The eighty holders occupying from half an acre to two acres would all be men in regular employment, as a rule, agricultural labourers. A body of these sent their deposition to the Select Committee in the following form:—
“We, the undersigned, being agricultural labourers at Epworth, are in occupation of allotments or small holdings, varying from 2 roods to 3 acres, willingly testify to the great benefit we find from our holdings. Where we have sufficient quantity of land to grow 2 roods each of wheat, barley and potatoes, we have bread, bacon, and potatoes for a great part of the year, enabling us to face a long winter without the dread of hunger or pauperism staring us in the face.”
But the more enterprising of these labourers do not rest content with so small a holding, and these pass into the next class, those who hold up to 10 acres. “Many such,” says Mr. J. Standring, “keep a horse and a cow and a few pigs. And on some of the stronger land two or three of these will yoke their horses together and work their own land, and also land belonging to other men similarly situated who do not keep horses. As a rule they have done very well—I scarcely know a failure.” The payment for horse-hire is usually made in labour.
The most successful of these again recruit the ranks of the larger farmers. “I do not believe there is one in ten in my parish, and in the adjoining parish, among those who are renting from 50 to 100 acres, but what, in my time, has been an agricultural labourer or an agricultural servant before he was married; and each of them, to my own knowledge, has commenced with two or three acres, and in some cases not more than one acre ... one man who is now occupying 200 acres was a labourer in his early days.”
These bigger farmers sometimes move elsewhere, and take larger farms, or bring up their sons in other occupations than farming, so that the farm of 150 to 200 acres becomes again available for division into small holdings. Thus, in spite of the continual growth of the holding occupied by individual men at different stages in their career, the average size of holdings does not show any tendency to increase. This is well shown by the figures given for Epworth, respectively, by Arthur Young and Mr. J. Standring, at about an interval of a hundred years. There were only 236 claimants of allotments in the Epworth commons at the end of the eighteenth century; in 1889 there were 291 occupiers of the 5741 acres in the parish, occupying therefore, on an average, less than 20 acres each.
The same eagerness to own land which Arthur Young noticed has also continued to prevail. Land is bought on the building society principle, money for the purpose being borrowed usually at 5 per cent. per annum, very frequently through the lawyer who conducts the sale. In the days of agricultural prosperity land in the open fields of Haxey, Epworth, and Belton was sold at £130 per acre; land in the one remaining open field of Owston as high as £140 per acre. Even now, in spite of the tremendous fall in price of agricultural produce, the ordinary price is about £70 to £75 per acre; which is about twenty-five years’ purchase of the rent.
It is obvious that a man who borrows money at 5 per cent. to buy land which can only be let at 4 per cent. on the purchase price embarks on a speculation which from the purely commercial point of view, can only be profitable provided the land is appreciating in value. There were naturally cases of men who, at the time when prices were falling most rapidly, were unable to keep up their payments of interest and instalments of principal, and who had in consequence, after a severe struggle, to forfeit their partially won property. At this time the Isle of Axholme won the evil repute of being “the paradise of lawyers.” But it would, I believe, be fair to say that the peasantry on the whole stood the strain of agricultural depression exceptionally well, and that their prosperity, with steadier prices, revived exceptionally quickly.
The Isle of Axholme has been singularly successful in preserving the spirit of the common field system—social equality, mutual helpfulness, and an industrial aim directed rather towards the maximum gross produce of food than towards the maximum net profit; while at the same time it has discarded those features of the system which would have been obstacles to agricultural progress. The “barbarous omission” to enclose the open arable fields has been abundantly justified.