THE FLIGHT FROM THE LAND 



85 



agricultural population aged ten and upwards has 

 decreased by 16 per cent, or by over two hundred 

 thousand. 



19. The cause of this flight from the land is to be 

 found in the great agricultural depression which con- 

 tinued up to 1906. Corn prices fell to a disastrous 

 level, and the farming industry suffered very serious 

 losses. In order to cut down expenditure the farmers 

 between 1871 and 1911 laid down more than 3 J million 

 acres of arable land to grass/ thereby dispensing with 

 the work of over 100,000 men. At least a similar 

 number were dispensed with on the 11 million acres 

 still remaining under the plough, partly by the extended 

 use of labour-saving machinery, but chiefly by cutting 

 down the farm staff to the narrowest possible margin.' 



20. The period of depression ended in 1906, but, in 

 spite of the improvement in prices which has taken 

 place during the last ten years, the tendency to lay 



2 Board of Agriculture and Fisheries ; Report on Migration from 

 Rural Districts, 1913, p. 3. 



In 1906 Sir Henry Rew expressed the opinion that the saving of 

 labour on land still under the plough had in the aggregate been 

 greater than on the two million acres laid down to grass between 

 1881 and 1901 (see Report on the Decline in the Agricultural 

 Population, p. 14), 



7 



