46 PRINCIPLES OF RURAL ECONOMICS 



or the substitution of money rents for services rendered by 

 the villeins to the lords ; and inclosure, or the fencing in of 

 tracts of land comprising either the old open fields or the com- 

 mon pasture. These practices, in turn, accompanied, if they 

 were not brought about by, a change from a self-sufficing sys- 

 tem of agriculture to a commercial system. 



Beginnings of commercial agriculture. In the early days 

 of the manor it was a self-sufficing unit, producing practically 

 everything it consumed and buying practically nothing from the 

 outside world. But with the general progress of trade and in- 

 dustry which followed upon the restoration of settled political 

 conditions, this self-sufficiency gave way to a certain degree of 

 interdependency, to the custom of selling produce from the 

 manor and buying goods from the outside world. Roads were 

 being built, towns where craftsmen plied their trades were grow- 

 ing up, and money was beginning to circulate. Thus it happened 

 that certain villeins, more successful or more intelligent than 

 their neighbors, began to make bargains with the lord, agreeing 

 to pay him a certain sum of money every year if he would 

 relieve them of the necessity of working for him on his land. 

 With the money thus received the lord would then hire laborers 

 to work on his land in place of the villeins whom he had re- 

 leased. Wherever this change was possible it was found to 

 work better for all concerned. The villeins were free to put 

 all their time on their own land, and the lord could employ a 

 permanent force of laborers upon his land. This enabled both 

 sides to work more systematically and regularly, and freed 

 them from the continuous interferences of the older system, 

 which must have proved not only unprofitable but exceedingly 

 vexatious besides. 



Inclosures. But when crops began to be sold for money, or 

 when farmers began to think in terms of money, the concepts 

 of profit and loss became much more definite and concrete, and 



