The Industrial Revolution

Bibliographic data

Monograph

Identifikator:: 1027928145

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-159926

Document type:: Monograph

Author:: Cunningham, William http://d-nb.info/gnd/128907487

Title:: The Industrial Revolution

Place of publication:: Cambridge

Publisher:: The University Press

Year of publication:: 1922

Scope:: xxii S., S. 404-886

Digitisation:: 2021

Collection:: Economics Books

Usage license:: Get license information via the feedback formular.

11} IMPROVEMENTS IN TILLAGE 549 the soil being sandy, the requsite team is certainly nearer a A.D. 1689 " : - —1776. single jackass than five horses. This miserable management cannot be too much condemnedt” At Offley, near Hitchin, “they never plough without four horses and two men, and do but an acre a day; this terrible custom, which is such a bane to the profits of husbandry, cannot be too much con- demned; for the whole expense (on comparison with the common custom) of tillage might be saved by the farmer if he would adopt the rational method of tillage with a pair of horses, and one man to hold the plough and drive at the same time?” He was, however, by no means a reckless in- novator; he was much interested in weighing the relative merits of oxen and horses for ploughing and draught, and was inclined to question the wisdom of dispensing with oxen, The raising of peas and beans formed part of the and traditional agriculture; near Woburn “they give but one et on tilth for beans alone, sow them broadcast, never hoe them, % but turn in sheep® to feed off the weeds, and reckon three quarters a middling crop” from four bushels sown. “This is an execrable custom, and ought to be exploded by all landlords of the country.” In fact, the prevailing evil of the old husbandry was the mass of weeds, which sometimes appear to have got the better of the crop altogether. Thorough ploughing and fallowing did much to clear the land; but it appears that some of the earlier attempts at improvement were most unsatisfactory. Thus the intro- duction of turnips in the East Riding of Yorkshire seems to have been positively mischievous. though “the soil is good turnip land, but,” as he continues, “their culture is so wretchedly defective, that I may, without the imputation of a paradox, assert, they had better have let it alone. Very few of them hoe at all, and those who do, execute it in so slovenly a way, that neither the crop nor the land are the least the better for'it. With such management, turnips are 1 Northern Tour, 1. 41. 2 1b. 1. 22. 3 Ib. 1. 169, 11. 70, and Southern Counties, 151, 203, 212, * Northern Tour, 1. 146. He argues for oxen in the Farmer's Letters, 166. 5 Northern Tour, 1. 40, 41. Compare the Scotch practice (1785), as described in Alexander's Notes and Sketches of Northern Rural Life (1877). 25.

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