driven barn-machinery, which threshed the corn, raised the straw to the loft, winnowed and dressed the grain, divided it according to quality, delivered it into sacks ready for market, and set aside the tailings for pigs and poultry. Nor did mechanical science neglect the live-stock industry, the development of which, in connection with corn-growing, was a feature of the period. Here, too, machinery economised the farmer's labour. He already knew the turnip-cutter and the chaff-cutter; but now the same engine which superseded the flail, pumped his water, ground his corn, crushed his cake, split his beans, cut his chaff, pulped his turnips, steamed and boiled his food. Without the aid of mechanical invention farming to-day would be at an absolute standstill. No farmer could find, or if he found could pay, the staff of scarce and expensive labour without which in 1837 agricultural produce could not be raised, secured, and marketed.

The improvements which have been indicated were not the work of a day. On the contrary, during the first few years of the reignthe only period passed under Protection-progress was neither rapid nor unchecked. Farmers in general were preparing for high farming; they had not yet adopted its practices. Whatever advance had been made between 1837 and 1846 was probably lost in the five succeeding years. Abundant materials exist for comparison. On the one side are the Reports of the Reporters to the old Board of Agriculture (1793-1815); and the Reports to the successive Commissions (1815-36); on the other, there are the Reports published in the early numbers of the Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society, the evidence given before the Select Committee of 1848 on tenant-right and agricultural customs, the letters of Caird to The Times in 1850-1, afterwards embodied in his English Agriculture in 1850-1, and the letters of the Commissioner to the Morning Chronicle during the same period. It is plain that in 1846 no universal progress had been effected; that many landowners had made no effort to increase the productiveness of their land; that high farming was still the exception; that the new resources were not yet generally utilised; and that more than half the owners and occupiers of the land had made but little advance on the ideas and practices of the eighteenth century. Another period of disaster, short but severe, forced home the necessary lessons, and ushered in the ten years, 1853-62, which were the golden age of English agriculture.

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The railway manias and their collapse in 1845-7 had depressed every industry. The failure of the potato crop in 1845-6 caused appalling famine, and led to the Repeal of the Corn Laws. When in 1846 Protection was abandoned for Free Trade, an agricultural panic was the result. Caird's pamphlet on High Farming... the best Substitute for Protection (1848) pointed out the true remedy. But for the moment he preached in the wilderness. The discovery of guano and the abolition of the Brick and Timber Duties seemed no adequate set-off to the anticipated consequences of Free Trade in grain. Agriculturists predicted the ruin of their industry, and their prophecies seemed justified by falling prices in 1848-50. Many landlords and tenants had been encouraged by Protection to gamble in land. Extravagant rents had been fixed, which were not justified by increased produce. Caird calculated in 1850 that rentals had risen 100 per cent. since 1770, while the yield of wheat per acre had only risen 14 per cent.-from 23 to 26 bushels. In 1850 wheat stood at the same price which it had realised eighty years before (40s. 3d.). On the other hand, butter, meat, and wool had risen respectively 100 per cent., 70 per cent., and 100 per cent. The great advance which had been made was, in fact, in live-stock. Competition in farms had been reckless, and the consequences were inevitable when prices showed a downward tendency. Here and there rents were remitted, but few were reduced. Clay farmers, as before, were the worst sufferers; dairy and stock farmers escaped comparatively lightly. But the loss was widespread. Much land was thrown on the hands of landlords, and efforts were made to convert a considerable area of arable into pasture.

From 1853 onwards, however, matters rapidly righted themselves. Gold discoveries in Australia and California raised prices; trade and manufacture throve and expanded; the Free Trade panic subsided; courage was restored. The Crimean War closed the Baltic to Russian corn. During the "Sixties," while the Continent and America were at war, England enjoyed peace. The seasons were uniformly favourable; harvests, except that of 1860, were good, fair, or abundant; the wheat area of 1854, as estimated by Lawes, rose to a little over four million acres; imports of corn, meat, and dairy produce supplemented, without displacing, home supplies. Even the removal of the shilling duty on corn in 1869 produced little effect. Counteracted as it was by the demand for grain from France in 1870-71, it failed to help foreign growers to force down the price of

British corn. Wool maintained an extraordinarily high price. Lincoln wool, for instance, rose from 13d. per lb. in 1851 to 27d. in 1864. Even when corn began to decline in value, meat and dairy produce maintained their price, or even advanced. Money was poured into land as the best investment for capital. Men like Mechi of Tiptree Hall, who had made fortunes in trade, competed for farms, and became enthusiastic exponents of their theories of scientific agriculture. Rentals rose rapidly; yet still farmers made money. Holdings were enlarged and consolidated; farmhouses became labourers' cottages; a brisk trade was carried on in machinery. High hopes were entertained of steam. Enormous and, as has since been proved, excessive sums were spent on farm buildings. Drainage was carried out extensively, and it was now that the general level of farming rose rapidly towards the best standard of individual farmers in 1837. Crops reached limits which production has never since exceeded, and probably, so far as anything certain can be predicted of the unknown, never will exceed.

During the period from 1853 to 1874 little attention was in England paid to improvements in dairying. But in live-stock progress was great and continuous. The advance was the more remarkable as it was made in the face of outbreaks of the rinderpest, pleuro-pneumonia, and foot-and-mouth diseases. Foot-and-mouth disease had been more or less prevalent since 1839, and pleuropneumonia since 1840. But the scourge of rinderpest in 1865, commonly called the cattle-plague, compelled energetic action.1 In stamping out the pest the two other diseases were nearly extinguished, so that good results flowed from a disaster which caused widespread ruin. The multiplication of shows encouraged competition; stock-breeding became a fashion, and "pedigree" a mania among men of wealth.

It was in cattle and sheep that the improvement was most clearly marked, though neither horses nor pigs were neglected. Not only did Shorthorns, Herefords, and Devons attain the highest standard

once.

1 In the week ended Feb. 24, 1866, 17,875 cattle were returned as infected by the disease. The Cattle Diseases Prevention Act, dated Feb. 20, 1866, made the slaughter of diseased animals compulsory. The effect was seen at In the week ending March 3, 1866, 10,971 cattle were attacked, and in the week ending March 10, 10,056 were killed. At the end of April the weekly tables showed 4,442 attacked; towards the end of May, 1,687; in the last week of June, 338. In the last week of the year the number had dwindled to 8. Appendix I. to Report on Cattle Plague during the years 1865, 1866, 1867 (Parliamentary Paper of 1868, Cd. 4060), p. 4.

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of excellence in symmetry, and quality, but other breeds, now almost as well-known, were rapidly brought to perfection. Especially is this true of the Aberdeen-Angus, the Sussex, Ayrshire, and Channel Island breeds.1 Other breeds were similarly improved by societies and the compilation of herd-books. Thus the Black cattle of South Wales and the Norfolk and Suffolk Red Polled breed have had their herd-books since 1874. In sheep the improvement was, perhaps, even more striking. The historic Leicesters, Cotswolds, and Southdowns still held their own, but other breeds made rapid strides in the popular favour. The improved Lincolns, the Oxford Downs, Hampshire Downs, and Shropshires are almost creations of the period. Between 1866 and 1874 the number of cattle in Great Britain rose from under five millions to over six millions, and sheep had increased to over thirty millions in 1874. Nor was there only an increase in numbers. The average quality was greatly improved, and good sheep and cattle were widely distributed.

1 The Shorthorn Society was founded in 1875: the Hereford Herd-book appeared in 1846, and the Hereford Herd-book Society was incorporated in 1878: the Devon Herd-book appeared in 1851. The first volume of the Aberdeen-Angus Polled Herd-book was issued in 1862, and the second in 1872: the Sussex Herd-book Society published its first volume (1855-78) in 1879; the Ayrshire Herd-book Society was established in 1877 and published its first volume in 1878; the English Herd-book of Jersey Cattle was first issued in 1879, and the English Jersey Cattle Society was incorporated in 1883.

CHAPTER XVIII.

ADVERSITY. 1874-1912.

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 civilisation. 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 to 1884, and again from 1891 to 1899.

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. 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

1E.g. 1825-6, 1836-7, 1847, 1857, 1866, 1877-8.