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.

MOTIVES FOR AND RESULTS OF ENCLOSURE 561 agricultural distress, which caused very widespread disaster; AD Lay the capitalists may have held out longer than the small ’ farmers, but many of them were forced to succumb? The small farmers who continued to devote themselves yada tioy. bo cattle-breeding and dairy farming, also found themselves produce in serious difficulties. The price of these products did not rise correspondingly with the price of corn; indeed there was a relative fall of price, as the labouring population which was forced to pay more for bread, found it necessary to economise in other articles of diet?., The business of the small farmer became less and less remunerative during the last decade of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth, while there was an eager demand for every rood of land that could be utilised for the growth of corn, Some of the yeomen were doubtless bought out, and some were crowded out, but in the changed conditions they could not maintain themselves by their traditional husbandry. Some of the other changes of the times were specially and were burdensome to the small farmers, as compared with their aed y wealthier neighbours. They were heavily charged for the ¥ maintenance of the poor, especially at the close of the eighteenth century after the adoption of the Speenhamland policy? of granting allowances out of rates in addition to wages. The small holder was a rate-payer and had to make increased contributions; since the labourers were not maintained by the wages paid by their employers, but partly subsisted on poor-relief, it followed that the small holders were taxed for the benefit of the large farmerst, All the circumstances of the day combined to render the position of the small farmer untenable. «Perhaps it may not be an ex- travagant conjecture to ventureb, if one were to affirm that if the small farmers should remain under a pressure of poor’s i About the year 1782 a number of country banks had been formed ; this was 2 sign of the increased facilities for saving money and for applying capital to land (Tooke, 1. 198) ; but in 1792, when prices were low, a considerable proportion of these country banks appear to have got into difficulties: there were a large number of failures in that and the following year, so that the whole credit system nf the country (75. 195) was seriously affected. 2 Levy, op. cit. 17, 58. 8 That this policy was practically in operation for some years before is shown oy David Davies, Case of Labourers in Husbandry (1795), p. 25. 1 Annals of Agr. xxxvm. 106. 109. 5 7h 100

Access restriction

Copyright

fullscreen: The Industrial Revolution

Monograph

Table of contents

Download

Monograph

This page

Image fragment

Citation links

Citation recommendation