A HISTORY OF YORKSHIRE 



later William Cobbctt, in urging the folly of fighting against nature by trying to grow corn in the 

 North Riding, writes : — 



What was my surprise at finding, which I verily believe to be the fact, that there is not as much 

 com grown In the North Riding of Yorbhire, which begins at Ripon, and in the whole 

 county of Durham as is grown in the Isle of Wight alone ... all along the road from Leeds 

 to Durham I saw hardly any wheat at all or any wheat stubble, the chief crops being oats and 

 beans mixed with peas . . . They are not agricultural counties ; they are not counties for the 

 producing of bread, but they are counties made for the express purpose of producing meat ; in 

 which respect they excel! the southern counties in a degree beyond all comparison." 



In the year 1769 alone 25,151 acres of common land were inclosed in the East Riding; but the 

 war period, as Arthur Young has pointed out, was coincident with great inclosing activity in the 

 district. 'For the indosures and turnpikes were carried on with great spirit during the later years 

 of the war, notwithstanding the great scarcity of hands so often talked of *' The last inclosure did 

 not take place until 1901, when 321 acres were inclosed at Skipwith. The largest inclosure by one 

 Act took place in the Kirkburton and Almondbury district in 1828, when 18,000 acres of common 

 pasture were inclosed. The West Riding furnishes another example of wholesale inclosure at 

 Ecclesfield : 1 4,000 acres were inclosed by one Act ; but 6,000 acres is the highest mark touched in 

 the East Riding, and 6,840 acres in the North.^* 



The industrial revolution of the early 19th century had naturally an enormous effect on 

 the economic history of Yorkshire, whose most important interests were bound up with mining and 

 manufacturing rather than agriculture. The substitution of machinery for hand labour necessitated 

 a change from the domestic to the factory system ; this led to the concentration of the population 

 in the towns, a movement somewhat accelerated by the rapid growth of parliamentary inclosures. 



The abolition of child labour, too, was a factor of more importance in Yorkshire than in any 

 other county.'" Daniel Defoe, writing in 1769 of the neighbourhood of Halifax, had commented 

 on the early age at which children were put to work. 'I never saw anything above four years 

 old but its hands were sufficient for its own support.' ^' It is, however, interesting to note that the 

 swing of the pendulum is at present in the direction of reverting to many customs abolished in the 

 early Victorian period, more on account of the abuse of the system than of its inherent viciousness. 

 The teaching of handicrafts in schools is only a modern adaptation of the rough-and-ready training 

 children obtained under the worst possible sanitary conditions, and by means of incredibly cruel 

 treatment, in the days of pre-factory legislation. 



The general use of the telephone and of electricity both as a motive and lighting power has 

 rendered the return of the factory to the country districts feasible. If this movement could be 

 accelerated by the cheapening of the transport of goods, some of the worst results of the industrial 

 revolution would be removed. By means of the telephone, the owner of a factory in the small 

 village of Greetland, in a remote district of West Yorkshire, is for all practical purposes as much 

 on the spot as the man in Bradford Exchange. The owner of a steel factory on a small stream in 

 a distant part of South-east Yorkshire has an efficient agent which supplies him with generating 

 and illuminating power as well as if he were in the immediate neighbourhood of a big town. The 

 self-sufficiency of a modern factory supplied with telephones and electricity renders the nearness of 

 a market of no importance, the presence of gas-works disadvantageous. The evils of the old truck 

 system cannot be exaggerated ; its modern prototype, meals provided by the firm, has much in its 

 favour. Throughout the length and breadth of Yorkshire the scheme is gaining ground. In York, 

 the most conservative of cities, in Wakefield, in Hull, even in the small village of Marsden, high 

 up the Colne Valley, men are being provided with food at cost price ; in many of the Yorkshire 

 factories a breakfast costs only i^d. or 2ci., a dinner ^.^d. The advantage of being saved a tiring 

 walk after hard physical toil is self-evident, and so long as the men get better food in more sanitary 

 surroundmgs — for the dining-rooms are usually presented to the workpeople by the employers — the 

 sentimentalist's jeremiad over the decay of home life may be disregarded. In those towns where the 

 women are joint wage-earners the ad^'antages outweigh the disadvantages to even a greater degree. 

 The growth of small holdings and allotments is only a modern adaptation of the old union of 

 agricultural and industrial employments. An entirely novel feature of modern economic develop- 

 ment, the pension scheme, has been taken up in many Yorkshire works and factories. 



Messrs. Walker and Hall, Sheffield, have adopted a plan by which any worker who has been 

 m their employment for twenty-one years, and has been either incapacitated or has attained the age 

 of sixty-fi\e years, receives a pension. As would be expected, the co-operative firm of William 



« ^' ^°^''"^' ^"''"^ ^''^"' »' 362,363. « A. Young, op. cit. i, 1 78. 



G. Slater, op. cit. 307-13. 



!s ^'-Cunningham, op. cit. 777 ; Ha/ifax Guardian, 31 October 1835. 

 D. Defoe, Tour through Great Britain, iii, 146. 



484 



