82 Large and Small Holdings 



for first-rate home-fed beef is not likely to lose its present decided 

 lead in comparative value 1 ." 



A second sphere in which pasture farming was expanded and 

 made much progress in method, was dairying. According to Mr 

 Wrightson, "the keen interest now seen on all sides in the dairy arose 

 after wheat ceased to be a profitable crop," and modern English 

 butter-making may be dated from i88o 2 . The cheapening of fodder 

 contributed along with the increased consuming capacity of the 

 masses to the extension of butter and cheese-making. But butter- 

 making, for reasons which will be considered below, suffered from 

 foreign competition. In the production of fresh milk and cream the 

 English farmers possessed, on the contrary, the monopoly of the 

 home market, and as the demand was increasing with the growing 

 prosperity of the population, they found here compensation for the 

 loss of the butter-market so far as they experienced it 8 . Dairy 

 farming, on the whole at any rate, remained profitable even when 

 agricultural distress was at its highest 4 , and accordingly the crisis 

 was least felt in the traditional dairying districts, such as Cumberland, 

 Dorset and Devon 5 . 



But the transition to pasture farming pure and simple, whether 

 in the form of the breeding of first-class stock for sale or for the 

 meat market, or in the form of dairying, was not always easy to carry 

 out. One difficulty was in the conservatism of the farmers themselves. 

 Many of them could not accommodate themselves at all to the new 

 conditions. They were accustomed to high arable farming, and were 

 quite unable to make up their minds to give it up in favour of 

 pasture. Land of poor quality was kept too long under the plough, 

 whereas if it had been at once laid down for grass much loss would 

 have been avoided 6 . But in many cases the transition to pasture 

 farming could not be made without loss. " Break a pasture, make a 

 man," had been the old saying. Now it was : " To make a pasture 

 breaks a man." To turn poor corn-lands once more into pasture was 



1 A. T. Matthews, Position and Prospects of Stock Farming, in Journal of the Bath and 

 West and Southern Counties Society, 1905, p. 17. 



2 John Wrightson, The Agricultural Lessons of the Eighties, in Journal R. A. S., 1890, 

 p. 279. 



3 Rew, op. cit. p. 43. 



4 James Long, A Handbook for Farmers and Small Holders, 1892, p. 44 : "The dairy 

 farm has admirably withstood the strain of competition, and dairy farmers have maintained 

 their position as successful agriculturists better than any of the larger classes of the farmers of 

 this country." 



5 Final Report, p. 229. 



6 Ibid., p. 260. 



