236 Agriculture during Two Great Wars. [June, 



manures were tried ; new machinery and implements were 

 purchased. More stock was kept, and it was both better bred 

 and better fed. Money was made in farming. Both among 

 landowners and farmers the standard of Hving was raised. 

 Land rose in value. It was eagerly bought at high prices by 

 farmers for their own occupation. Another class of buyers 

 was attracted into the market ; the advent of the speculator, 

 or " land jobber as he was then called, is noted. 



Agrricuitural Labour after the Napoleonic War.- — ^To labourers, 

 who neither owned nor occupied land, the rise in prices brought 

 no compensation. The increased cost of living was not 

 adequately met by a corresponding advance in earnings. 

 Cash wages undoubtedly rose substantially. Whether Arthur 

 Young and Tooke are justified in claiming that they doubled 

 may be doubted. There is some evidence that cash wages 

 rose from 75. to 12s. 6d. a week ; but it is difficult to say with 

 certainty that such a rise was universal: The most that can 

 be said is that, so long as the agricultural activity lasted, there 

 was no lack of employment at considerably enhanced wages. 

 Had labourers still been able to supplement their increased 

 cash earning by the use of land or by their domestic handi- 

 crafts, it is possible that, in spite of the high, but fluctuating, 

 prices for food, they might have even bettered their position* 

 But their rural industries were now employing thousands of 

 townsmen in the factories, and the land, where they had 

 gathered firing or run their live stock, was growing corn for the 

 population of manufacturing centres. It was not till the war 

 was over, when wages were falling and unemployment was rife, 

 that the full extent of their irreparable loss was revealed. To 

 landowners and farmers the 20 years that followed the end of the 

 war were a period of falling fortunes and to labourers of misery, 

 and moral degradation. To the whole agricultural community 

 ^' Peace and Plenty " proved a delusion ; to the agricultural 

 labourer it was a cruel mockery. 



Agriculture at the Time of the Great War. — During the recent 

 war the story of British agriculture is fresh in our minds. It 

 does not need to be retold. But the position of the industry 

 and the policy adopted towards it at the two periods of the 

 French and German wars are strongly contrasted. 



Long before the close of the 19th century, Great Britain 

 had been transformed into a manufacturing country. In the 

 process, for good or for evil, agriculture had been sacrificed. 

 Its interests had been subordinated to those of manufacture. 

 It had dwindled in its relative importance as an income-tax- 



