4 THE RURAL PROBLEM 



The Census of 1911 shows a decrease in the population of 

 the rural portions of several counties since 1901, as, for 

 instance, by 2,725 in Cornwall, 1,138 in Herefordshire, and 

 1,286 in Radnorshire, amounting in this last case to a 

 decrease of 7'1 per cent.* 



Private inquiries reveal an even more striking decline in 

 the prosperity of individual villages. Cerne Abbas, in Dorset- 

 shire, where no new cottages have been built for over half a 

 century, presents an extraordinary instance in point. 



Census of Inhabitants of Cerne Abbas, Dorset. 



1S21 ... 1,060 1881 ... 925 



1831 ... 1,209 1891 ... 834 



1841 ... 1,341 1912 ... 585 



1851 ... 1,343 (including 40 in 



1861 ... 1,164 workhouse). 



This decline in the rural population has been hastened by 

 the miserable plight in which the workers of the land have 

 found themselves, and which it will be the object of subse- 

 quent chapters to examine and describe. Owing to low prices 

 and diminished capital, the farmers altered their methods of 

 farming with a view to economising labour. The laying down 

 of land to grass and the loss of two million acres of arable 

 land threw out of work at least 60,000 to 80,000 labourers in 

 the twenty years 1881-1901. A still greater displacement 

 was caused by the extended use of labour-saving machinery 

 on the fifteen million acres still remaining under the plough. 

 The substitution of mechanical for hand labour in threshing 

 machines, chaff-cutters, pumps, etc., and the greatly in- 

 creased use of drills, mowers, binders, manure distributors, 

 and the like, have more than counterbalanced any extension 

 of dairy farming and market gardening. 



Side by side with the displacement of labour in the 

 country the ever-increasing demand for workers in the towns 

 has attracted all the energy and enterprise from the villages 

 into the urban centres. The career of the agricultural 

 labourer offers at best little scope for ambition, and at worst 

 a drudgery unequalled for its monotony and wretchedness. 

 Not only is there little chance either for himself or for his 

 children to raise themselves into a position of comparative 



* Cd. 6258, 1912. 



