THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION 117 



thusiasm for experiment. Having failed at farming, 

 he set to work as an investigator and writer. He 

 travelled first throughout England and later in France, 

 and recorded in a number of books, which attained a 

 great reputation, the results of his inquiries. Young, 

 who was perhaps the greatest English writer on agri- 

 culture, spent his life exciting the interest and 

 enthusiasm of the people of the country in its develop- 

 ment, and his propagandist work ably supplemented 

 the more practical work of other leaders. - 



The lives of these men tell incidentally (the story of 

 the new agriculture. The introduction of labour- 

 saving machines, the spread of clover and turnips, the 

 development of the four-course system of farming, the 

 enormous improvement in the quality of stock, com- 

 bined with the habit of research to revolutionize 

 agriculture ; at the same time, in order to carry out 

 the new system, the capitalist took^the place of the 

 small man working on his own land. ) 



The mew agriculture meant, of course, a large 

 increase^ in production : and so farmers of the new 

 school had a considerable surplus over what 

 social inter- they needed for their home consumption, 

 course and There was an increasing amount of corn, 

 and more stock to send to market or to sell 

 to dealers buying for the town demand. The farmers, 

 when they had sold their produce, became in their turn 

 buyers on an increased scale, for they had money to 

 spend on such articles as they needed for their im- 

 proved standard of giving, and for the effective cultiva- 

 tion of their farms. \ 



The trade so created attached itself to the country 

 towns, by this time well established as the centres of 



