THE RURAL EXODUS 8$ 



the displacement of labour by machines was 

 gradual, and its economic effects less heavily 

 felt in agricultural than in some other 

 great industries. In the Rural Report on 

 the Poor Laws in 1817, it is stated that a 

 considerable number of labourers have been 

 thrown out of employment in consequence 

 of the use of machines, but the Report of 

 1843 makes only one slight reference to the 

 subject. It was in the three decades 1851 

 1881 that the economic pressure from the new 

 machinery was most heavily felt, and we find 

 that in the last ten years of this period the 

 owners and operators of agricultural machinery 

 had risen in number from 2,160 to 4,260. 

 In the days of Joseph Arch's Union the 

 opposition of the labourers to the introduction 

 of new machinery appears again and again, 

 and one of the weapons employed against 

 the strikers was the proposal to limit the 

 demand for labour by an additional use of 

 machinery. 



Another explanation for the disappearance 

 of young men from the country is to be found 

 in the unattractive character of the career 

 open to a class of men underpaid, overworked, 

 and for the most part absolutely cut off from 

 any share in the land they help to cultivate. 

 Young men in most other walks of life enjoy 



