3C6 AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS 



of landlords, and of farms which they had not been able to let 

 since the depression. In this way the Duke of Grafton occupied 

 five farms besides his home farm, in 1899. The five farms 

 aggregated five thousand four hundred and ninety acres. Each 

 one of these farms, as well as the home farm, had a bailiff 

 (manager) upon it. There were more than seventeen thousand 

 (17,189) farm bailiffs in England according to the census of 1891. 

 Tenant farmers who keep bailiffs are very rare. The vast 

 majority of these bailiffs were, doubtless, operating land which 

 is recorded in the Agricultural Returns as " occupied by owners." 

 Hence " occupied by owners " quite generally indicates a lower 

 status of the farmer than that of the tenant farmer, though in 

 some instances it indicates land cultivated directly by the 

 owner. Kent was a county noted for her landowning farmers in 

 the years gone by, but in 1898 it was stated that " the small 

 landowners have in most instances been compelled to sell their 

 land, and the yeoman of Kent has practically disappeared." 



To-day practically all the farmers in England lease the land 

 which they occupy. The young man becomes a tenant farmer 

 with the expectation of remaining such all his life. When 

 money has been saved he looks for a larger farm where he may 

 employ his surplus funds, but very rarely does he even think 

 of investing in land. To an American this seems strange, 

 and raises two important questions : First, what forces were 

 operating in England to bring about so complete a disappearance 

 of the landowning farmer ? Second, what has been done in Eng- 

 land to make tenant farming a satisfactory life for the farmer? 

 The first of these questions will be discussed in this chapter, 

 and the second will be discussed in the chapter on methods of 

 adjusting the relation of landlord and tenant in England. 



Many of the small landowning farmers disappeared as a 

 result of improvements in the methods of farming during 

 the eighteenth century. The names of Jethro Tull and 

 Charles Townshend are associated with movements most 

 significant in the history of English agriculture. These great 

 agriculturists carried on their important experiments during 

 the second quarter of the eighteenth century. With the name of 



