Conclusion 201 



the country was able to cover its demand for corn, as it had done 

 formerly, by foreign imports at a steady or decreasing price, the more 

 did every new addition to the population suffer under that law, as the 

 bread it needed could only be obtained at a higher and higher price. 

 Relatively more labour and capital were needed to produce the 

 necessary quantity of corn, since as the numbers of the people 

 increased less fertile soils had continually to be brought under 

 cultivation. In other words, the relation of the labour expended to 

 the results achieved was continually altering for the worse, in propor- 

 tion as the growing population had to put out a comparatively greater 

 effort in order to supply its demand for the chief means of subsistence, 

 or as, in accordance with the law of diminishing returns, the same 

 effort produced less corn than previously. To work more and to get 

 less was the lot of the labouring people of England so long as they 

 were compelled to wring an increasing part of their subsistence from 

 unfruitful soils. This state of affairs was manifested in the fact that 

 between 1760 and 1846 wages never rose in proportion to the very 

 marked rise in the price of bread. As regarded the conditions of 

 agricultural production, however, these high corn-prices had a two- 

 fold effect. In the first place corn became an increasingly profitable 

 crop ; and in the second place the profits from the other branches of 

 agriculture fell and indeed in some cases almost vanished. The 

 standard of life of the lower classes deteriorated as the price of 

 corn rose ; and hence the profitableness of stock-farming and petite 

 ctilture decreased, in proportion as the high price of cereals together 

 with the fall in real wages diminished the consumption of meat 

 and vegetables. Corn dominated the situation. Now corn is the 

 special property, so to say, of the large farmer. Corn-growing 

 can be most profitably conducted on large holdings. For it demands 

 the greatest possible expenditure of capital, and can be satisfactorily 

 carried on by means of wage-labour and machinery. Accordingly 

 when corn-growing came to the front, the chances of the small 

 holding decreased. The speciality of the small holding is its quan- 

 titatively and qualitatively intensive application of labour. It 

 finds its proper sphere in stock-farming and petite culture, which 

 demand a detailed care and an amount of painstaking effort not to 

 be obtained from hired labour. Hence it had prospered up to the 

 middle of the eighteenth century. Then the change in market 

 conditions began ; they favoured corn-growing, and the production of 

 meat and vegetables became of less and less importance. Wars and 

 bad harvests, and later on a corn-law policy calculated to have the 



