36 Large and Small Holdings 



large towns the agricultural labour-market was over-stocked, and the 

 farmers could get as many men as they liked 1 . The consequences 

 were evident in the lowered purchasing-power of wages, the deterio- 

 rated position of the labourer, and the rising poor-rates. 



The labourer had. further lost the~~possibility of investing his 

 savings in taking _a small farm or some tiny piece of land such as 

 would now be known as an allotment. In the old days an industrious 

 couple who had managed to save some 50 or ;ioo could take a 

 farm large enough to make themselves and their family independent 2 . 

 Now a labourer might offer a high rent for a few acres, but he would 

 be contemptuously refused and the land let to a large farmer 8 . A 

 landlord who built new cottages for his labourers and provided them 

 with a small piece of garden-ground was held up as " an example 

 worthy of imitation 4 ," but the example was followed by very few. 

 The large farmers were even less inclined than the landlords to allow 

 land to their labourers 5 . It is significant that in 1774 the Act 

 of Elizabeth providing that every cottage must have four acres of 

 land annexed, was repealed 6 . The Act had long ceased to be enforced, 

 but it was repealed in order to remove even the theoretical importance 

 which might perhaps have been attributed to it by the opponents of 

 the large farm system. 



The reasons why the large farmers and their friendly landlords 

 objected to labourers holding any land are not difficult to discover. 

 The old-fashioned small farmers had found it convenient to have the 

 labour of the cottiers at their disposal during harvest and on other like 

 occasions, as by this arrangement they were free from any necessity 

 of keeping labourers all the year through. The large farmer's 

 interest was to the exact contrary. He was simply the manager of 

 the farm, and he needed a supply of labour permanently at his dis- 

 posal. He needed besides labourers who would not be hampered in 

 their work for him by consideration of the needs of their own holdings 7 . 

 Also he wanted his men to be as dependent as possible upon their 

 enrpjoyer^ and consequently to depend for their livelihood on their 



1 Adam Murray remarks in his General View of the Agriculture of Warwickshire, 1813, 

 p. 167, that although Warwickshire was a great manufacturing county, "I could not learn 

 that any want of labourers prevailed, as plenty were to be had for all the agricultural purposes 

 wanting." 



8 Duncumb, op. cit. p. 33. 3 Perry, op. cit. p. 21. 



4 W. Gooch, A General View of the Agriculture of Cambridge, 1811, p. 31. 



5 Kent, Norfolk, p. 172. 



6 Cp. Traill, Social England, p. 337. 



7 See on this point Dr Hasbach's interesting description and references, op. cit. p. 100, n. i. 



