Page:The Evolution of Modern Capitalism.djvu/36
16 THE EVOLUTION OF
found an England one-third of which still remained in
common fields with the slovenly and wasteful cultivation
involved in this system. A large part of the country was
in the hands of small yeomen, farming their own land,
cottagers or crofters, renting small holdings and enjoying
not only a share in the common fields, but other rights of
pasture, forest, and waste. The wage-work for farmers was
partly performed by these, partly by farm-labourers who,
if single, “lived in,” and, if married, were supplied with a
cottage on the farm, and were allowed certain small rights
of pasturage for a cow, etc. Again, farmers in many parts —
of the country let patches of land to sub-tenants, who were
primarily engaged in weaving or other domestic industry, and
worked on the land in their spare time.
The conditions of enclosure and the new farming changed all this. Scientific rotation of crops, deep cultivation, the use of artificial manures, the increasing employment of machinery, involved a capital outlay and a business adminis- tration with which the small farmer could not cope.
The yeomen and other small owners or holders were unable to keep their grip upon the land: the legal and other expenses of acts of enclosure, the cost of fencing and other adjustments ruined many of them, and they were unable to stand up against the large landowners in the defence of doubtful legal or customary rights. The speculative busi- ness of growing for markets, with fluctuating prices, was un- suited alike to their means and their intelligence. Many of this class, thus failing to maintain an independent footing, came to recruit the new industrial army of the towns.
The cottagers, crofters, and other labourers were still less able to retain whatever rights custom yielded them in the beneficial use of the land. The old patriarchal farm life, which preserved elements of a profit-sharing character, gave way before the new business pressure, the supplementary wages in kind disappeared or were commuted into a trifling addition to a money-wage which the Poor Law in the later . eighteenth century reduced to a degraded level.
The new wheat-farming economy had the further effect of diminishing winter employment. An even more serious consideration was the effect of the introduction of ma- chinery in destroying the supplementary industries which helped the small peasants to pay their money rents, and