SKETCH OF MODERN AGRICULTURE 51 



became a valuable crop. For a long time, however, it was re- 

 garded as a mere agricultural novelty, later as a garden veg- 

 etable, and not till about the middle of the seventeenth cen- 

 tury as a field crop. But this was about the time of one of the 

 greatest agricultural expansions which England has known, and 

 was contemporaneous with the most active period of Amer- 

 ican colonization. 



Transition to the modern system of rural economy. Much 

 earlier than this, however, the Black Death (1348-1349, 1361- 

 1362, 1368-1369) had nearly depopulated some parts of rural 

 England and greatly reduced the supply of agricultural labor. 

 The owners of many estates found their profits or rents greatly 

 reduced as a result of this scarcity of labor, and began to cast 

 about for new ways of utilizing their land. Bread being the chief 

 article of diet of the English people in those days, the arable 

 land was devoted almost exclusively to the growing of grain. 

 But the difficulty of securing labor enough to sow and harvest 

 the grain crop led many landlords to change the arable land into 

 pasture and resort to the raising of sheep and cattle, especially 

 sheep. Like every period of reorganization, this change was 

 attended by many evils and much bitter feeling. A great deal 

 of the political agitation of the ensuing period grew out of the 

 economic changes that were taking place. On the one side 

 there were many complaints that England was being ruined 

 by the growth of inclosures, and also by the conversion of 

 arable land into pasture ; and a great many attempts were 

 made to stop these practices by legislation. On the other side 

 there were complaints from the landlords and the larger tenant 

 farmers that farm laborers were demanding unusual and, from 

 the standpoint of the employing class, exorbitant wages. Many 

 attempts were made to fix wages by law and to punish with 

 the severest penalties any agricultural laborer who would 

 demand more. 



