The necessary diffusion of information was carried out largely by Arthur Young and the Board of Agriculture, while the stimulus of the great wars and the shortage in the food supply provided a powerful incentive for improvement by means of high prices. Moreover, the growth of the iron and coal trade had led to the cut ting of canals, and internal communications of all kinds were improved. People could get about ; great towns began to grow up, provid ing an ever increasing market for food stuffs. It therefore became more and more worth while to effect improvements, and scientific agriculture became a patriotic hobby. The King himself wrote articles for agricultural newspapers and the great agricultural meetings and cattle shows put a spirit of emulation into farmers.
The chief obstacle to betterment lay how ever in the fact that much of the land was owned by small farmers who simply had not the capital to get good stock, implements, seeds and manures. Moreover, the system of farming among the peasantry was that of farming in strips, each man having about thirty strips of land but no two lying together. These strips were separated from one another by turf balks, and after the hay and corn harvest had been gathered all the animals were turned indis criminately over the open fields. The system was most wasteful. It was quite impossible to adopt improved methods of cultivation on half acre strips. No winter crops could be grown because the cattle ranged all over the fields from September to February. No improvements in breed could be carried out when good cattle were exposed to the infection of the mangy village herds with their foot and mouth disease. No drainage could be attempted since the out fall would be on some neighbor's strip. The loss of time involved in going from piece to piece, and in carting little bits of hay and corn from different places, to say nothing of the waste of numerous footpaths and the endless disputes over real or fancied encroachments, made the system one which in the interest of good farming it was highly desirable to displace. It was established by the Board of Agriculture that tenants lived comfortably on enclosed land rented at 10s. 6d. ($2.62) an acre who had starved on open farms at 2s. 6d. (62 cents) an acre and that enclosed land at 20s. ($5) an acre was cheaper than open land at 8s. ($2).
The famine years of 1795, 1800 and 1801 made the prosperity of agriculture a pressing national question. Enclosures were pushed on rapidly, partly by the agreement of the parties concerned, but mainly by private Acts of Par liament. The general result was that the scat tered strips were given up and each farmer received an equivalent in a compact little hold ing all in one place.
Between 1770 and 1799, 1,375 enclosure bills were passed, between 1800 and 1819, 1,700. Altogether it has been calculated that over 2,500,000 acres were affected by the acts prior to 1801.
The result meant better farming, but it also involved great loss to the peasant and the laborer. The fees of the commissioners for re distributing the lands, the legal expenses of getting a private act, the cost of hedging the new farm, all bore hardly on the yeoman. Even when he had survived the actual enclosure he found it hopeless to compete with the capitalist farmer. The stuff he could raise would not bring a remunerative price in competition with that of the large producers. He was moreover hard hit by the loss of the bye employments of spinning and weaving which were tending to become more and more factory industries. Many of the yeomen sold their little farms to large landowners who were only too anxious to throw them together into big ones in order to realize the high prices during the war period. Moreover the new men who were making their money in cotton were glad to buy land for the sake of social position. With an increasing struggle for existence on the one hand and the prospect of a good sale on the other the small farmers sold their holdings and disappeared. Those that held on were so hard hit by the great depression in agriculture after 1815 that they too were forced to succumb. Hence England between 1770-1815 became predominantly the land of the capitalist farmer.
The laborers, too, suffered considerably, since when the land was enclosed they lost many little perquisites such as turning out a cow on the waste or gathering fuel. But more im portant than all was the fact that the laborer lost the chance of rising in the world. The small farmer had ceased practically to exist and the laborers never could hope to get together capital enough to take a big farm.
But without the improvements of those years England could not have held out against Napoleon. She would simply have surrendered from famine when the Baltic corn was cut off.
The stimulus of the Corn Bounty Act started the agricultural revolution; the great wars com pleted it. The result was an enormous advance in farming but great social distress; the extinc tion of the peasant proprietor, but the ultimate safety of England.
Bibliography.— Cunningham, W.,
of English Industry and Commerce — Modern Times' (1903) ; Defoe, D.,