Nineteenth-century Britain : A Very Short Introduction by Harvie Christopher.; Matthew H. C. G

Author:Harvie, Christopher.; Matthew, H. C. G. [G., Harvie, Christopher.; Matthew, H. C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 0192853988
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2009-10-04T18:13:21+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

y Britain

hay, and straw production were not open to harsh foreign competition. eenth-Centur

In particular, the price of grain, the characteristic product of the eastern et

Nin

side of the country, fell dramatically, but farmers, especially the smaller ones, were slow to accept the permanence of this fall, or to adapt to the new demand for dairy products. The pastoral west was less severely affected.

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 82

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 A Shi

dramatically, leaving a marked imbalance of the sexes in the ftin

countryside, though many unmarried women found their way into g P

domestic service in the towns aided by such agencies as the Girls’

opu

Friendly Society.

lation

Rural Decay

All this left rural society demoralized and neglected, with the passivity characteristic of communities in decay. Thomas Hardy’s novels, whose span of publication (1872–96) covered almost exactly the years of the agricultural depression, captured majestically the uncontrollable and distant forces which seemed to determine the fate of the country communities and their inhabitants. Hardy wrote of country habits and traditions which had passed away but, though historical in form, the novels had a contemporary overtone. The Mayor of Casterbridge described the fate of Michael Henchard, a corn merchant whose failure to adapt to new methods of trading brought him to ruin. Hardy observed of him at the moment of his financial crash: ‘The movements of his mind seemed to tend to the thought that some power was working against him.’ The ‘general drama of pain’ which the Wessex 83

novels depict was the disintegration of a civilization.

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