584 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



But as there has been no cessation in the growth of the mechanical 

 industries of the United Kingdom, or in her transportation service by- 

 land or sea, or in her j^roduction of coal and iron, or in the consump- 

 tion of her staple food commodities — such growth, although not in- 

 creasing as it were by " leaps and bounds," as in some former periods 

 (as during the decade from 18G5 to 1875), being always in a greater 

 ratio than her increase in population* — it would seem that any increase 

 in the number of her necessarily unemployed must have been mainly 

 derived from the one branch of her industry that has not been pros- 

 jierous, namely, agriculture, in which the losses in recent years on the 

 part alike of landlords, tenants, and farm-laborers, from decline in land 

 and rental values, in the prices of farm products, and through reduc- 

 tion of wages, has been very great.f Mr, Alfred Russel Wallace in- 

 clines to the opinion that twenty thousand English farm-laborers, in- 

 volving, with their families, a population of from sixty to eighty thou- 

 sand, were, between 1873 and 1887, obliged to quit their homes, and 

 mostly drifted to the larger cities, in consequence merely of substi- 

 tuting, through the increasing unprofitableness of grain-culture, past- 

 ure for arable land ; and this substitution is reported as at present 

 continuing at the rate of two hundred and sixty thousand acres per 

 annum. 



We have in these facts, furthermore, a clew to the cause of the in- 

 creased discontent in recent years in Ireland. If the Irish tenantry 

 could pay the rent demanded by the landlords, and at the same time 

 achieve for themselves a comfortable subsistence, there would be no 

 necessity for extraordinary governmental interference on their behalf ; 

 and this was what, prior to the years 1873-'75, the prices of farm 

 products — especially of all dairy products — enabled the better class 



do,' " the meaning of which was that every occupatiou in London, in the opinion of the 

 speaker, was full. 



*The ratio of increase in the population of the United Kingdom between 18*75 and 

 1885 was about 10 per cent. During the same period the increase in the production of 

 coal was 20 per cent; in pig-iron, 16 per cent; in railway receipts from goods-traffic 

 per head of population, 18 per cent ; in shipping engaged in foreign trade, S3 per cent; 

 in consumption of tea per head, 13J per cent ; in sugar per head, 19 per cent. 



f " The agricultural returns for Great Britain tell us that, from 1873 to 1884, the quan- 

 tity of arable land in the country has decreased considerably more than a million acres. 

 The reason of this is chiefly that landlords having farms thrown on their hands, and be- 

 ing unable to obtain fresh tenants, find it the most economical method to lay down tho 

 land in permanent pasture, which requires the minimum of labor, superintendence, and 

 expenditure to work. This in part explains the forced exodus of the agricultural laborers 

 no longer required to cultivate the land thus laid down. About twenty-five laborers are 

 required on an arable farm of one thousand acres, while probably five would be ample on 

 the same quantity of pasture ; and we should have a diminution of twenty thousand 

 laborers from the change of cultivation which has taken place, or, with their families, a 

 population of sixty or eighty thousand, which, from this cause alone, have been obliged 

 to quit their homes, and have mostly drifted hopelessly to the great towns." In addition, 

 a large number of farms " are now, and have been for some years, lying absolutely waste 

 and uncultivated." — Bad Timcg, Alfred Russel Wallace, London, 1885. 



