1920.] Agriculture during Two Great Wars. 231 



a matter of extreme urgency. Under the tyrannical spur of 

 necessity, great agricultural changes which were already in 

 progress were crowded into the short space of 20 years. It 

 was now that a large proportion of the rural population were 

 severed from the use of the soil. This is not the occasion to 

 discuss the Enclosure Acts which, during the war period, dealt 

 with 4,000,000 acres of wastes and open field farms. Most 

 people looking back on the past will recognise that though 

 the action taken may have been necessary, and, in the majority 

 of cases, legal, the law^ was often harshly interpreted, and that a 

 golden opportunity was missed. To the community, the social 

 loss was immense. The justification of enclosures lies in the 

 facts that the necessities of the day required factories of bread 

 and meat for the thousands who were gathering in manufactur- 

 ing centres ; that the fullest possible use of the land for the 

 production of food had, owing to the war, suddenly become 

 vital to the national existence ; that the farming practices of 

 the self-contained, self-sufficing communities of open-field 

 farmers were a hindrance to this fullest use as well as to in- 

 dustrial development. All this is true. On the other hand, 

 in the moral and social interests of the community, it would 

 have been wise and easy to preserve the independence of the 

 peasant by securing to him the use of a portion of the land. 



To our ancestors, struggling in the throes of a great war, 

 the provision of bread was the paramount consideration. 

 Five years ago the present generation could scarcely have 

 understood their position. Recent experience may have 

 helped us to see more clearly with their eyes. What they 

 dreaded was a deficiency of corn. The only foreign supphes 

 that were available to meet a scarcity in our home-grown crop 

 were grown under climatic conditions similar to our own. 

 Harvests were simultaneously favourable or simultaneously 

 unfavourable. If our home crop was short, the crops of 

 Northern Europe were also short. There was no alternative 

 source — for supplies from North America were so small as to 

 be neghgible — which was independent of our own adverse 

 seasons. Provision against deficiency was, therefore, an 

 essential feature of the Corn Laws from 1689 to 1S15. The 

 scales of regulating prices were frequently revised. But the 

 principles remained the same. In normal years, when home 

 J)rices kept below a certain level, imports of foreign com 

 were prohibited. When home harvests were abundant, ex- 

 ports were encouraged by a bounty. If the homo crops were 

 deficient, and prices rose above a certain level, exports were 



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