Between 1780 and 1850, economic change had far-reaching effects on British society. From being an overwhelmingly rural and agricultural society, Britain was transformed into a manufacturing and urban society. This chapter examines how and why this process occurred, its effects on rural and urban society and the ways in which working people responded to these changes.
In what ways did farming change between 1780 and 1850 and why? How ‘revolutionary’ was this? Change in farming took place far more slowly than in the dynamic manufacturing industries. Output increased by less than fifty per cent between 1700 and 1800 compared to nearly two hundred per cent in industry and commerce. However, the most significant advance was not in yield per acre but the amount of land under cultivation by about half. Total corn output rose from 15 million quarters in 1750 to 19 million by 1800 and 25 million in 1820. By 1800, the number of sheep reached 26 million and cattle numbers stood at 4 million. There were, however, imports of grain and cattle from Europe. The achievement appears even more moderate when it is remembered that the major part of the increase in grain output was the result of the expansion of cultivated.
Changes in farming techniques.
Increased productivity in farming was the result of a combination of improved techniques of farming (many of which predated 1780), mechanisation (though its impact can be overstated) and the enclosure of large areas of land.
New crops
The most important change in agriculture lay in improved techniques of farming: the introduction of new crops, greater attention to soil fertility, and improved livestock breeding. The impact of new fodder crops was widely felt.[1] They had been introduced from the Low Countries in the mid-seventeenth century and were widespread by the 1750s. Their impact was of major importance. They allowed large waste areas to be brought into cultivation.[2] These included extensive areas of light soil on scarp land England that had previously been used only as sheep runs but also the areas, which had previously been left fallow. New rotations were introduced and spread throughout the eighteenth century. The most famous was the four courses of wheat, turnips, barley and clover introduced in Norfolk in the late-seventeenth century. A second consequence of the new crops was that they underlay the increase in livestock production in the eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries by providing winter-feed.
Improving soil fertility
A variety of other methods was used to improve fertility. The supply of manure remained of critical importance in maintaining the fertility of the soil. Until 1850, the main source of manure was animal dung hence the importance of new root crops and legumes which made it possible to keep more animals. Dung was also brought in from outside and farmers within reach relied heavily on ‘town muck’.[3] They also made use of industrial waste materials--coal ashes, soot, waste bark from tanneries, bones, pulverised slag from ironworks, and marl and lime. Guano, the dried droppings of seabirds, began to be imported in 1835 but quantities remained small until the 1840s. ‘Artificial’ fertilizers were introduced on a commercial scale in the 1840s.
Drainage was not a new problem in 1780. Some surface drainage was achieved by the ridges and furrows created during ploughing. The importance of effective under-drainage was not recognised until the mid-eighteenth century. Joseph Elkington had proposed the making of borings to enable water to pass through the impervious stratum to a porous one in 1764 and James Smith used shallow drains in the 1820s. However, it was not until the appearance of a tile-making machine invented by Thomas Scraggs and mole or drainage ploughs in the 1840s that the clay lands were brought into more productive farming.[4]
Improved livestock breeding
Livestock breeding improved considerably during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Robert Bakewell emerged as Britain’s foremost livestock expert by the 1770s but he extended the work of earlier breeders. His work was built on by the Culleys, the Collings and Jonas Webb. Bakewell’s pre-eminence rested with his improved longhorn cattle and the ‘New Leicester’ sheep. Though both his sheep and cattle had defects--his longhorns were wanting in milk and fertility and his sheep fattened too quickly--he did succeed in producing animals ready speedily for the market.
Better machinery
Advances in stock, drainage, fertilizers and crops emphasised the need for improved farm tools and machinery. Before 1800, changes in implements, other than ploughs, proceeded slowly. Mass-produced tools originated in the 1780s and by the 1840s, Robert Ransome of Ipswich was producing as many as eighty-six different designs of ploughs to suit local needs. From 1786, Andrew Meikle’s threshing machine began to be adopted and horse-drawn reapers appeared in the early decades of the nineteenth century.
Mechanisation in farming was primarily a mid-nineteenth-century development. The threshing machine was first adopted in Scotland and by 1815 was common both there and in northeast England. However, it was not general in the south or in Wales until after 1850. Seed-drills were increasingly advertised in newspaper after 1820. Reapers and mowing machines did not appear until the 1850s and only became common after 1870. In 1850, most of British corn was still cut and threshed by hand. The unreliability of the early machines partly accounted for this. Far more important was the cost of labour. In the north, where labour costs were higher because of competition from non-agricultural employment, the early adoption of powered threshing was economic. It was more sluggish in the south where cheap labour was plentiful.[5] Some farmers kept the old methods to provide a major source of winter employment in order to prevent throwing their regular men on to the parish.[6]
The spread of new farming techniques altered the pattern of late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth-century agriculture. Until the 1820s, arable prosperity shifted away from the heavy clay vales to the lighter chalk land, soils. Many were close enough to London to profit from the overall rise in grain prices after 1780. Change occurred more quickly on the lighter soils, more slowly on the heavy clay soils which suffered from a shorter growing season and a higher risk of harvest failure. Important though these changes were their impact would have been lessened after 1780, without the changes in the organisation of farming.
Enclosure
Enclosure did more than any other development to alter the face of the countryside.[7] By 1780, large areas of Britain had already been enclosed or had never known open field cultivation. It was important in improving the efficiency and flexibility of the open fields and in bringing into fuller use wastelands, marshes, heaths and hill grazing. Enclosure led villages to improve their road system, dig drainage channels, rebuild farmhouses, barns and byres and plant new hedgerows to provide windbreaks and shelter for stock.
Enclosure between 1750 and 1850 was largely as the result of parliamentary acts and fell into two phases. Thirty-eight per cent of all acts were concentrated between 1750 and 1780, with 630 acts in the 1770s. The second phase of activity occurred between 1790 and the mid-1830s, though 43 per cent of all acts were passed during the French wars. The first phase was concentrated on the heavier-soiled counties of Midland clay belts, the lighter clays of much of Lincolnshire and Yorkshire. The second phase completed this process but included the lighter soils of East Anglia, Lincolnshire and the East Riding, marginal soils of the Pennine uplands and heaths of Surrey, Berkshire and Middlesex.
Many contemporaries were certain about increased productivity achieved in terms of both improved output and rent. Ten per cent increases in grain output occurred in Oxfordshire, Warwickshire and Northamptonshire when enclosed fields were compared with open ones and improvements of 25 per cent may well have been possible. For the landlord enclosure was a good investment. Rents were increased by 15 and 20 per cent but this was both a cause and a consequence of enclosure. From the 1770s until the end of the French wars, prices rose. This too helped landowners, who often relied on fixed rents for income, to enclose and renegotiate leases with tenants who benefited from rising prices.
There was a significant rise in prices from the 1750s to the inflationary prices during the French wars. This coincided with the growth of parliamentary enclosure. Rising wheat prices are attractive in explaining who large areas of commons and waste were enclosed after 1793 even though much of this was poor in quality and capable of only low yields. Relatively stable interest rates in the 1760s and 1770s coincided with the growth of enclosure while the higher rates during the American war of the late 1770s and early 1780s saw a significant decline. During the French wars, high interest rates and large numbers of enclosures coexisted. However, the level of prices was higher than the interest rates and in real terms, money was ‘cheaper’. Farmers could borrow money to enclose their land knowing that high wheat prices would enable them to repay their loans and still make a good profit.
After 1780, population growth increased the demand for agricultural products. Price levels moved ahead more rapidly than in industry. These encouraged farmers to invest in change. British farming was highly capitalised by 1800. High-intensity arable farming was situated near the main centres of population in the band from Lancashire to London. Lower levels of investment occurred on the upland fringes where stockbreeding dominated. Rising population increased the supply of labour. In 1801, 3.3 million people or 36 per cent of the population of England and Wales were involved in agriculture, forestry and fishing. This represented an increase of about eight per cent since 1750 compared to the seventy per cent increase in total population. Although there were only slightly more people working in farming they were feeding more people. One person in 1750 fed 1.7 persons; by 1800, it was 2.5 people. The percentage of the total population employed in farming fell relative to other industries after 1800, but people employed continued to rise until 1850. Farming remained a labour-intensive industry with no dramatic breakthrough in mechanisation.
A chronology of change
Between 1750 and 1790, there was a gradual but consistent increase in all food prices paralleled by gradual but accelerating enclosure. Wheat increasingly became the staple grain food--89 per cent of Londoners were on a wheat diet by 1764. Potatoes were increasing important helping to explain demographic growth in Ireland and parts of Scotland. Homegrown food supplies were sufficient until the 1770s but after that, substantial imports were necessary. Corn prices began to rise faster than other prices and faster than wages. This stimulated further agricultural change.
Years of shortage, amounting between 1795 and 1800, in 1808 and 1812 to ‘famine’, became more frequent. Local shortages and food riots were often caused by failure to distribute supplies effectively. Increased demand was met largely by increased productivity. Grain output rose at the same rate as population: 14 per cent between 1793 and 1815. This was achieved by extending of the land under cultivation and the use of new crops and new breeds of livestock. The major problem facing farmers in this period was labour costs. The extent to which enclosure and new techniques required more labour is debatable but in some areas labour shortages pushed up costs further. Many farmers were forced to rely on casual workers. Yet, this did not lead to widespread mechanisation. Between 1790 and 1815, British agriculture increased its productivity by only 0.2 per cent per year. This compares adversely with the 0.3 per cent per year achieved between 1816 and 1846, a period regarded as one of ‘depression’.
Prices fell dramatically after 1814 and thousands were demobilised or released from war industries. The severity of distress was greatest on the clay land arable farms and least in dairy and stock-rearing districts or in areas like Kent where hops and fruit were important crops. Depression was closely linked to the flexibility of the land under cultivation. Farmers sought legislative support in the form of protection or reductions in taxes. The Corn Law of 1815 was the result. However, by the 1830s many farmers were adjusting their costs to lower prices or moving across to mixed farming. The social cost of ‘depression’ was most severe in areas with falling agricultural wages. Tariffs did little to protect arable farmers and provoked a violent reaction that the Anti-Corn Law League built on the 1830s and 1840s.
By the mid-1830s, British farming had got through its ‘depression’. The introduction of inexpensive drainage techniques liberated the clay lands from high production costs. Farming generally became more ‘scientific’, producing higher output at lower cost. From the mid-1840s until the 1870s, agricultural production rose at 0.5 per cent per year. There was a more intensive application of the techniques of mixed farming on the light soils of southern and eastern England and on the Lothian area of southeast Scotland. There was some shift on the clay soils, especially those in the north and west of England, to beef and dairy production. Railways reduced transport costs--cheap food had become both an economic and a political necessity. British farming was more productive in 1850 than it had been in 1780.[8]
The end of the French wars in 1815 saw up to a quarter of a million men demobilised. They had to be absorbed back into the labour force at a time when both farming and industry faced depression. This caused considerable distress in rural England where there was a surplus of workers. Farmers needed to reduce their costs (at a time of falling wheat prices) to repay loans they had taken out during the war when prices were higher. Rural wages fell.
Agricultural labourers were rarely at the centre of protest in the eighteenth century but this situation changed after 1780. Why did this change occur and why were the protests of farm workers largely confined to southern and eastern England? The agricultural revolution, especially enclosure, upset traditional rural society. There was a decline in hiring farm servants and ‘living in’ disappeared. Labourers were paid by the day or week and were employed for short periods for harvesting, hedging, ditching and threshing.[9] There was little guarantee of work. The social and financial gulf between farmer and labourer widened.
There was growing rural poverty in southern England. In 1795, Berkshire magistrates introduced a system of relief to supplement the wages of labourers. Similar schemes were introduced across southern England. This was known as the ‘Speenhamland system’.[10] The name gave the schemes a sense of uniformity that in practice they did not possess. Its attempt to redress low wages became part of the framework of labourers’ lives instead of a safety net in hard times. The system encouraged low pay and did not fully make up the difference between high prices and low wages. Wartime farming transformed much of southern and eastern England into a region dominated by wheat production. Boom conditions ended abruptly in 1815, grain prices slumped while rents, fixed during wartime inflation, did not. Farmers were faced with falling profits and sought to reduce costs by cutting wages, quite possible in a labour market saturated by the demobilisation of the armed forces, or by introducing economies that technological innovations like the threshing machine offered.
The 1816 riots
Industrial workers, townsmen, cottagers and agricultural labourers were linked together in 1816 in ways not repeated in 1822 or 1830. There were three main types of protest. There were incidents in some market towns, a continuation of the tradition of food riots and collective action by textile workers. Agricultural labourers took little part in these. On the loam and clay lands of Essex, Suffolk and Norfolk, there were protests over the use of the mole plough and threshing machines and demands for a subsistence wage. The third series of disturbances was in the Fens, centred on Littleport and Ely. The diversity of rioters--one in three arrested was not an agricultural labourer and one in seven had some land--reflected the impact of enclosure and drainage and the particular effect of depression. The authorities at local level had limited resources at their disposal to stop riots spreading and, especially in the Fens, there were too few gentry to act collectively. Magistrates made concessions to stop the protest but the dramatic breakdown of law and order could not be tolerated by central government. Sidmouth ordered the military to be sent to Norfolk and Suffolk, not just in the Fens. Magistrates who had made concessions were overruled and harsh sentences were passed. Five rioters were executed and this, as much as anything, ensured that rioting spread no further.
Disturbances in 1822
Protest occurred in three areas in Norfolk in late February and early March 1822. All three involved the destruction of threshing machines and in contrast to 1816, these attacks were not simply symbolic, drawing attention to the plight of the labourer, but were a campaign to sweep the machines away. Local magistrates acted quickly to prevent widespread disturbances and the use of the military drove the rioters underground.
The Swing riots of 1830
The problem of pauperism was worst in south of a line from Norfolk to Gloucestershire. In these so-called ‘Swing’ counties, enclosure had taken place on a grand scale. In the 1820s, high poor rates led to increasing attempts to cut relief. Between 1815 and 1820, Poor Law spending was 12/10d per head; by 1830, it was 9/9d. Reductions were made by stopping people asking for relief. This created a hatred of the Poor Law but it is noticeable that between 1824 and 1830, rural crime rates increased by 30 per cent--mainly poaching and food thefts. Pauperism, desperation and discontent were almost universal in agricultural areas.
The Swing riots[11] lasted from August until well into December 1830 and took several forms. In some areas, there were demands for higher wages; in others, tithes were the issue; Poor Law officials and workhouses were attacked but the destruction of threshing machines was most widespread. The major difference between protests in 1816 and 1822 and those in 1830 was their scale. Although the ‘Swing’ riots are normally associated with southern and eastern England with over 3,000 incidents, workers across the North responded to the political and social unrest in 1830 and over 50 incidents of actions against farmers, whether threatening letters, machine-breaking or arson occurred in northern England between 1830 and 1834. Why was there such a widespread mobilisation of agricultural labourers in 1830? The aims of the rioters were remarkably similar throughout the ‘Swing’ counties. Men demanded a minimum wage, the end of rural unemployment and tithe and rent reductions. Farmers supported the labourers in the two latter demands.
The leaders of the riots were often craftsmen and the led were predominantly labourers, often paupers on poor relief. Rioters were usually young men, many of them married. Their concern was for a living wage. The riots began slowly and initially machine breakers were given lenient sentences. This was interpreted by many labourers as tacit approval of their actions and led to protests gathering momentum. Revolution in France in July gave rural protest a more threatening dimension than in either 1816 or 1822. The Whig government made suppressing the disturbances its first priority on achieving power in mid-November. Concerted local action, especially by the gentry of Wiltshire and Hampshire, the use of troops and unwillingness of Lord Melbourne, the Home Secretary, to tolerate weakness or compromise on the part of local magistrates gradually restored order.
After Swing
Swing did not destroy the willingness of agricultural labourers across the country to protest. There was widespread, if unsuccessful, rural action against the Poor Law Amendment Act in 1835, rural trade unionism in the south-east and at Tolpuddle and protests in the form of arson. Labourers were experts in slacking in undetectable ways. More seriously, they could steal their employers’ corn, fruit and game despite the severity of sentence if caught; transportation to Australia was widely used. Sheep and horse stealing were capital offences until 1831 and arson remained so until 1837. Poaching was endemic in rural areas. Stacks could be fired, farm buildings lit, fences pulled down, animals maimed and drainage channels breached though the systematic nature of these actions died down after the 1840s. Rural protest after 1790 can be explained by the failure to understand the nature of change by both labourers and their employers. Change imperfectly understood aroused fear. This was made worse by ‘want’ and ‘distress’ and under- or unemployment.
[1] Fodder crops were used to feed animals in the winter.[2] Large areas of England consisted of wasteland. This land had previously not been cultivated because it would have been unprofitable to do so. The new crops ended this practice. They had the same effect on leaving land fallow for a year to restore its fertility.[3] ‘Town muck’, the product of the swelling urban population, was either given to farmers willing to take it away or sold by people who collected urban sewage: a further example of recycling waste products.[4] Britain’s soils can be divided into three broad types: sandy, chalk and clay. In the late eighteenth century, sandy soil was the easiest to cultivate because it was generally fertile and porous. Chalk soils were less fertile than sandy soils. Clay soil was very fertile but suffered from major drainage problems.[5] Winter employment was often provided by farmers for their regular workforce especially in southern England. This helped keep the parish poor rate at a lower level but also reflected the widespread belief that farmers had a paternal responsibility for their ‘men’. The same responsibility, however, was not applied to casual workers and there was chronic under-employment in rural England especially after 1815.[6] In 1851, James Caird, in his study of British farming, divided the country into high and low wage areas. In northern and parts of central England, where industrialisation was widespread, farm labourers’ wages were high. In southern England, where there was no alternative and attractive employment available supply exceeded demand and wages were significantly lower.[7] Enclosure was achieved either by agreement between the local landowners or, increasingly, by getting Parliament to pass an enclosure act.[8] Historians disagree about the impact of enclosure on rural labour. Some argue that farmers who had enclosed their land needed fewer workers. Others suggest that during and immediately after enclosure more workers were needed. In the longer term, the combination of enclosure and mechanisation led to a reduction in the agricultural workforce.[9] It had been customary for farm workers to be hired for a year receiving food, clothes, board and a small annual wage in return for work, only living out when they wished to marry.[10] The Speenhamland system was named after the village of Speen, near Newbury where the Berkshire magistrates met in May 1795.[11] The Swing riots were called after their assumed leader, Captain Swing. There is no evidence that the riots were coordinated in this way.
[1] Fodder crops were used to feed animals in the winter.[2] Large areas of England consisted of wasteland. This land had previously not been cultivated because it would have been unprofitable to do so. The new crops ended this practice. They had the same effect on leaving land fallow for a year to restore its fertility.[3] ‘Town muck’, the product of the swelling urban population, was either given to farmers willing to take it away or sold by people who collected urban sewage: a further example of recycling waste products.[4] Britain’s soils can be divided into three broad types: sandy, chalk and clay. In the late eighteenth century, sandy soil was the easiest to cultivate because it was generally fertile and porous. Chalk soils were less fertile than sandy soils. Clay soil was very fertile but suffered from major drainage problems.[5] Winter employment was often provided by farmers for their regular workforce especially in southern England. This helped keep the parish poor rate at a lower level but also reflected the widespread belief that farmers had a paternal responsibility for their ‘men’. The same responsibility, however, was not applied to casual workers and there was chronic under-employment in rural England especially after 1815.[6] In 1851, James Caird, in his study of British farming, divided the country into high and low wage areas. In northern and parts of central England, where industrialisation was widespread, farm labourers’ wages were high. In southern England, where there was no alternative and attractive employment available supply exceeded demand and wages were significantly lower.[7] Enclosure was achieved either by agreement between the local landowners or, increasingly, by getting Parliament to pass an enclosure act.[8] Historians disagree about the impact of enclosure on rural labour. Some argue that farmers who had enclosed their land needed fewer workers. Others suggest that during and immediately after enclosure more workers were needed. In the longer term, the combination of enclosure and mechanisation led to a reduction in the agricultural workforce.[9] It had been customary for farm workers to be hired for a year receiving food, clothes, board and a small annual wage in return for work, only living out when they wished to marry.[10] The Speenhamland system was named after the village of Speen, near Newbury where the Berkshire magistrates met in May 1795.[11] The Swing riots were called after their assumed leader, Captain Swing. There is no evidence that the riots were coordinated in this way.
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