The crowning period of this prosperity. was the time of the Franco-German War of 1870-71. By 1875 the depression was beginning to make itself felt. Freights were low and foreign im ports, especially American, of grain, wool, cheese and butter were beginning to grow rap idly. A run of bad harvests had also set in, culminating in the black year of 1879, when the lowest cereal yields on record, due to continu ous wet weather, coincided with an enormous crop and corresponding importations from the United States. From this time the yield of corn in England ceased to rule its price, which has in the main been set in Chicago. The great change that then came over agriculture would have been less fatal had its permanent char acter been recognized earlier; as it was, on very many estates rents were not lowered rapidly enough, with the result that the old tenants were ruined and new ones could only be at tracted by comparatively enormous reductions. Up till 1894 the gloom was unrelieved, the prices of corn and wool dropped year by year, although wages were rising, nor were there any new factors in sight which promised a change for the better.
It was the arable land farmers who suffered the most, particularly the cultivators of heavy land in the eastern counties and the midlands, where the land was expensive to work and only profitable when wheat and beans made a good price. This land gradually got laid down to grass; much of it went wholly out of cultiva tion for a time and was only reclaimed again as grass land by a new race of farmers who got it almost rent free. The western side of the country, which had always been in the main devoted to grazing and dairying and where rents had never been excessive, suffered compara tively little, nor did the highly fanned Lothians show the same fall in rents as the arable lands farther south.
Since 1894 the drop in prices has been ar rested, and an upward turn has manifested it self for nearly all the products of the farmer, meat only excepted. At the same time, a new race of farmers had grown up, who discovered methods and openings by which a living may still be made out of the land. But though the agricultural situation may now be said to be comparatively stable and even improving, it is still full of difficulties. The British farmer is now competing with every country that has any agricultural produce to sell; the British market is one open market of the world, and the price of any commodity is fixed by whichever country has a great surplus crop in that year. The proximity of the town, while it creates a market for certain products, also increases the farmer's expenses; in the end the manufactur ing industries set the standard of wages and draw off the energetic and the able among the laborers. At the same time the farmer has to
conform to the urban standard of life; he has to pay for roads, sanitation and education of a style unknown to his competitors in a primitive country. Again, as a capitalist, he expects a return for the money he has invested in his business, whereas his competitors are, in most cases, content if they extract a living out of their labor, without taking into account the capital they have accumulated on their small holdings. Even the proximity to the great pop ulation, which ought to be the saving factor, is nullified by high internal railway rates, which compare unfavorably with the assisted freights of most competing countries.
During the period we have under review the British tenant fanner may be credited with two characteristic steps forward; the perfect ing of a system of high farming and the fixing and improvement of a number of races of live stock. As regards the first matter—high farm ing— three contributing factors may be noticed. Owing to the changeable climate and the diver sity of the soils the preparation of the land for crops has always required some nicety in man agement, and the British fanner in virtue of his long experience became something of an artist in the treatment of his soil. And though since prices have fallen some of his practices are no longer very remunerative, however de sirable from the point of view of securing the °best* even if not the most paying crop, yet British farmers are still in the main more skil ful than those in any other country, as far as the actual cultivation of the soil goes. Sec ondly, the British farmer early learnt the value of a good rotation of crops, which should not only provide something to sell, but which would also furnish a continual supply of food for his stock. The British farmer was the first to ap preciate the possibilities which artificial ma nures put at his disposal; and the early exporta tions of guano, nitrate of soda, bones, etc.; were in the main to the United Kingdom: Lie big even denounced England in no measured terms for her greed and wastefulness in draw ing bones from all other civilized countries, and then squandering the phosphoric acid thus ob tained by letting her sewage run into the sea. With the more intensive farming, due to better cultivation and the addition of manures, came improvements in the varieties of seed sown, mode of progress taken up with great energy both by individuals and certain firms of seeds men. Though the results are not so note worthy as in the case of live stock, yet most of the heavier yielding varieties, both of corn and of green crops, are of British origin, e.g., the uSquarehead* wheats, the °Chevalier" type of barley, the '