THE RURAL PROBLEM 53 



complete, with the result that large holdings and larger 

 ownings had been substituted for small holdings and the 

 complicated manorial system of owning. 



There is no doubt that the main factor in this great agra- 

 rian revolution was economic. This is shown by the fact that 

 consolidation and enclosure of holdings went on in all sorts 

 of ways, and was promoted by all classes of people. In some 

 counties — Kent, Essex, Devon, and Cornwall — it took place 

 so early and so completely that very little is known about the 

 process. Elsewhere it was brought about by exchange, by 

 purchase and sale, and by general agreement amongst the 

 peasant occupiers themselves, and * later on by landlord 

 aggression, by private Acts of Parliament, and, finally, by 

 provisional order. 



The old three-field system was wasteful of labour, pre- 

 vented agricultural progress, and maintained a low grade of 

 cultivation. It had to go. During the eighteenth century 

 the growing population increased the demand for corn, which 

 is best grown on a large scale, and until about 1880 all the 

 efforts of the State to counteract economic pressure, efforts 

 extending from the days of Elizabeth to the Allotments Act 

 of 1887, proved vain. Big farms paid best, and the small 

 farms and small holdings had to disappear. 



But in 1880 the tide turned, t wheat began to fall rapidly 

 in price owing to the reduction in the cost of carriage ; the 

 wheat farmers lost money, and the graziers, for a similar 

 reason, were in no better case. The turn of the small holder 

 had come. The home-grown produce which England wanted 

 was fruit and flowers, vegetables and eggs, milk and butter, 

 all things which can perhaps be produced best on a small 

 scale, except indeed the last-named pair, which can be pro- 

 duced profitably by large holders and by small. 



Small holdings pay because our big towns now demand 

 what small holdings can best supply ; and failing to get it, 

 they import it from abroad. Our soil is under cultivated ! 



* See R. H. Tawney, The Agrarian Problem in the Sixteenth Century, 

 1912. See Levy, Large and Small Holdings. Also Johnson, The 

 Disappearance of the Smallholder. 



t See Levy, Large and Small Holdings. Also Johnson, The 

 Disappearance of the Smallholder. 



