A Short History of English Agriculture

by W. H. R. Curtler

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 class 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, Sussex, 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 assertions 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. 8¹/₂d., but in the north 4s. 7³/₄d., 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 sexes, with no curtain or partition 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
	cultivated land	Produce of	Price per lb. of
	per acre.	Wheat per acre.	Bread.	Meat.	Butter.
1770	13s. 4d.	23	11/2d.	31/4d.	6d.
1850	26s.10d.	263/4[646]	11/4d.	5d.	1s.

	Price of Wool per lb.	Cottage rents.	Labourer's wages per week.
1770	51/2d.	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%, butter 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 illustrated 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 grass counties in the midlands and west, 31s. 5d.