In the great agricultural county of Lincoln rents had fallen from 30 to 75 per cent.[685] The average amount realized on an acre of wheat had fallen from £10 6s. 3d. in 1873-7 to £2 18s. 11d. in 1892[686]; and the fall in the price of cattle between 1882 and 1893 was a little over 30 per cent. Many of the large farmers in Lincolnshire before 1875 had lived in considerable comfort and even luxury, as became men who had invested large sums, sometimes £20,000, in their business. They had carriages, hunters, and servants, and gave their children an excellent start in life. But all this was changed; a day's hunting occasionally was the utmost they could afford, and wives and daughters took the work from the servants. The small farmers had suffered more than the large ones, and the condition of the small freeholders was said to be deplorable; a fact to be noted by those who think small holdings a panacea for distress.[687]

Even near Boston, where the soil is favourable for market gardening, the evidence of the small holder was 'singularly unanimous' as to their unfortunate condition. The small occupiers were better off than the freeholders, because their rents had been reduced and they could leave their farms if they did not pay; but their position was very unsatisfactory. From the evidence given to the assistant commissioner it is clear that the small occupier and freeholder could only get on by working harder and living harder than the labourer. 'We all live hard and never see fresh meat,' said one. 'We can't afford butcher's meat,' said another. Another said, 'In the summer I work from 4 a.m. to 8 p.m., and often do not take more than an hour off for meals. That is penal servitude, except you have your liberty. A foreman who earns £1 a week is better off than I am. He has no anxiety, and not half the work.' These instances could be multiplied many times, so that it is not surprising that the children of these men have flocked to the towns.

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:

The reductions of rents in various counties were estimated thus[689]:

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]:

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.

The small freeholders were also largely burdened with mortgages, and even in the Isle of Axholme were said to have suffered more than any other class; largely because of their passion for acquiring land at high prices, leaving most of the purchase money on mortgage, and starting with insufficient capital.

As regards the agricultural labourer, the chief effect of the depression had been a reduction of the number employed and a consequent decrease in the regularity of employment. [693]

Their material condition had everywhere improved, though there were still striking differences in the wages paid in different parts; and the improvement, though partly due to increased earnings, was mainly attributable to the cheapening of the necessaries of life.[694] The great majority of ordinary labourers were hired by the week, except those boarded in the farm-house, who were generally hired by the year. Men, also, who looked after the live stock were hired by the year. Weekly wages ranged from 10s. in Wilts, and Dorset to 18s. in Lancashire, and averaged 13s. 6d. for the whole country.

This general fall in prices seems to have been directly connected with the increase of foreign competition.[695] Wheat has been most affected by this development, and at the date of the Commission the home production had sunk to 25 per cent. of the total quantity needed for consumption. Other home-grown cereals had not been similarly displaced, but the large consumption of maize had affected the price of feeding barley and oats. As regards meat, while foreign beef and mutton had seriously affected the price of inferior British grades, the influence on superior qualities had been much less marked. Foreign competition had been, on the whole, perhaps more severe in pork than in other classes of meat, but had been confined mainly to bacon and hams.

The following table[696] is a striking proof of the increased ratio of the cost of labour to gross profits:

On a farm in Wilts., between 1858 and 1893, the ratio of the cost of labour to gross profits had increased from 47.0 per cent. to 88.3 per cent.; on one in Hampshire, between 1873 and 1890, from 44.4 per cent. to 184.3 per cent.; and many similar instances are given, illustrating very forcibly the economic revolution which has led to the transfer of a larger share of the produce of the land to the labourer.

Before leaving the subject of this famous Commission it is well to state the answer of Sir John Lawes, than whom there was no higher authority, to the oft-repeated assertion that high farming would counteract low prices. 'The result of all our experiments,' he said, 'is that the reverse is the case. As you increase your crops so each bushel after a certain amount costs you more and more ... the last bushel always costs you more than all the others.' As prices went lower 'we must contract our farming to what I should call the average of the seasons'; and in the corn districts, the higher the farmer had farmed his land by adding manure the worse had been the financial results.[697]

In 1896 the injustice of the incidence of rates on agricultural land was partly remedied, the occupier being relieved of half the rates on the land apart from the buildings, which Act was continued in 1901.[698] But the system is still inequitable, for a farmer who pays a rent of £240 a year even now probably pays more rates than the occupier of a house rated at £120 a year. Yet the farmer's income would very likely not be more than £200 a year, whereas the occupier of the house rated at £120 might have an income of £2,000 a year.

In 1901 and 1902 Mr. Rider Haggard, following in the footsteps of Young, Marshall, and Caird, made an agricultural tour through England. He considered that, after foreign competition, the great danger to English farming was the lack of labour,[699] for young men and women were everywhere leaving the country for the towns, attracted by the nominally high wages, often delusive, and by the glamour of the pavement. Yet the labourer has come better out of the depression of the last generation than either landowner or farmer: he is better housed, better fed, better clothed, better paid, but filled with discontent. Since Mr. Haggard wrote, however, there seems to be a reaction, small indeed but still marked, against the townward movement, and in most places the supply of labour is sufficient. The quality, however, is almost universally described as inferior; the labourer takes no pride in his work, and good hedgers, thatchers, milkers, and men who understand live stock are hard to obtain[700]; and the reason for this is in large measure due to the modern system of education which keeps a boy from farm work until he is too old to take to it. His wages to-day in most parts are good; near manufacturing towns the ordinary farm hand is paid from 18s. to 20s. a week with extras in harvest, and in purely agricultural districts from 13s. to 15s. a week, often with a cottage rent free at the lower figure. His cottage has improved vastly, especially on large estates, though often leaving much to be desired, and the rent usually paid is £4 or £5 a year, rising to £7 and £8 near large towns. The wise custom of giving him a garden has spread, and is nearly always found to be much more helpful than an allotment. The superior or more skilled workmen,[701] such as the wagoner, stockman, or shepherd, earns in agricultural counties like Herefordshire from 14s. to 18s. a week, and in manufacturing counties like Lancashire from 20s. to 22s. a week, with extras such as 3d. a lamb in lambing time. At the lower wages he often has a cottage and garden rent free.

The divorce of the labourer from the land by enclosure had early exercised men's minds, and many efforts were made to remedy this. About 1836 especially, several landowners in various parts of England introduced allotments, and the movement spread rapidly, so that in 1893 the Royal Commission on Labour stated that in most places the supply was equal to or in excess of the demand.[702] However, previous Allotments and Small Holdings Acts not being considered so successful as was desired, in 1907 an effort was made to give more effect to the cry of 'back to the land' by a Small Holdings and Allotments Act[703] which enables County Councils to purchase land by agreement or take it on lease, and, if unable to acquire it by agreement, to do so compulsorily, in order to provide small holdings for persons desiring to lease them. The County Council may also arrange with any Borough Council or Urban District Council to act as its agent in providing and managing small holdings. The duty of supplying allotments rests in the first instance with the Rural Parish Councils, though if they do not take proper steps to provide allotments, the County Council may itself provide them.

It is true that the occupier of a few acres often brings to bear on it an amount of industry which is greater in proportion than that bestowed on a large farm; but the large farmer has, as Young pointed out long ago, very great advantages. He is nearly always a man of superior intelligence and training. He has more capital, and can buy and sell in the best markets; he can purchase better stock, and save labour and the cost of production by using the best machinery. By buying in large quantities he gets manures, cakes, seeds, &c., better and cheaper than the small holder.

Besides the small holders who have outside industries to fall back upon, those who are aided by some exceptionally favourable element in the soil or climate, or proximity to good markets, should do well. Yet in the Isle of Axholme, the paradise of small holders, we have seen that the Commission of 1894 reported that distress was severe. This, however, seems to have been largely due to the exaggerated land-hunger in the good times, which induced the tenants to buy lands at too high a price; and under normal conditions, such as they are now returning to, the tenants seem to thrive. In this district the preference for ownership as opposed to tenancy is, in spite of recent experiences, unqualified, though it is admitted that the best way is to begin by renting and save enough to buy.[704] The soil is peculiarly favourable to the production of celery and early potatoes; and large tracts of land are divided into unfenced strips locally known as 'selions' of from a quarter of an acre to 3 acres each, cultivated by men who live in the villages, each having one or more strips, some as much as 20 acres, and it is considered that 10 acres is the smallest area on which a man can support a family without any other industry to help him.

Yet in the fen districts and on the marsh lands between Boston and the east coast of Lincolnshire, where the land is naturally very productive, many people are making livings out of 5 or 6 acres, mainly by celery and early potatoes.[705] Other districts adapted naturally to small holdings are those of Rock and Far Forest, the famous Vale of Evesham, the Sandy and Biggleswade district of Bedfordshire; Upwey, Dorset; Calstock and St. Dominick, Cornwall; Wisbech, Cambridgeshire; and Tiptree, Essex. Apart, however, from by-industries, and exceptional climate, soil, and situation, the small holding for the purpose of raising corn and meat, as distinguished from that which is devoted to dairying, fruit-growing, and market gardening, does not seem to-day to have much chance of success. If farms were still self-sufficing, and simply provided food and clothing for the farmer, the small producer even of corn and meat might do as well as the larger farmer on a lower scale, but such conditions have gone; all holdings now are chiefly manufactories of food, and the smaller manufactory has little chance in competition with the greater.

The example of foreign countries is usually held up to Englishmen in this connexion, and the argument naturally used is that 'if small holdings answer in France and Belgium, why can they not do so in England?' On this point the testimony of Sir John Lawes is worth quoting.[706] 'In most, if not in all continental countries' he says, 'the success of small holdings depends very materially on whether or not the soil and the climate are suitable for what may be called industrial crops: such as tobacco, hops, sugar beet, colza, flax, hemp, grapes, and other fruit and vegetables; where these conditions do not exist the condition of the cultivators is such as would not be tolerated in this country.' That is the reason probably why small holdings, apart from exceptional conditions, do not answer in England; the Englishman of to-day is not anxious to face the hard and grinding conditions under which the continental small holder lives.

Since Mr. Haggard's tour the black clouds which have so long lowered over agriculture have shown signs of lifting. Rents have been adjusted to a figure at which the farmer has some chance of competing with the foreigner,[707] though the price of grain keeps wretchedly low; stock has improved, and there is undoubtedly to-day (1908) a brisker demand for farms, and in some localities rents have even advanced slightly. The yeoman—that is, the man who owns and farms his own land, perhaps the most sound and independent class in the community—has, unfortunately for England, largely disappeared. Even of those who remain, some prefer to let their property and rent holdings from others! It has been noticed that the labourer's lot has improved in this generation of adversity; and well it might, for his previous condition was miserable in the extreme. The farmers have suffered severely, many losing all their capital and becoming farm labourers. The landlords have suffered most; they have not been able to throw up their land like the farmer, and until quite recently have watched it becoming poorer and poorer. The depression, in short, has driven from their estates many who had owned them for generations. Those who have survived have usually been men with incomes from other sources than land, and they have generally deserved well of their country by keeping their estates in good condition in spite of falling rents and increasing taxation.

No class of men, indeed, have been more virulently and consistently abused than the landlords of England, and none with less justice. There have been many who have forgotten that property has its duties as well as its rights; they have erred like other men, but as a rule they play their part well. Even the worst are to some extent obliged by their very position to be public spirited, for the mere possession of an estate involves the employment of a number of people in healthy outdoor occupations which Englishmen to-day so especially need to counteract the degenerating influences of town life. Many of the great estates[708] are carried on at a positive loss to their owners, and it may be doubted whether agricultural property pays the possessor a return of 2 per cent. per annum; which is as much as to say that the landlord furnishes the tenant with capital in the form of land at that rate for the purpose of his business. What other class is content with such a scanty return? They are often charged with not managing their estates on business principles, and no charge is worse founded. It would be a sad day for the tenants on many an estate if they were managed on commercial lines. One of the first results would be that many properties would be given up as a dead loss. They could only be made to pay by raising the rents or cutting down the ever-recurring expenditure on repairs and buildings which are necessary for the welfare of the tenants. The Duke of Bedford, in his Story of a Great Estate, has said that the rent has completely disappeared from three of his estates. On the Thorney and Woburn estates over £750,000 was spent on new works and permanent improvements alone between 1816 and 1895, and the result, owing to agricultural depression and increased burdens on the land, was a net loss of £7,000 a year; and every one with any knowledge of the management of land knows that this is no isolated case, though it may be on an exceptionally large scale. Where would many tenants be if commercial principles ruled on rent audit days? The larger English landlords of to-day are as a rule not dependent on their rent rolls. To their great advantage, and to the advantage of their tenants, they generally own other property, so that they need not regard the land as a commercial investment. They can therefore support the necessary outlay on a large estate, the capital expenditure on improvements of all kinds, and thus relieve the tenant of any expense of this kind. The farms are let at moderate, not rack rents, such as the tenants can easily pay. Also the landlord can make large reductions of rent in years of exceptional distress.[709] Rents are generally collected three months after they are due, a considerable concession; and even then arrears are numerous, for any reasonable excuse for being behind with the rent is generously listened to. It is owing to forbearance in this and other matters that the relations between landlord and tenant are generally excellent. Where are the best farm buildings, where the best cottages, where does the owner carry on a home farm often for the assistance of the tenant by letting him have the use of entire horses, well-bred bulls, and rams, if not on the larger estates? The restrictions in leases, so much decried of late years, were nearly always in the interest of good farming, and their abolition will lead to the deterioration of many a holding.

Bacon said, 'Where men of great wealth do stoop to husbandry, it multiplieth riches exceedingly' and wiser words were never uttered. Yet these are the men who are singled out for attack by agitators, who are only listened to because the greater number of modern Englishmen are ignorant of the land and everything connected with it. At a time when rents have dwindled, in some cases almost to vanishing point, taxation has increased, and confiscatory schemes and meddlesome restrictions have frightened away capital from the land. Many of the landlords of England would clearly gain by casting off the burden of their heavily weighted property, but they nearly all stick nobly to their duty, and hope for that restoration of confidence in the sanctity of property and of respect for freedom of contract which would do so much towards the rehabilitation of what is still the greatest and most important industry in the country.

CHAPTER XXII

It is a curious fact that the barriers which protected the British farmer were thrown down shortly before he became by unforeseen causes exposed to the competition of the whole world. Down to 1846 Germany supplied more than half the wheat that was imported into England, Denmark sent more than Russia, and the United States hardly any. Other competitors who have since arisen were then unknown. By the end of the next decade Russia and the United States sent large quantities, as may be gathered from the following table [710]: