A Short History of English Agriculture Part 33

It appeared as if the abolition of the Corn Laws was not to have any great effect after all.

Now at last the great body of farmers began to approach the standard set them long before by the more energetic and enterprising. Early maturity in finishing live stock for the market by scientific feeding probably added a fourth to their weight The produce of crops per acre grew, and drainage and improvements were carried out on all sides, the greatest improvement being made in the cultivation and management of strong lands, of which drainage was the foundation, and enabled the occupier to add swedes to his course of cropping.[654]

It was in this period that Shorthorns, Herefords, and Devons attained a standard of excellence which has made them sought after by the whole world; and other breeds were perfected, the Suss.e.x and Aberdeen Angus especially; while in sheep the improvement was perhaps even greater.[655] The improved Lincolns, Oxford Downs, Hampshire Downs, and Shropshires took their place as standard breeds at this period. In 1866, after many years of expectation and disappointment, agriculturists were furnished with statistics which are trustworthy for practical purpose, but are somewhat vitiated by the fact that the live stock census was taken on March 5, which obviously omitted a large number of young stock; so that those for 1867, when the census was taken on June 25, are better for purposes of comparison with those of subsequent years, when the census has been taken on June 4 or 5.

Between 1867 and 1878 the cattle in England and Wales had increased from 4,013,564 to 4,642,641, though sheep had diminished from 22,025,498 to 21,369,810.[656] The total acreage under cultivation had increased from 25,451,526 acres to 27,164,326 acres in the same period.

There was, however, one black shadow in this fair picture: in 1865 England was invaded by the rinderpest, which spread with alarming rapidity, killing 2,000 cows in a month from its first appearance, and within six months infecting thirty-six counties.[657] The alarm was general, and town and country meetings were held in the various districts where the disease appeared to concert measures of defence.

The Privy Council issued an order empowering Justices to appoint inspectors authorized to seize and slaughter any animal labouring under such diseases; but, in spite of this, the plague raged with redoubled fury throughout September. There was gross mismanagement in combating it, for the inspectors were often ignorant men, and no compensation was paid for slaughter, so that farmers often sold off most of their diseased stock before hoisting the black flag. The ravages of the disease in the London cow-houses was fearful, as might be expected, and they are said to have been left empty; by no means an unmixed evil, as the keeping of cow-houses in towns was a glaring defiance of the most obvious sanitary laws. In October a Commission was appointed to investigate the origin and nature of the disease, and the first return showed a total of 17,673 animals attacked. By March 9, 1866, 117,664 animals had died from the plague, and 26,135 been killed in the attempt to stay it. By the end of August the disease had been brought within very narrow limits, and was eventually stamped out by the resolute slaughter of all infected animals. By November 24 the number of diseased animals that had died or been killed was 209,332,[658] and the loss to the nation was reckoned at 3,000,000.

The disease was brought by animals exported from Russia, who came from Revel, via the Baltic, to Hull. In 1872, cattle brought to the same port infected the cattle of the East Riding of Yorkshire, but this outbreak was checked before much damage had been done, and since 1877 there has been no trace of this dreaded disease in the kingdom. The cattle plague, rinderpest, or steppe murrain, is said[659] to have first appeared in England in 1665, the year of the Great Plague, and reappeared in 1714, when it came from Holland, but did little damage, being chiefly confined to the neighbourhood of London. The next outbreak was in 1745, and lasted for twelve years, undoubtedly coming from Holland; it is said to have caused such destruction among the cattle, that much of the gra.s.s land in England was ploughed up and planted with corn, so that the exports of grain increased largely. In 1769 it came again, but only affected a few localities, and disappeared in 1771, not to return till 1865.

Foot and mouth disease was first observed in England in 1839,[660]

and it was malignant in 1840-1, when cattle, sheep, and pigs were attacked as they were during the serious outbreak of 1871-2. In 1883 no less than 219,289 cattle were attacked, besides 217,492 sheep, and 24,332 pigs, when the disease was worse than it has ever been in England. Since then, though there have been occasional outbreaks, it has much abated. Another dread scourge of cattle, pleuro-pneumonia, was at its worst in 1872, a most calamitous year in this respect, when 7,983 cattle were attacked. In 1890 the Board of Agriculture a.s.sumed powers with respect to it under the Diseases of Animals Act of that year, and their consequent action has been attended with great success in getting rid of the disease.

At the end of this halcyon period farmers had to contend with a new difficulty, the demand for higher wages by their labourers at the instigation of Joseph Arch.[661] This famous agitator was born at Barford in Warwickshire in 1826, and as a boy worked for neighbouring farmers, educating himself in his spare time. The miserable state of the labourer which he saw all around him entered into his soul, meat was rarely seen on his table, even bacon was a luxury in many cottages. Tea was 6s. to 7s. a lb., sugar 8d., and other prices in proportion; the labourers stole turnips for food, and every other man was a poacher. Arch made himself master of everything he undertook, became famous as a hedger, mower, and ploughman, and being consequently employed all over the Midlands and South Wales, began to gauge the discontent of the labourer who was then voiceless, voteless, and hopeless. His wages by 1872 had increased to 12s. a week, but had not kept pace with the rise in prices. Bread was 7-1/2d. a loaf; the labourer had lost the benefit of his children's labour, for they had now all gone to school; his food was 'usually potatoes, dry bread, greens, herbs, "kettle broth" made by putting bread in the kettle, weak tea, bacon sometimes, fresh meat hardly ever.'[662] It is difficult to realize that at the end of the third quarter of the nineteenth century, when Gladstone said the prosperity of the country was advancing 'by leaps and bounds', that any cla.s.s of the community _in full work_ could live under such wretched conditions. Arch came to the conclusion that labour could only improve its position when organized, and the Agricultural Labourers' Union was initiated in 1872. Not that the idea of obtaining better conditions by combination was new to the rural labourer. It was attempted in 1832 in Dorset, but speedily crushed, and not till 1865 was a new union founded in Scotland, which was followed by a strike in Buckinghamshire in 1867, and the foundation of a union in Herefordshire in 1871.[663] It was determined to ask for 16s. a week and a 9-1/2 hours' working day, which the farmers refused to grant, and the men struck. The agitation spread all over England, and was often conducted unwisely and with a bitter spirit, but the labourer was embittered by generations of sordid misery. Very reluctantly the farmers gave way, and generally speaking wages went up during the agitation to 14s. or 15s. a week, though Arch himself admits that even during the height of it they were often only 11s. and 12s. With the bad times, about 1879, wages began to fall again, and men were leaving the Agricultural Union; by 1882 Arch says many were again taking what the farmer chose to give. From 1884 the Union steadily declined, and after a temporary revival about 1890, practically collapsed in 1894. Other unions had been started, but were then going down hill, and in 1906 only two remained in a moribund condition. Their main object, to raise the labourer's wages, was largely counteracted by the acute depression in agriculture, and though there has since been considerable recovery, there are districts in England to-day where he only gets 11s. and 12s. a week.

The Labourers' Union helped to deal a severe blow to the 'gang system', which had grown up at the beginning of the century (when the high corn prices led to the breaking up of land where there were no labourers, so that 'gangs' were collected to cultivate it[664]), by which overseers, often coa.r.s.e bullies, employed and sweated gangs sometimes numbering 60 or 70 persons, including small children, and women, the latter frequently very bad specimens of their s.e.x. These gangs went turnip-singling, bean-dropping, weeding &c., while pea-picking gangs ran to 400 or 500. Though some of these gangs were properly managed, the system was a bad one, and the Union and the Education Acts helped its disappearance.

FOOTNOTES:

[613] Cylindrical pipes came in about 1843, though they had been recommended in 1727 by Switzer.

[614] _R.A.S.E. Journal_ (1st series), xxii. 260.

[615] _R.A.S.E. Journal_, 1890, pp. 1 sq.

[616] Ibid., 1894, pp. 205 sq.

[617] McCombie, _Cattle and Cattle Breeders_, p. 33.

[618] These cla.s.ses, however, did not comprise all the then known breeds of live stock.

[619] _R.A.S.E. Journal_, 1892, pp. 479 sq.

[620] At the show at Birmingham In 1898 there were 22 entries of Longhorns; in 1899 a Longhorn Cattle Society was established, and the herd-book resuscitated. More than twenty herds of the breed are now well established.

[621] _R.A.S.E. Journal_, 1901, p. 24.

[622] Caird, _English Agriculture in 1850-1_, pp. 252 sq.

[623] Porter, _Progress of the Nation_, p. 142.

[624] _R.A.S.E. Journal_, 1901, p. 25.

[625] Ibid. 1896, p. 96.

[626] Ibid. (1st ser.), vi. 2.

[627] Ibid. (1st ser.), v. 102.

[628] 1838, 64s. 7d; 1839, 70s. 8d.; 1840, 66s. 4d.; 1841, 64s. 4d.

[629] Tooke, _History of Prices_, iv. 19.

[630] C. Wren Hoskyns, _Agricultural Statistics_, p. 5.

[631] The abnormal prices during the Crimean War cannot fairly be taken into account. The home and foreign supplies of wheat and flour from 1839-46 were:--

Home Supplies. Foreign Supplies.

qrs. qrs.

1839-40 4,022,000 1,762,482 1840-1 3,870,648 1,925,241 1841-2 3,626,173 2,985,422 1842-3 5,078,989 2,405,217 1843-4 5,213,454 1,606,912 1844-5 6,664,368 476,190 1845-6 5,699,969 2,732,134

(Tooke, _History of Prices_, iv. 414.)

1844-5 was a very abundant crop, and the threatened repeal of the Corn Laws induced farmers to send all the corn possible to market.

[632] Tooke, _History of Prices_, iv. 32.

[633] Cobden's Speech, March 12, 1844.

[634] Tooke, _History of Prices_, iv. 142.

[635] From evidence collected by Mr. Austin in the southern counties.

[636] _Progress of Nation_, pp. 137 sq. For the amount imported before that date, see Appendix 2.

[637] Walpole, _History of England_, iv. 63 sq. Cobden apparently never contemplated such low prices for corn as have prevailed since 1883. In his speech of March 12, 1844, he mentioned 50s. a quarter as a probable price under free trade, and he died before the full effect of foreign compet.i.tion was felt by the English farmer.

[638] McCulloch, _Commercial Dictionary_, 1847, p. 274. See below, pp.

325 sq.

[639] Caird, _English Agriculture in 1850-1_, p. 498.

[640] Ibid. p. 490.

[641] _Victoria County History: Warwickshire_, ii. 277.

[642] Caird, _op. cit._, p. 481.

[643] Caird, _op. cit._ p. 507.

[644] Hasbach, _op. cit._ pp. 220, 226.

[645] Cobden's Speech, March 12, 1844.

[646] Mr. Pusey, one of the best informed agriculturists of the day, estimated the produce of wheat per acre in 1840 at 26 bushels.--_R.A.S.E. Journal_, 1890, p. 20.