Land and People in Nineteenth-Century Wales

David W. Howell

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9781138639423
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317266693
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: 19th Century History
• Index: History

First published in 1977. Essentially an economic history with strong emphasis on human factors, this title examines the reasons for the backwardness of much of the farming of Wales and discusses in detail how agricultural resources and organisation directly affected the nature of social relationships within the community. This study will be of central importance to students of the history of Wales. It should appeal equally to those interested in the economic history of late modern Britain; students of nineteenth-century British Agriculture and the rural community; historical geographers; and all those concerned with peasants and peasant societies.

CHAPTER 1

THE HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

I

Over the course of the nineteenth century the role of farming in the Welsh economy, as for that of Britain as a whole, was a declining one. (1) One index for measuring this decline is the labour force. The population of Wales rose rapidly in the nineteenth century, multiplying between three and fourfold between 1801 and 1911 from under 600,000 to over two million. Table 1.1 shows that the increase was not shared evenly across the principality. Although the population rose sharply in all Welsh counties up until 1841, thereafter the rate of increase slackened noticeably in the rural counties while in the industrial counties of Glamorgan and Monmouth there was a great acceleration in population growth. (2) The two phenomena were closely inter-related, for of the net migration of 388,000 people from rural Wales over the sixty years 1851–1911 there was over the same period a net inflow of 320,000 people into the Glamorgan and Monmouthshire coalfields from the Welsh countryside. (3) The immensity of the change in population distribution is shown by the fact that whereas at the start of the nineteenth century over 80 per cent of the Welsh people lived in rural, non-urbanised areas by 1911 fewer than 20 per cent occupied the countryside.

TABLE 1.1 Population growth in Wales (1000)

Counties	1801	1851	1911
Glamorgan and Monmouth	116	389	1,517
Other Welsh counties	471	774	510
Total: Wales and Monmouth	587	1,163	2,027

From the 1840s, and even earlier, a trickle of farm-workers were migrating from the rural farmsteads to the iron-works at Merthyr.(4) Only from mid century, however, did this migration quicken significantly. Reasonably reliable statistics for the distribution of the British labour force are provided in the Census Returns from 1851 onwards and they show that the numbers involved in Welsh agriculture fell by 45.8 per cent between 1851 and 1911. Indeed the full extent of the fall is somewhat camouflaged by the rise in numbers of agriculturalists between 1901 and 1911 and if we measure the drop between 1851 and 1901 the figure is even higher at 51.4 per cent. By way of comparison the numbers engaged in agriculture, forestry and fishing in Britain as a whole fell by some 24 per cent between 1851 and 1911. (5)

More useful, of course, in depicting the declining role of agriculture within the Welsh economy is a statement of the proportion of the occupied population engaged in agriculture over the years 1851 to 1911 (see table 1.2). While nearly a fifth of the Welsh labour force was occupied in agriculture around mid century, by the close just over a twentieth were similarly engaged. Not only did the numbers working in Welsh agriculture decline but also the agricultural sector shared none of the general increase in the labour force arising from the growth in population. The agriculturalists’ importance to the total labour force in the Welsh economy had decreased by three-quarters between 1851 and 1911. A similar downward trend occurred over Britain as a whole, though from table 1.2 we see that the proportion of workers in agriculture in Britain was slightly higher throughout these years.

TABLE 1.2 Proportion of the Welsh labour force employed in agriculture, forestry and fishing*

* Figures from the Census Returns. Figures for 1891 onwards for fishing are separate in the Returns but are included here to conform with the earlier data.

** From Deane and Cole, ‘British Economic Growth’ (Oxford, 1967), p.143.

Agriculture, however, retained an importance in the public mind out of all proportion to its dwindling role in the economy. Until the third quarter of the century it had, for reasons of transport costs and technology, to provide the fast-growing home population with the bulk of its food. Also, down to the 1870s and even beyond, ownership of land was all important in achieving political and social position. Landowners continued to dominate politics in Wales until the celebrated election of 1868 which made the all-important inroads into the old order. Their power at the local level, where it was most keenly felt, was only finally removed with the County Council Act of 1888. (6)

Throughout the period the character of farming throughout Wales was mixed, with the emphasis on livestock and dairying. Regional variations of course occurred within this general pattern. In north Wales the western counties of Anglesey, Caernarvon and Merioneth were cattle-rearing counties whereas the eastern counties of Denbigh, Flint and Montgomery concentrated far more on butter and cheese manufacture. Sheep were almost exclusively reared on the mountain farms of over 1400 feet in both the north and south. Within the mixed husbandry of the Vale of Glamorgan and south Monmouthshire there was an emphasis on arable both for corn and roots for livestock fattening. Elsewhere in south Wales the breeding and rearing of store animals and the manufacture of butter and cheese prevailed. The mixed nature of Welsh farming became more dominantly pastoral from the 1870s. This balance between livestock and arable shielded the Welsh farmer from the drastic fluctuations in farming fortunes felt in certain areas of England. At times of high corn prices Welsh farming was limited in its ability to grow more grain while in times of slump there was no need for panic contraction. In this way Welsh farming throughout the century did not experience to any significant extent the ‘selective’ depressions which occurred in English farming in the quarter century or so after 1815 and again from 1876 to the mid 1890s. In December 1887 the ‘Cambrian News’ explained the relative immunity of the Welsh farmer from depression partly on the grounds that Welsh agriculture was more mixed than English farming and therefore the season had to be extremely bad to ruin him beyond recovery. (7)

When considering the Welsh small family-farm type economy it is tempting to underplay the importance of the market. The farmer’s system of living was indeed largely a self-contained one: for the most part, particularly in the first half of the century, he produced practically all the basic requirements of life, in food and clothing, on his holding. There was not much to sell and little to buy. While the Welsh farmer thus persisted in the peasant attitude that he should produce everything needed at home there was nevertheless a compulsion to market in order to meet the demands of the rent, tithes, local taxation and labourers’ wages. Semi-subsistent farming therefore prevailed. The biggest element in farm income in most areas of Wales was in the sale of intermediate products in the form of store cattle and store sheep. Income from this source went to pay the rent while the dairy, principally butter but also cheese, poultry and eggs, brought in ready money to meet current expenses.

Prices for store animals were affected by a number of factors. The state of industry and of English pasture grazing were equally crucial in influencing demand. In the ‘high farming’ years animals were also in demand for manure towards increasing corn crops. Competition from Irish and Scottish stores and, from the 1880s, from foreign meat imports, again had an obvious bearing on Welsh store prices. Demand for final products like butter, cheese, wool and corn was influenced first by the prosperity or otherwise of industry. In 1882, for example, it was reported that sheep prices in Brecknockshire had fallen because of the depression in the south Wales iron and coal industries and that farmers in Caernarvonshire were suffering because of the depression in the local slate industry. (8) Second, the development of improved communications linking farming areas with urban centres was all-important in determining demand for final products. Thus in 1845, before the railway was constructed through south Wales, prices of provisions were as much as 12 per cent lower in Carmarthen than in the mining districts of Glamorgan and Monmouthshire and ‘as the distance increased the difference increased’, The reason for these low prices in the western areas was the absence of a speedy and economical means of communication with the industrial market to the east. (9) Again, by way of illustration, it was stated in 1844 that the Welsh tithe-owner was forced to moderate his demands to the defective husbandry and ‘lower markets’ of the principality. (10) After the opening up of the country by railways in the third quarter of the century Welsh corn prices and those of other farm produce came more into line with those prevailing in the kingdom as a whole. And here, the superior transport facilities linking south Wales with the London market meant that prices in the markets of the south coincided more closely with London’s than did those ruling in the markets of mid and north Wales. (11) Prices for final products were also influenced on the supply side by factors like the weather and foreign competition from the 1870s, Such competition also meant that no longer could farmers be compensated for bad seasons by high prices.

Welsh farmers, like their counterparts elsewhere in Britain, prospered from the high prices of the Napoleonic War years. These dizzy levels arose from the interaction of an abnormal run of bad harvests, inflationary finance and, to a lesser extent, the difficulties in obtaining imports. (12) The depression after 1814 was intermittent, not continuous right down to the accession of Queen Victoria, as Lord Ernle once erroneously, albeit convincingly, led us to believe. (13) Furthermore, this depression was mainly felt by the wheat farmers of the heavy clays, thus establishing a precedent for the later depression following 1873. (14) The movement of Welsh corn prices shown in Appendix 1 followed the overall British trends. After the first drastic post-war fall of between 50 and 60 per cent, Welsh corn farmers, like their English counterparts, experienced a number of short but sharp crises within an otherwise higher run of prices even if substantially below their war-time level. Such crises occurred between 1821–3, caused by good harvests and large imports in 1818 (the sharp contrast of these years with the famine prices of 1817–18 emphasising the failure of the Corn Laws of 1815 to keep home prices at a stable level), and again between 1832–6 due to bountiful harvests. (15) As in English markets Welsh corn prices between 1815 and 1846 ruled on average above their pre-war levels.(16)

For the most part, however, corn prices were of little concern to the Welsh livestock farmer, although the fact that down to the late 1850s the home demand for wheat was constant, owing to the cost of transport from English areas and the uncertainty of foreign supplies, meant that small quantities of wheat were marketed off many Welsh farms well into the third quarter of the century. (17) Having stated this, the important fact remains that the basic pastoral nature of Welsh farming meant that the clamour by the agricultural interest in 1815 and afterwards for the maintenance of high corn prices did not arouse much attention in Wales outside the Vale of Glamorgan and other primarily corn-producing areas. Welsh corn growers had one special reason for supporting protection, namely the inferiority of their corn to that which was now being imported. (18) The drop in post-war stock and dairy produce prices was much more serious for the Welsh farmer. Cattle and sheep prices in Britain rose considerably in 1813 and 1814 but during 1815 a marked fall set in owing to the long summer drought which forced farmers to sell their stock in large quantities. (19) It was stated in 1816 that in south Wales cattle were selling at a third of their former price and sheep at a half. At the same time it was reported of north Wales that compared with 1814 horses and pigs were reduced in price by a half, milch cows by a third and other horned cattle by more than a half. (20) On 3 February 1816 E. Jones wrote to his brother from Garthmyl, Montgomeryshire: ‘I have Horses and Cattle upon my hands which it is quite ruin to sell at the present times.’ (21) Salted butter had sold at 6d. a pound in south-west Wales before the war, but by 1811 it was selling in Carmarthen market at an average of 11

d. a pound. (22) By 1816 its value had so fallen that it was being sold to chandlers as common grease. (23) The following years 1817 and 1818 were worse and livestock farmers were forced to sell their stock at any price. (24)

The situation improved between 1819 and the summer of 1821 when once again livestock prices slumped. (25) Markets throughout Wales continued very low until 1823. Richard Humphreys of Landawke farm in south-west Carmarthenshire wrote to his landlord, Lord Kensington, on 13 July 1822:

The prices of everything that a Farmer has to sell is not even [sic] very low, but without demand also. I have 150 sheep that I should be glad to sell for 10s. per head but cannot get a person that will offer me anything for them as yet. These are similar sheep my Lord would sell for at least 30s. per head when I took the farms. Cattle has also sunk in value at least two-thirds.(26)

Conditions once again improved for the livestock farmer in 1824 and good harvests in 1825 kept prices up. (27) Reaction to the commercial and banking crisis of 1825 led to a fall in prices in the following year but by June 1827 livestock were once more selling at a profit. At the Carmarthen June Fair, for example, cattle prices were 30 per cent up on the previous year. (28) Wet summers and poor harvests from 1828 to 1830 saw a return of crisis in the store cattle industry between 1829 and 1832, but conditions picked up somewhat in the middle years of the decade. (29)

In the years immediately before 1830 sheep husbandry, according to Youatt, continued in ‘the most prosperous state in the lower districts of every part of Wales’. This prosperity was shattered by the serious outbreak of sheep rot in the seasons of 1830 and 1831 when, Youatt informs us, in many areas of Wales ‘whole flocks were swept away’. (30) The consequent scarcity led to high prices, in south-west Wales ‘much higher in proportion to other stock’. (31) The same observation was made by a Carmarthenshire land agent who wrote in 1833 ‘the hill farmers were the best off last year, sheep and wool being high and in demand’. (32) ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• NOTE on ABBREVIATIONS
• INTRODUCTION
• 1 THE HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE
• 2 THE STRUCTURE AND DISTRIBUTION OF LANDOWNERSHIP
• 3 LANDOWNERS AND AGRICULTURE
• 4 LAND OCCUPANCY AND SIZE OF HOLDINGS
• 5 TENURIAL RELATIONS
• 6 THE AGRICULTURAL LABOURER
• 7 MARKETING
• 8 FARMING PRACTICES
• 9 CONCLUSION
• APPENDIX 1
• APPENDIX 2
• NOTES
• BIBLIOGRAPHY
• INDEX