AGRICULTURAL HOLDINGS ACTS 297 



burden thrown on real property. The difficulties of farmers 

 were aggravated by the high price of labour, which had in- 

 creased 25 per cent, in twenty years, largely owing to the 

 competition of other industries, and at the same time become 

 less efficient. As provisions were cheap, and employment 

 abundant, the labourer had been scarcely affected by the 

 distress. His cottage, however, especially if in the hands of 

 a small owner, with neither the means nor the will to expend 

 money on improvements, was often still very defective. 

 I Farmers were already complaining of the results of the new 

 system of education, for which they had to pay, while it de- 

 prived them of the labour of boys, and drained from the land 

 the sources of future labour by making the young discontented 

 with farm work. The Commission denied that rents had been 

 unduly raised previous to 1875 ^ ; and in the exceptional cases 

 where they had been, it was due to the imprudent competition 

 of tenant farmers encouraged by advances made by country 

 bankers, the sudden withdrawal of which had greatly contri- 

 buted to the present distress. Districts where dairying was 

 carried on had suffered least, yet the yield of milk was much 

 diminished, and the quality deteriorated, owing to the in- 

 feriority of grass from a continuance of wet seasons. The 

 production and sale of milk was increasing largely, so that the 

 attention of farmers and landlords was being drawn to this 

 important branch of farming, milk-sellers necessarily suffering 

 less from foreign competition than any other farmers. 



Let us turn once more to the hop yards: in 1878 the 

 acreage of hops in England reached its maximum. We have 

 seen that in the first half of the eighteenth century hop yards 

 covered 12,000 acres ; which between 1750 and 1780 increased 

 to 25,000, and by 1800 to 32,000. In 1878, 71,789 acres were 

 grown. The great increase prior to that year was due to 

 the abolition of the excise duty in 1862, which on an average 



^ The rise between 1857 and 1878 has been estimated at 20 per cent., 

 and between 1867 and 1877 at 11^ per cent., Hasbach, op. aV., p. 291. 



