195] ^^^ PRICE OF WOOL 39 



to that steady rise which would have to be assumed, if high 

 wages are to furnish the explanation of the substitution of 

 pasture for tillage from the thirteenth century to the eigh- 

 teenth. The statistical data on this subject are fragmentary, 

 but Thorold Rogers' calculations for the period 1 540-1 582 

 are significant. In this period wages rose 60 per cent above 

 the average of the previous century and a half; but the 

 market prices of farm produce rose 170 per cent.^ The 

 rise in wages was far from keeping pace with the rise in 

 selling prices, and the displacement of agriculture for graz- 

 ing at this time must be due to some cause other than the 

 greater number of laborers needed in agriculture. If, dur- 

 ing certain periods within the four centuries under consider- 

 ation wages advanced more rapidly than the prices of pro- 

 duce (statistical information on this subject is lacking) the 

 continuous withdrawal of land from tillage during periods 

 when wages fell remains to be explained by some cause other 

 than high wages. Nor can high wages account for the con- 

 version of tilled land to pasture simultaneously with the con- 

 version of pasture land to tillage in the seventeenth century. 

 If wages were exorbitantly high in the seventeenth cen- 

 tury, and if this is the reason for the laying to pasture of 

 so much arable, how could farmers afford to cultivate the 

 large amount of fresh land which they were bringing under 

 the plow ? Is this accounted for not by any expectation of 

 profit from this land but by the statutory requirement that 

 no arable should be laid to pasture unless an equal amount 

 of grass land were plowed in its stead? Pasture in excess 

 of the legal requirements was plowed up, and persons who 

 did not wish to convert any arable to pasture are found in- 

 creasing their tilled land by bringing grass land imder culti- 

 vation. The movement cannot be explained, therefore, 



1 Rogers, History of Agriculture and Prices, vol. iv, p. 757. 



