The Organisation oj the Industry;. 3 



from small patches to larg-e-scale farms, but that the 

 typical farm ranges round about 200 acres and that these 

 farms are worked by capitalist farmers employing workers 

 who are paid wages. This system has grown up within 

 the past 150 years and may be said to have become estab- 

 lished during the last century. It has been a natural 

 development alongside the development of the large-scale 

 manufacturing industries in this country. The rapidly 

 increasing population in the manufacturing centres making 

 greater demands for the production of breadstuffs, meat 

 and milk for sale, and at the same time attracting the 

 workers from the land, has aided this development of 

 agriculture. During the first half of the 19th century this 

 demand led to rising prices which enabled the farmers 

 to increase their profits and the landlords to increase their 

 rents, so that there was a stimulus to both these classes 

 to increase the scale of their operations. The small owners 

 and occupiers who had been steadily decreasing for three 

 centuries gave way before the economic pressure of the 

 other interests or were driven from their holdings by the 

 political power of the land-owning class exercised through 

 the Enclosure Acts. The opening up of the markets of 

 this country to the unrestricted importation of food sup- 

 plies from abroad and the development of the wheat lands 

 of the New World lessened the return to landowners and 

 farmers, and put a check to the tendency to the amal- 

 gamation of holdings. It did not affect to any extent the 

 distribution of land, and even the attempts by legislation 

 during the last three decades to establish smallholders on 

 British land have done little to modify the general develop- 

 ment of British agriculture. The depression of the last 



