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

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ENCLOSURE AND THE LABOURERS 715 however, the labourers’ condition was changed for the worse AD. yi by the extinction of small farms; in the old days there had always been a possibility that he might become an inde- os i eprived of pendent farmer, but he was practically precluded from ob- tie hope of taining such capital as was requisite for working a large 7h, word. farm. He was thus cut off from any hope of bettering himself, or becoming his own master; through the progress of enclosure he was rendered entirely dependent on his wages as a labourer?, and at the same time he was deprived of any prospect of ever being more than a wage-earner, and of attaining an improved status. 262. At the very time when the rural labourer was which could keep a cow was as well off as if they had five or six shillings of parish allowance (Annals, xxxv1. 510); and Arthur Young's idea of suitable land seems always to have been such land as would enable them to keep one cow, or at all events some sort of stock (7b. 541). Sir John Sinclair discusses how this might be managed in counection with arable allotments, and in counties where little or no grazing land was available (Jb. xxxvir. 232), and he lays down the following principles (Jb. 233). “1st. That the cottager shall raise by his own labour some of the most material articles of subsistence for himself and his family. “2nd. That he shall be enabled to supply the adjoining markets with the mmaller agricultural productions; and “3rd. That both he and his family shall have it in their power to assist the neighbouring farmers, at all seasons of the year, almost equally as well as if they had no land in their occupation.” The last of these touches on the crucial difficulty. If the labourers’ allot- ments demanded more than * the leisure hour horticulture’ (4nnals, xxxvi. 852), it would interfere with the labourers’ employment and consequently with his wages. The problem therefore of providing suitable allotments was of this kind,—that the labourer should have so much land as would enable him to keep a cow, but not enough to interfere with his ordinary work for an employer. There was a very general feeling, at the beginning of this century, that this problem did not present insuperable difficulties; but it is obviously one which is not capable of solution in general ferms by such a formula as ‘three acres and a cow.’ A good deal of attention was given to this mode of affording assistance to cottagers, but it may oe doubted how far it produced the improvement that Arthur Young had hoped for, as those who received allotments were not thereby excluded from participation in poor relief. On the other hand, there were many economists who were inclined to condemn the arrangement, as they held that such assistance would, like parish allowances, lower the rate of wages; while Malthus and his followers regarded it a8 an inadequate solution of the recurring problem presented by the pressure of population. See below, p. 743 n. 2. I am inclined to believe that these doctrinaire eriticisms prevented the scheme from being so generally tried as might have been lesirable. Had it been more generally adopted, and subsistence-cultivation re- introduced even to a small extent, the fall of prices in 1815 could surely not have been attended by such distress, and there would have been less excuse for an :xpedient like the Corn Law of that year. 1 See p. 723 below.

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