British Agriculture

1875-1914

P J Perry

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781138878662
• eBook ISBN: 9781136581182
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

Profound Changes took place in British Agriculture between 1875 and 1914. After the prosperous years of the mid-nineteenth century came a period of difficulty for landowners and farmers, with falling prices, lower rents and untenanted farms. Previously attributed to bad seasons and increased food imports, this book questions whether the unexpected depression was rather the evolutionary upheaval of a system forced reluctantly into change.

Undoubtedly there was a crisis, in these decades farming ceased to be Britain's major industry; no longer able to supply all her own food, the country came to depend increasingly upon imports. Methods changed, cereal production yielding pre-eminence to pastoral farming. In recent years scholars have challenged traditional interpretations of the crisis, seeking a wider range of causes, characteristics and consequences. It has come to be seen as a phenomenon of change as much as of decay. This book brings together different views of the depression, ranging from contemporary evaluations to recent regional and econometric studies which stress its spatial and developmental character. Originally published in 1973, these eight contributions provide a survey of changing approaches to one of the major economic crises in modern history.

1 The Great Depression and Recovery, 1874–1914

LORD ERNLE

This article was first published as Chapter 18 of English Farming Past and Present, 6th edition, Heinemann, 1961.

Since 1862 the tide of agricultural prosperity had ceased to flow; after 1874 it turned, and rapidly ebbed. A period of depression began which, with some fluctuations in severity, continued throughout the rest of the reign of Queen Victoria, and beyond.

Depression is a word which is often loosely used. It is generally understood to mean a reduction, in some cases an absence, of profit, accompanied by a consequent diminution of employment. To some extent the condition has probably become chronic. A decline of interest on capital lent or invested, a rise in wages of labour, an increased competition for the earnings of management, caused by the spread of education and resulting in the reduction or stationary character of those earnings, are permanent not temporary tendencies of civilization. So far as these symptoms indicate a more general distribution of wealth, they are not disquieting. But, from time to time, circumstances combine to produce acute conditions of industrial collapse which may be accurately called depression. Such a crisis occurred in agriculture from 1875–84, and again from 1891–9.

Industrial undertakings are so inextricably interlaced that agricultural depression cannot be entirely dissevered from commercial depression. Exceptional periods of commercial difficulty had for the last seventy years recurred with such regularity as to give support to a theory of decennial cycles.⁹⁹ In previous years, each recurring period had resulted in a genuine panic, due as much to defective information as to any real scarcity of loanable capital. The historic failure of Overend and Gurney in 1866 and the famous ‘Black Friday’ afford the last example of this acute form of crisis. Better means of obtaining accurate intelligence, more accessible supplies of capital, the greater stability of the Bank of England have combined with other causes to minimize the risk of financial stampedes. But, though periods of depression cease to produce the old-fashioned panic, they are not less exhausting. Their approach is more gradual; so also is the recovery. Disaster and revival are no longer concentrated in a few months. Years pass before improvement is apparent; the magnitude of the distress is concealed by its diffusion over a longer period. The agricultural depressions of 1875–84 and of 1891–9 had all the characteristics of the modern type of financial crisis.

In 1870 had begun an inflation of prices. The outbreak of the Franco-German War and the withdrawal of France and Germany from commercial competition enabled England to increase her exports; the opening of the Suez Canal (1869) stimulated the ship-building trade; the railway development in Germany and America created an exceptional demand for coal and iron. Expanding trade increased the consuming power of the population, and maintained the prices of agricultural produce. The wisest or wealthiest landowners refused the temptation to advance rents on sitting tenants. But in many cases rents were raised, or farms were tendered for competition. Farmers became infected with the same spirit of gambling which in trade caused the scramble for the investment of money in hazardous enterprises. In their eagerness for land they were led into reckless biddings, which raised rentals beyond reasonable limits. In 1874 the reaction began. Demand had returned to normal limits; but the abnormal supply continued. Over-production was the result. The decline of the coal and iron trade, the stoppage, partial or absolute, of cotton mills, disputes between masters and men, complications arising out of the Eastern question, the default on the Turkish debt, disturbances of prices owing to fluctuations in the purchasing power of gold and silver, combined to depress every industry. In 1878 the extent to which trade had been undermined was revealed by the failure of the Glasgow, Caledonian and West of England Banks. One remarkable feature of the crisis was that it was not local but universal. New means of communication had so broken down the barriers of nations that the civilized world suffered together. Everywhere prices fell, trade shrank, insolvencies multiplied. In the United States the indirect consequences of the industrial collapse of 1873–4 proved to be of disastrous importance to English farming. A railway panic, a fall in the price of manufactured articles, a decline in wages drove thousands out of the towns to settle as agriculturists on the virgin soils of the West.

English farming suffered from the same causes as every other home industry. In addition, it had its own special difficulties. The collapse of British trade checked the growth of the consuming power at home at the same time that a series of inclement seasons, followed by an overwhelming increase of foreign competition, paralysed the efforts of farmers. For three years in succession, bleak springs and rainy summers produced short cereal crops of inferior quality, mildew in wheat, mould in hops, blight in other crops, disease in cattle, rot in sheep, throwing heavy lands into foul condition, deteriorating the finer grasses of pastures. In 1875–6 the increasing volume of imports¹⁰⁰ prevented prices from rising to compensate deficiencies in the yield of corn. The telegraph, steam carriage by sea and land, and low freights, consequent on declining trade, annihilated time and distance, destroyed the natural monopoly of proximity, and enabled the world to compete with English producers in the home markets on equal, if not more favourable, terms. Instead of there being one harvest every year, there was now a harvest in every month of each year. In 1877 prices advanced, owing to the progress of the Russo-Turkish War. But the potato crops failed, and a renewed outbreak of the cattle-plague, though speedily suppressed, hit stockowners hard. The tithe rent-charge was nearly £12 above its par value. Rates were rising rapidly. Land-agents began to complain of the scarcity of eligible tenants for vacant corn-land. During the sunless ungenial summer of 1879, with its icy rains, the series of adverse seasons culminated in one of the worst harvests of the century, in an outbreak of pleuro-pneumonia and foot-and-mouth disease among cattle, and among sheep a disastrous attack of the liver-rot, which inflicted an enormous loss on flockmasters. The English wheat crop scarcely averaged 15

bushels to the acre. In similar circumstances, farmers might have been compensated for the shortness of yield by an advance in price. This was no longer the case in 1879. America, which had enjoyed abundant harvests, poured such quantities of wheat into the country as to bring down prices below the level of the favourable season of the preceding year. At the same time, American cheese so glutted the market as to create a record for cheapness. Thus, at the moment when English farmers were already enfeebled by their loss of capital, they were met by a staggering blow from foreign competition. They were fighting against low prices as well as adverse seasons.

English farmers were, in fact, confronted with a new problem. How were they to hold their own in a treacherous climate on highly rented land, whose fertility required constant renewal, against produce raised under more genial skies on cheaply rented soils, whose virgin richness needed no fertilizers? To a generation familiar with years of a prosperity which had enabled English farmers to extract more from the soil than any of their foreign rivals, the changed conditions were unintelligible. The new position was at first less readily understood, because the depression was mainly attributed to the accident of adverse seasons, and because the grazing and dairying districts had as yet escaped. Thousands of tenants on corn-growing lands were unable to pay their rents. In many instances they were kept afloat by the help of wealthy landlords. But every landowner is not a Dives; the majority sit at the rich man’s gate. In most cases there was no reduction of rents. Remissions, sometimes generous, sometimes inadequate, were made and renewed from time to time. Where the extreme urgency of the case was imperfectly realized, many old tenants were ruined. It was not till farms were re-let that the necessary reductions were made, and then the men who profited were new occupiers.

If any doubt still existed as to the reality of the depression, especially in corn-growing districts, it was removed by the evidence laid before the Duke of Richmond’s Commission, which sat from 1879–82. The Report of the Commission established, beyond possibility of question, the existence of severe and acute distress, and attributed its prevalence, primarily to inclement seasons, secondarily to foreign competition. It was generally realized that the shrinkage in the margin of profit on the staple produce of agriculture was a more or less permanent condition, and that rents must be readjusted. Large reductions were made between 1880 and 1884, and it was calculated that in England and Wales alone the annual letting value of agricultural land was thus decreased by 5I millions. Yet in many cases the rent nominally remained at the old figure. Only remissions were granted, which were uncertain in amount, and therefore disheartening in effect. According to Sir James Caird’s evidence given in 1886, before the Royal Commission on Depression of Trade, the yearly income of landlords, tenants and labourers had diminished since 1876 by £42,800,000.

The worst was by no means over. On the contrary, the pressure of foreign competition gradually extended to other branches of agriculture. The momentum of a great industry in any given direction cannot be arrested in a day; still less can it be diverted towards another goal without a considerable expenditure of time and money. Unreasonable complaints were made against the obstinate conservatism of agriculturists, because they were unable to effect a costly change of front as easily as a man turns in his bed. The aims and methods of farming were gradually adapted to meet the changed conditions. As wheat, barley and oats declined towards the lowest prices of the century, increased attention was paid to grazing, dairying and such minor products as vegetables, fruit and poultry. The corn area of England and Wales shrank from 8,244,392 acres in 1871 to 5,886,052 acres in 1901.¹⁰¹ Between the same years the area of permanent pasture increased from 11,367,298 acres to 15,399,025 acres. Yet before the change was complete farmers once more found themselves checkmated. The old adage ‘Down horn, up corn’ had once held true. Now both were down together. Till 1885 the prices of fat cattle had been well maintained, and those of sheep till 1890. Both were now beginning to decline before the pressure of foreign competition. Up till 1877 both cattle and sheep had been chiefly sent in alive from European countries. Now America and Canada joined in the trade, and the importation of dead meat rapidly increased. Consignments were no longer confined to beef and pig meat. New Zealand and the Republic of Argentina entered the lists. The imports of mutton, which in 1882 did not exceed 181,000 cwts, and chiefly consisted of meat boiled and tinned, rose in 1899 to 3! million cwts, of frozen carcasses. The importation of cheese rose by more than a third; that of butter was doubled; that of wool increased more than twofold. Meanwhile the outgoings of the farmer were steadily mounting upwards. Machinery cost more; labour rose in price and deteriorated in efficiency. The expenses of production rose as the profits fell.

Some attempt was made by Parliament to relieve the industry. The recommendations of the Richmond Commission were gradually carried into effect. Grants were made in aid of local taxation. Measures were adopted to stamp out disease among livestock, and to protect farmers against the adulteration of feeding-stuffs, and against the sale of spurious butter and cheese. The primary liability for tithe rent-charge was transferred from occupiers to owners (1891). The law affecting limited estates in land was modified by the Settled Lands Act (1882). A Railway and Canal Traffic Act was passed, which attempted to equalize rates on the carriage of home and foreign produce. The permissive Agricultural Holdings Act of 1875, which was not incorrectly described as a chomily to landlords’ on the subject of unexhausted improvements, was superseded by a more stringent measure and a modification of the law of distress (1883). A Minister of Agriculture was appointed (1889), and an Agricultural Department established.

But the legislature was powerless to provide any substantial help. Food was, so to speak, the currency in which foreign nations paid for English manufactured goods, and its cheapness was an undoubted blessing to the wage-earning community. Thrown on their own resources, agriculturists fought the unequal contest with courage and tenacity. But, as time went on, the stress told more and more heavily. Manufacturing populations seemed to seek food markets everywhere except at home. Enterprise gradually weakened; landlords lost their ability to help, farmers their recuperative power. Prolonged depression checked costly improvements. Drainage was practically discontinued. Both owners and occupiers were engaged in the task of making both ends meet on vanishing incomes. Land deteriorated in condition; less labour was employed; less stock was kept; bills for cake and fertilizers were reduced. The counties which suffered most were the corn-growing districts, in which high farming had won its most signal triumphs. On the heavy clays of Essex, for example, thousands of acres, which had formerly yielded great crops and paid high rents, had passed out of cultivation into ranches for cattle or temporary sheep-runs. On the light soils of Norfolk, where skill and capital had wrested large profits from the reluctant hand of Nature, there were widespread ruin and bankruptcy. Throughout the eastern, midland and southern counties – wherever the land was so heavy or so light that its cultivation was naturally unremunerative – the same conditions prevailed. The west on the whole, suffered less severely. Though milk and butter had fallen in price, dairy farmers were profiting by the cheapness of grain, which was ruining their corn-growing neighbours. Almost everywhere retrenchment, not development, was the enforced policy of agriculturists. The expense of laying land down to grass was shirked, and arable areas which were costly to work were allowed to tumble down to rough pasture. Economy ruled in farm management; labour bills were reduced, and the number of men employed on the land dwindled as the arable area contracted.¹⁰²

During the years 1883–90, better seasons, remissions of rent, the fall in tithes, relief from some portion of the burden of rates, had arrested the process of impoverishment. To some extent the heavy land, whether arable or pasture, which wet seasons had deteriorated, recovered its tone and condition. But otherwise there was no recovery. Landlords and tenants still stood on the verge of ruin. Only a slight impulse was needed to thrust them over the border line. Two cold summers (1891–2), the drought in 1893, the unpropitious harvest of 1894, coupled with the great fall in prices of corn, cattle, sheep, wool, butter and milk produced a second crisis, scarcely, if at all, less acute than that of 1879. In this later period of severe depression, unseasonable weather played a less important part than before. But in all other respects the position of agriculturists was more disadvantageous than at the earlier period. Foreign competition had relaxed none of its pressure; on the contrary, it had increased in range and in intensity. Nothing now escaped its influence. But the great difference lay in the comparative resources of agriculturists. In 1879 the high condition of the land had supplied farmers with reserves of fertility on which to draw; now, they had been drawn upon to exhaustion. In 1879, again, both landlords and tenants were still possessed of capital; now, neither had any money to spend in attempting to adapt their land to new conditions.

In September, 1893, a Royal Commission was appointed to inquire into the depression of agriculture. The evidence made a startling revelation of the extent to which owners and occupiers of land, and the land itself, had been impoverished since the Report of the Duke of Richmond’s Commission. It showed that the value of produce had diminished by nearly one-half, while the cost of production had rather increased than diminished; that quantities of corn-land had passed out of cultivation; that its restoration, while the present prices prevailed, was economically impossible; that its adaptation to other uses required an immediate outlay which few owners could afford to make. Scarcely one bright feature relieved the gloom of the outlook. Foreign competition had falsified all predictions. No patent was possible for the improved processes of agriculture; they could be appropriated by all the world. The skill which British farmers had acquired by half a century of costly experiments was turned against them by foreign agriculturists working under more favourable conditions. Even distance ceased to afford its natural protection either of time or cost of conveyance, for not even the perishable products of foreign countries were excluded from English markets. Yet the evidence collected by the Commission established some important facts. It proved that many men, possessed of ample capital and energy, who occupied the best-equipped farms, enjoyed the greatest liberty in cropping, kept the best stock and were able to continue high farming, had weathered the storm even on heavy land; that small occupiers employing no labour but their own had managed to pull through; that, on suitable soils, market-gardening and fruit-farming had proved profitable; that, even on the derelict clays of Essex, Scottish milk farmers had made a living. At no previous period, it may be added, in the history of farming were the advantages and disadvantages of English land-ownership more strongly illustrated. Many tenants renting land on encumbered estates were ruined, because their hard-pressed landlords were unable to give them financial help. At least as many were nursed through the bad times by the assistance of landowners whose wealth was derived from other sources than agricultural land.

When the extent of the agricultural loss and suffering is considered, the remedies adopted by the legislature seem trivial. Yet some useful changes were made. Farmers were still further protected against adulteration of cake, fertilizers and dairy produce by the provision of the Fertilizers and Feeding-Stuffs Act (1893) and the Sale of Food and Drugs Act (1899). The Market-Gardeners Compensation Act (1895) enabled a tenant, where land was specifically let for market-garden purposes, to claim compensation for all improvements suitable to the business, even though they had been effected without the consent of the landlord. The Improvement of Land Act (1899) gave landowners increased facilities for carrying out improvements on borrowed money. The amendment of the Contagious Diseases of Animals Act (1896), requiring all foreign animals to be slaughtered at the port of landing, was a valuable step towards preventing the spread of infection. The Agricultural Rates Act (1896) and the subsequent Continuation Acts (1901, etc.), though they were only palliatives which did not settle the many questions involved in the increasing burden of rates, rendered the load of local taxation for the moment less oppressive. After all, agriculturists received little assistance from Parliament. They had to help themselves. Conditions slowly mended. More favourable seasons, rigid economy in expenses, attention to neglected branches of the industry have combined to lessen the financial strain. But the greatest relief has been afforded by the substantial reduction in the rents of agricultural land, which has resulted in a fairer adjustment of the economic pressure of low prices as between owners and occupiers.

The ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION
• 1 The Great Depression and Recovery, 1874–1914
• 2 Causes of the Fall of Agricultural Prices between 1875 and 1895
• 3 The Great Depression of English Agriculture, 1873–1896
• 4 Agricultural Changes in the Chilterns, 1875–1900
• 5 Lancashire Livestock Farming during the Great Depression
• 6 The Landlord and Agricultural Transformation, 1870–1900
• 7 Where was the ‘Great Agricultural Depression’?
• 8 Free Trade in ‘Corn’: A Statistical Study of the Prices and Production of Wheat in Great Britain from 1873 to 1914
• GLOSSARY OF TECHNICAL TERMS
• SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY