328 AGRICULTURAL DEPRESSION 



pressure of time in the examination of witnesses in Edin- 

 burgh, the character, extent, and acuteness of the depression 

 were generally assumed, and witnesses were questioned 

 chiefly as to remedies and practical suggestions. 



The facts of the situation in Scotland had already been 

 laid before us by Scotch witnesses examined in London, and in 

 the Sub-Commissioners' reports. It is clear from that evi- 

 dence that tenant farmers have suffered severely in all parts of 

 Scotland, and that, except under favourable circumstances of 

 position, or soil, or crops, or markets, even those best off 

 have been only able to make two ends meet, and to secure a 

 bare living. If they had not made money in the previous 

 good times they could not have held out now. As a great 

 agent puts it : " The farmers are getting only their living 

 for their labour, and probably some of them with ;^io,ooo 

 invested are getting very, little interest, whereas in former 

 days they got a good profit." But those who have been less 

 fortunate are described as being too deep in the mire to get 

 out, while in several typical districts of Scotland, the rich 

 arable south-eastern counties, and also the south-western 

 arable and dairy counties, there are shown to have been 

 enormous changes of tenancy during the depression, involv- 

 ing in a striking proportion of cases the total ruin of the 

 unfortunate tenants. 



The report of the majority lays everywhere stress on the 

 evidence of competition in the demand for farms. I am 

 convinced by the unvarying tenour of evidence as to the 

 causes and character of this competition, as is stated more 

 fully elsewhere,^ that it is largely due to other causes than 

 supposed profits from agriculture, and that, in regard to 

 farms whose tenants have kept them in high cultivation, 

 such competition is, to some extent, fraudulent and with 

 a view to the exhaustion of the fertility created by high 

 farming. 



It seems to me plain that while Scotch farmers have to a 

 certain extent made a saving by lengthening rotations, and 

 reducing the labour and horses employed in cultivation, 

 the general increase in wages and the cost of production, 

 and the maintenance of relatively very high rents have, as 

 in Wales, intensified the depression inevitable from the 

 heavy fall in prices. And it must be remembered that 



' Chapter VII. 



