; which duties continued till 1846.

It is interesting to find that so shrewd an observer as McCulloch did not expect any great increase in the imports of live animals from the reduction of the duties, but he antic.i.p.ated a great increase in salted meat from abroad; cold storage being then undreamt of.

The full effect of this momentous change was not to be felt for a generation, but the immediate effect was an agricultural panic apparently justified by falling prices. In 1850 wheat averaged 40s.

3d. and in 1851 38s. 6d. On the other hand, stock farmers were doing well. But on the corn lands the prices of the protection era had to come down; many farms were thrown up, some arable turned into pasture; distress was widespread. Owing to the depressed state of agriculture in 1850, the _Times_ sent James Caird on a tour through England, and one of the most important conclusions arrived at in his account of his tour is, that owing to protection, the majority of landowners had neglected their land; but another cause of neglect was that the great body of English landlords knew nothing of the management of their estates, and committed it to agents who knew little more and merely received the rents. The important business of being a landowner is the only one for which no special training is provided. Many of the landlords, however, then, as now, were unable to improve their estates if they desired to do so, as they were hopelessly enc.u.mbered, and the expense of sale was almost prohibitive. The contrast between good and bad farmers was more marked in 1850 than to-day, the efforts of the Royal Agricultural Society to raise the general standard of farming had not yet borne much fruit. In many counties, side by side, were farmers who used every modern improvement, and those who still employed the methods of the eighteenth century: on one farm wheat producing 40 bushels an acre, threshed by steam at a cost of 3s. 6d., on the next 20 bushels to the acre threshed by the flail at a cost of 9s.[639]

Drainage in the counties where it was needed had made considerable progress, the removal of useless hedgerows often crowded with timber, that kept the sun from the crops and whose roots absorbed much of the nourishment of the soil, was slowly extending, but farm-buildings almost everywhere were defective. 'The inconvenient ill-arranged hovels, the rickety wood and thatch barns and sheds devoid of every known improvement for economizing labour, food, and manure, which are to be met with in every county in England, are a reproach to the landlords in the eyes of all good farmers.'[640] The farm-buildings of Belgium, Holland, France, and the Rhenish Provinces were much superior. In parts of England indeed no progress seems to have been made for generations at this date. Thousands of acres of peat moss in Lancashire were unreclaimed, and many parts of the Fylde district were difficult even to traverse. Even in Warwickshire, in the heart of England, between Knowle and Tamworth, instead of signs of industry and improvement were narrow winding lanes leading to nothing, traversed by lean pigs and rough cattle, broad copse-like hedges, small and irregular fields of couch, amidst which straggled the stalks of some smothered cereal; these with gipsy encampments and the occasional sound of the poacher's gun from woods and thickets around were the characteristics of the district.[641]

Leases were the exception throughout England, though more prevalent in the west.[642] The greater proportion of farms were held on yearly agreements terminable by six months' notice on either side, a system preferred by the landlord as enabling him to retain a greater hold over his land, and acquiesced in by the tenant because of easy rents.

In spite of this insecurity of tenure and the absence of Agricultural Holdings Acts, the tenants invested their capital largely with no other security than the landlord's character, 'for in no country of the world does the character of any cla.s.s of men stand so high for fair and generous dealing as that of the great body of the English landlords.'

The custom of tenant-right was unknown except in certain counties, Surrey, Suss.e.x, the Weald of Kent, Lincoln, North Notts, and in part of the West Riding of Yorkshire.[643] Where it existed, the agriculture was on the whole inferior to that of the districts where it did not, and it had frequently led to fraud in a greater or less degree. Many farmers were in the practice of 'working up to a quitting', or making a profit by the difference which their ingenuity and that of their valuer enabled them to demand at leaving as compared with what they paid on entry. The best farmers as well as the landlords were said to be disgusted with the system. The dislike for leases in the days immediately before the repeal of the Corn Laws was partly due to the uncertainty how long protection would last; but chiefly then, as afterwards, to the fact that if a man improved his farm under a lease he had nearly always to pay an increased rent on renewal, but if he held from year to year his improvement, if any, was so gradual and imperceptible that it was hardly noticed and the rent was not raised. It may also be attributable to the modern disinclination to be bound down to a particular spot for a long period. At all events, the general dislike of farmers for leases is a curious commentary on the a.s.sertions of those writers who said that leases were his chief necessity.

The disparity of the labourer's wages in 1850 was most remarkable, ranging from 15s. a week in parts of Lancashire to 6s. in South Wilts, the average of the northern counties being 11s. 6d., and of the southern 8s. 5d. a difference due wholly to the influence of manufactures, which is still further proved by the fact that in Lancashire in 1770 wages were below the average for England. In fact since Young's time wages in the north had increased 66 per cent., in the south only 14 per cent. In Berkshire and Wiltshire there had been no increase in that period, and in Suffolk an actual decrease. It is not surprising to learn that in some southern counties wages were not sufficient for healthy sustenance, and the consequence was, that there, the average amount of poor relief per head of population was 8s. 8-1/2d., but in the north 4s. 7-3/4d., and the percentage of paupers was twice as great in the former as in the latter. This was mainly due to two causes: (1) the ratepayers of parishes in the south were accustomed to divide among themselves the surplus labour, not according to their requirements but in proportion to the size of their farms, so that a farmer who was a good economist of labour was reduced by this system to the same level as his unskilful neighbours, and the labourer himself had no motive to do his best, as every one, good and bad, was employed at the same rate. (2) To the system of close and open parishes, by which large proprietors could drive the labourer from the parish where he worked to live in some distant village in case he should become chargeable to the rates, so that it was a common thing to see labourers walking three or four miles each day to their work and back, and in one county farmers provided donkeys for them.

Between 1840 and 1850 the labourer had, however, already benefited by free trade, for the price of many articles he consumed fell 30%; on the other hand the rent of his cottage in eighty years had increased 100%, and meat 70%, which however did not, unfortunately, affect him much. The great development of railway construction also helped him by absorbing much surplus labour, and the work of his wife and children was more freely exploited at this date to swell the family budget.[644]

The great difference between the wages of the north and the south is a clear proof that the wages of the agricultural labourer are not dependent on the prices of agricultural produce, for those were the same in both regions. It was unmistakably due to the greater demand for labour in the north.

The housing of the labourer was, especially in the south, often a black blot on English civilization. From many instances collected by an inquirer in 1844 the following may be taken. At Stourpaine in Dorset, one bedroom in a cottage contained three beds occupied by eleven people of all ages and both s.e.xes, with no curtain or part.i.tion whatever. At Milton Abbas, on the average of the last census there were thirty-six persons in each house, and so crowded were they that cottagers with a desire for decency would combine and place all the males in one cottage, and all the females in another. But this was rare, and licentiousness and immorality of the worst kind were frequent.[645]

As for the farmer, the stock raiser was doing better than the corn grower. The following table shows the rent of cultivated land per acre, the produce of wheat per acre in bushels, the price of provisions, wages of labour, and rent of cottages in England at the date of Young's tours, about 1770, and of Caird's in 1850[647]:

Rent of Produce of cultivated land Wheat Price per lb. of per acre. per acre. Bread. Meat. b.u.t.ter.

1770 13s. 4d. 23 1-1/2d. 3-1/4d. 6d.

1850 26s. 10d. 26-3/4[646] 1-1/4d. 5d. 1s.

Price of Wool Cottage Labourer's wages per lb. rents. per week.

1770 5-1/2d. 34s. 8d. 7s. 3d.

1850 1s. 74s. 6d. 9s. 7d.

Thus in eighty years the average rent of arable land rose 100%, the average wheat crop 14%, while the price of bread had decreased 16%.

But meat had increased 70%, wool over 100%, b.u.t.ter 100%. The chief benefit to the farmer therefore lay in the increased value of live stock and its products, and it was found then, as in the present depression, that the holders of strong wheat land suffered most, which was further ill.u.s.trated by the fact that the rent of the corn-growing counties of the east coast averaged 23s. 8d. per acre; that of the mixed corn and gra.s.s counties in the midlands and west, 31s. 5d.

Writing in 1847, Porter said rents had doubled since 1790.[648] In Ess.e.x farms could be pointed out which were let in 1790 at less than 10s. an acre, but during the war at from 45s. to 50s. In 1818 the rent went down to 35s., and in 1847 was 20s.

In Berks. and Wilts. farms let at 14s. per acre in 1790, rose by 1810 to 70s., or fivefold; sank in 1820 to 50s., and in 1847 to 30s. In Staffordshire farms on one estate let for 8s. an acre in 1790, rose during the war to 35s., and at the peace were lowered to 20s., at which price they remained. Owing to better farming light soils had been applied to uses for which heavy lands alone had formerly been considered fit, with a considerable increase of rent.

On the Duke of Rutland's[649] Belvoir estate, of from 18,000 to 20,000 acres of above average quality, rents were in--

1799 19s. 3-3/4d. an acre.

1812 25s. 8-3/4d. "

1830 25s. 1-3/4d. "

1850 36s. 8d. "

But the Dukes of Rutland were indulgent landlords and evidently took no undue advantage of the high prices during the war, a policy whose wisdom was fully justified afterwards.

It was the opinion of most competent judges, even after the abolition of the Corn Laws, that English land would continue to rise in value.

Porter stated that the United Kingdom could never be habitually dependent on the soil of other countries for the food of its people, there was not enough shipping to transport it if it could.[650]

Caird prophesied that in the next eighty years the value of land in England would more than double. The wellnigh universal opinion was that as the land of England could not increase, and the population was constantly increasing, land must become dearer. Men failed to foresee the opening of millions of acres of virgin soil in other parts of the world, and the improvement of transport to such an extent that wheat has occasionally been carried as ballast. About twenty-five or thirty years after these prophecies their fallacy began to be cruelly exposed.[651]

About 1853[652] matters began to mend, chiefly owing to the great expansion in trade that followed the great gold discoveries in America and Australia. Then, came the Crimean War, with the closing of the Baltic to the export of Russian corn, wheat in 1855 averaging 74s.

8d., and in the next decade the American War crippled another compet.i.tor, the imports of wheat from the United States sinking from 16,140,000 cwt in 1862, to 635,000 cwt. in 1866. From 1853 until 1875 English agriculture prospered exceedingly, a.s.sisted largely by good seasons. Between 1854 and 1865 there were ten good harvests, and only two below the average. Prices of produce rose almost continuously, and the price and rent of land with them. The trade of the country was good, and the demand for the farmer's products steadily grew; the capital value of the land, live stock, and crops upon it, increased in this period by 445,000,000.[653]