24 DECLINE OF BRITISH AGRICULTURE 



and if we further take the pigs into account the 

 lessened production of wheat and barley is not com- 

 pensated for at all by the increase in the produce 

 from the stock. This agrees with the conclusion to 

 be discussed later that a given area of land will produce, 

 when under the plough, in addition to its usual yield 

 of wheat and barley, just as much cattle food as the 

 same area of land under grass. 



The number of men employed in agriculture has 

 declined with the plough land ; ioo acres of arable land 

 will employ as many as four men, while 200 or 300 acres 

 of grazing can be looked after by a single man. During 

 the forty years under review three and a half million 

 acres have passed from arable to grass, and 261 thousand 

 men have left agriculture — seven men for each hundred 

 acres that have been laid down. The loss of employment 

 would have been greater but for two causes — the develop- 

 ment of certain fruit and market gardening areas which 

 employ a large number of men, and the fact that, as all 

 farmers attest, the average quality of the labourers has 

 deteriorated ; the best and most active have been the 

 ones to go into other occupations. On the other hand, 

 farming operations have been improved and call for 

 less manual labour ; the introduction of the self-binder 

 alone has enabled the arable farmer to dispense with 

 one of the heaviest of his former calls for labour, and 

 many of the other operations have been cheapened by 

 the use of machines. This is reflected in the fact that 

 the decrease in the number of agricultural horses is 

 proportionally much less than the diminution in the 

 men employed. 



The great fall in prices came to an end, however, 

 about 1895 ; since 1900 they have been steadily rising, 



