In Norfolk, 'twenty or thirty years ago, no class connected with the land held their heads higher' than the farmers. Many of them owned the whole or a part of the land they farmed, and lived in good style. All this was now largely changed. 'The typical Norfolk farmer of to-day is a harassed and hardworking man,' engaged in the struggle to make both ends meet. Many were ruined.
However, there were farmers who, by skill, enterprise, and careful management, made their business pay even in these times, such as the tenant of the farm at Papplewick in Nottinghamshire who gained the first prize in the Royal Agricultural Society's farm competition in 1888.[688]. This farm consisted of 522 acres, of which only 61 were grass, but chiefly owing to the trouble taken in growing fine root crops, a large number of live stock were annually purchased and sold off, the following balance sheet showing a profit of £3 1s. 0d. per acre:
| DR. | £ | CR. | £ | |
| Rent, tithes, rates, taxes, &c. | 278 | Corn, hay, potatoes, and like product sold | 655 | |
| Wages | 387 | Live stock, poultry, dairy produce, and wool sold | 4,941 | |
| Purchase of cake, corn, seeds, manure, &c. | 688 | |||
| Purchase of live stock | 2,654 | |||
| ——— | ||||
| £4,007 | ||||
| Profit | 1,589 | |||
| ——— | ——— | |||
| £5,596 | £5,596 | |||
| ====== | ====== | |||
The reductions of rents in various counties were estimated thus[689]:
| Per cent. | Per cent. | |||||||
| Northumberland | 20 | to | 25 | Hereford | 20 | to | 30 | |
| Cumberland | 20 | to | 40 | Somerset | 20 | to | 40 | |
| York | 10 | to | 50 | Oxford | 25 | to | 50 | |
| Lancaster | 5 | to | 30 | Suffolk | up | to | 70 | |
| Stafford | 10 | to | 25 | Essex | 25 | to | 100 | |
| Leicester | 40 | Kent | 15 | to | 100 | |||
| Nottingham | 14 | to | 50 | Hants | 25 | to | 100 | |
| Warwick | 25 | to | 60 | Wilts | 10 | to | 75 | |
| Huntington | 40 | to | 50 | Devon | 10 | to | 25 | |
| Derby | 14 | to | 25 | Cornwall | 10 | to | 100 | |
This large reduction in the rent rolls of landowners has materially affected their position and weakened their power. Many, indeed, have been driven from their estates, while others can only live on them by letting the mansion house and the shooting, and occupying some small house on the lands they are reluctant to leave. The agricultural depression, which set in about 1875, may in short be said to have effected a minor social revolution, and to have completed the ruin of the old landed aristocracy as a class. The depreciation of their rents may be judged from the following figures[690]:
| Gross annual value of lands, including tithes, | Decrease. | ||
| under Schedule A in England. | Amount. | Per cent. | |
| 1879-80 | 1893-4 | ||
| £ | £ | £ | |
| 48,533,340 | 36,999,846 | 11,533,494 | 23.7 |
These figures, however, are far from indicating the full extent of the decline in the rental value of purely agricultural land, as they include ornamental grounds, gardens, and other properties, and do not take into account temporary remissions of rent. Sir James Caird, as early as 1886, estimated the average reduction on agricultural rents at 30 per cent.
The loss in the capital value of land has inevitably been great from this reduction in rents, and has been aggravated by the fact that the confidence of the public in agricultural land as an investment has been much shaken. In 1875 thirty years' purchase on the gross annual value of land was the capital value, in 1894 only eighteen years' purchase; and whereas the capital value of land in the United Kingdom was in 1875 £2,007,330,000, in 1894 it was £1,001,829,212, a decrease of 49.6 per cent. Moreover, landlords have incurred increased expenditure on repairs, drainage, and buildings, and taxation has grown enormously. On the occupiers of land the effect of the depression was no less serious, their profits having fallen on an average 40 per cent.[691] Occupying owners had suffered as much as any other class, both yeomen who farmed considerable farms and small freeholders. Many of the former had bought land in the good times when land was dear and left a large portion of the purchase money on mortgage, with the result that the interest on the mortgage was now more than the rent of the land.[692]
They were thus worse off than the tenant farmer, for they paid a higher rent in the shape of interest; moreover, they could not leave their land, for it could only be sold at a ruinous loss. The 'statesmen' of Cumberland were weighed down by the same burdens and their disappearance furthered; for instance, in the parish of Abbey Quarter, between 1780 and 1812 their number decreased from 51 to 38. By 1837 it was 30; by 1864, 21; and in 1894 only 9 remained.