HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION 25 



suggested that the main cause is that the output per 

 labourer has greatly lessened ; this is true to a certain 

 extent — indeed, since the Great War to a marked extent — 

 but I cannot regard it as the main cause, which I think 

 will be found to lie in the fact that in times of prosperity 

 more and more labour per farm was employed. 



In other words, one of the factors of agricultural 

 progress being that a greater amount of labour was 

 bestowed upon the land, the wage bill increased in 

 consequence. 



The following figures illustrate the point. 



In 1805 on a farm chiefly arable, rented at £1 per 

 acre, the rate of wages per acre was only 5s. In another 

 case where the farmer paid ^{^200 a year for his farm his 

 labour bill was only £^S per annum. 



During the last half of the nineteenth century the wage 

 bill in terms per acre was roughly taken to be equal to 

 the rental per acre, though as a matter of fact it was 

 generally a few shillings per acre more than the rental. 

 From a slightly diflerent point of view the accounts of 

 a Suffolk farm of 600 acres show that for the period 

 1839-43 the ratio of cost of labour to gross profits was 

 49 per cent ; 1863-7, 54 per cent ; 1871-5, 59 per cent ; 

 1890-4, 133 per cent. 



The enormous increase in the ratio for the last period 

 was chiefly due to the low prices prevailing in the great 

 depression. 



To-day (in 1920) the labour bill would generally 

 average at least four times the rental on an arable farm. 



SOCIAL STATUS 



In early Feudal times there was no clear distinction 

 between the farmer and thr labourer ; there was the 



