52 The Landed Interest. 



the natural draft to the better-paid labour of the 

 mining, manufacturing, and other industrial 

 centres, which are augmented both by this im- 

 migration and by natural increase. Diminished 

 population in the rural districts is followed by 

 a rise of wages ; and this leads to greater 

 economy of labour, both by the introduction of 

 labour-saving machinery and the conversion of 

 arable land to pasture, where the nature of the 

 soil admits. The higher price of meat and dairy- 

 produce also contributes to this change. But 

 the loss in numbers of the agricultural districts 

 is amply made good by the gain in the rest of 

 the country, the population now employed in 

 agriculture being small compared with that of 

 the other industries. Fifty years ago a fifth of 

 the working population of England was engaged 

 in agriculture. At the present time there is less 

 than a tenth. 

 Class of The land of the United Kingdom may be 



yeomen, 



farming Said to be now almost wholly cultivated by 

 their own 



land, now tenant-farmers. The class of yeomen, or small 



in very 



small pro- landowners farming their own land, is found 



portion to 



that of here and there in England, but scarcely at all 



