Nineteenth-Century Britain: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) by Harvie Christopher & Matthew Colin

Author:Harvie, Christopher & Matthew, Colin [Matthew, Colin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2000-08-09T16:00:00+00:00

10. The agricultural depression. Farm labourers evicted at Milbourne St Andrew, Dorset, in 1874, for belonging to Joseph Arch’s National Agricultural Labourers Union

The significance of agriculture in the economy declined as towns grew, a decline made swifter by the depression: in 1851 agriculture accounted for 20.3 per cent of the national income, in 1901 only 6.4 per cent, and the majority of British food and agricultural raw materials such as wool were imported - a fact which was to be of considerable strategic importance. Cries for the protection of agriculture received little response, even within the Tory Party - certainly not to the point of an alteration to the fiscal system of free trade. Some Liberal land reformers - for whom protection was axiomatically ruled out -advocated smallholdings (the ‘three acres and a cow’ campaign of 1885) as a solution; the establishment of the Crofting Commission (1886) for the Scottish Highlands, empowered to establish crofting communities free from landlord interference, was the only substantial achievement on the mainland, though a notable one in its long-term results.

The attraction of higher wages for fewer hours in the towns, mechanization in the 1850s and 1860s, and depression in the last quarter of the century led to extensive rural depopulation - a great exodus mostly to the Scottish and English towns, some to the coalfields (especially in Wales), some to the colonies, some to the army. Between 1861 and 1901 the decrease in the total of rural male labourers in England and Wales was just over 40 per cent; the total of women, less easily employable in the towns, decreased less dramatically, leaving a marked imbalance of the sexes in the countryside, though many unmarried women found their way into domestic service in the towns aided by such agencies as the Girls’ Friendly Society.

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