Unaffected by religious persecution, civil war, or political revolution, the medieval organisation of agriculture, where it remained at all, entered on the 18th century unaltered. Its crops, its live-stock, its implements, its methods and practices were those of the Middle Ages. In many districts it had been displaced by enclosures carried out in the interest of private persons. Economically, a more productive, as well as more profitable, use was made of the soil by individual occupation than by cultivation in common. But no national reasons as yet compelled a change. Agriculture was still unprogressive. No large demands for food arose from growing towns. If the open-field system did little more than feed the producers, it maintained a considerable population on the land; it gave them an interest in its management and a livelihood which was independent of any masters but themselves. During the next hundred years all this was changed. England suddenly passed from a leisurely agricultural country into a hustling industrial nation. Huge populations, gathered round centres of trade and manufacture, cried aloud for bread and meat. As the century neared its close, the demand grew more urgent under the pressure of a great war and fear of famine. Meanwhile, new agricultural resources had accumulated. The nation

had the means of doubling, or even trebling, its homegrown supply of food; but on the open-field system they could not be adopted. As long as the arable land was from harvest to seed time a common pasture, and as long as the village flocks and herds grazed the triennial fallows, it was impossible to introduce roots and grasses into field cultivation.

National necessity demanded drastic change in the old village farms. At East Hendred some effort was made to utilise the grasses which their neighbour Jethro Tull, the greatest natural genius whom English farming has produced, had done so much to introduce. On his farm at Mount Prosperous, in the village of Shalbourn— some twelve miles distant across the Downs-he had, for thirty years, 1709-40, drilled turnips and grown clover and sanfoin. Ocular demonstration may have convinced some partner in the village farm who, with his own eyes, had seen the crops in the fields. In 1767,

6

regulations framed by the partners show that they had agreed to exclude their stock from the Hitch Field,' in which they grew clover and sanfoin. Neither artificial grasses nor roots were, however, introduced into the mediæval rotation of winter or spring corn, followed by a fallow, under which the bulk of the arable land was cropped. The Hitch Field was a palliative, not a remedy, for the waste of the productive powers of the soil.

The end was not long deferred. In 1800 Sir John Pollen, Basil Eyston, and Richard Hopkins, Esquires,' three other landowners described as 'gentlemen,' ten yeomen, a blacksmith, a cordwainer, and a mason, petitioned Parliament for an Enclosure Act. It was passed in 1801, and three Commissioners were appointed 'to divide allot and lay in severalty the open and common fields, common meadows, common pastures, Downs and other commonable and waste lands in that part of the Parish of East Hendred which lies in the Westmanside Hundred of Wantage.' The Commissioners met for the first time in June 1801, and before the end of the year their award was issued. Notices were given in the press and on the church door of each stage in the proceedings. Claims were considered at two special meetings. To pay expenses, seventy-eight acres, two-thirds of which were Down lands, were sold by auction. Compensation was awarded to four lords of manors for their rights and interests in the soil of the commons and wastes lying within their respective boundaries. The total area so allotted is nine acres, the King receiving the largest allotment (3 acres, 3 roods, 32 poles) in respect of the King's Manor. The award then distributed the 1250 acres of the village farm in compact blocks among 36 persons, of whom the Rector was one. A few years later, the rest of the parish was similarly enclosed.

The story of the enclosure of East Hendred is that of hundreds of other villages. During the reign of George III, the modern division of the rural population became so uniform that the existence of the older system was in a few years forgotten. The intermediate links in the social scale, once so finely graduated that, at the points of transition, the divisions were scarcely perceptible, have dropped out. Capital and labour, employers and employed, confront each other with all the buffers

gone. Where corn-growing continued, improved methods created a brisk demand for labour. Population rather rose than fell. At East Hendred, for instance, the number grew from 683 in 1801 to 949 in 1851; since that date, they declined, till in 1911 they had fallen to 728. Economically, the change of system was justified by success. After the country had recovered from its collapse at the close of the French war, agriculture entered on a period of solid prosperity greater than it enjoyed before or since. Popular gibes at the new standard of living among farmers are illustrated by some lines, which Mr Humphreys quotes, from the manuscript farm-book of John Robey, a yeoman of East Hendred:

1743

Man, to the Plough.
Wife, to the Cow.

Girl, to the Yarn.

Boy, to the Barn.

And your Rent will be netted.

1843

Man, Tally Ho!
Miss, Piano.

Wife, Silk and Satin.

Boy, Greek and Latin. And you'll all be Gazetted.

On the displaced village-farmers the effects were less favourable. The compact holdings which they were allotted may have corresponded in money value with the land and rights that they had lost; but they were generally small. Many sold their lots at the high prices which land commanded during the Napoleonic War. With the capital, some became tenant farmers, some started business in towns. Others spent the money, fell into the ranks of landless labour and, as weekly wageearners, cultivated the soil which they and their ancestors had tilled as co-partners. With the break-up of the village farm, community life shrivelled at the core. One by one common interests and corporate activities died out. With them, accelerated by access to towns, departed the variety of occupation. Everywhere, villages were brought into touch with the outside world by improved roads and facilities of transport. At East Hendred, for instance, at five o'clock every Sunday evening, a six-horse waggon had left the village for London. A few years later, a stage-coach ran three times a week to London from Wantage, and another from the neighbouring village of Blewbury; but the seats were few and the charges high. Now, several times a day, a motor-bus,

plying between Wantage and Abingdon and Oxford, passes almost at the doors of the village.

It is to the good that the outlook is widened. Otherwise the change has not been entirely advantageous. It has helped to destroy small trades and industries, and so to intensify the monotony of occupation which already characterises rural life. Local and domestic industries, on which the older self-supporting organisation depended for its existence, have been swept into the towns. The clock cannot be put back, and some have gone for ever. Everywhere, spinning-wheels and weaving-looms have long been silenced. Brewing, tanning, milling are taking flight. Even baking is a lost art in the cottage. Small trades are passing away. Carriers cease to ply; tailors and cobblers put up their shutters. Businesses which are adjuncts of agriculture are failing; saddlers and wheelwrights are closing their shops; carpenters and blacksmiths are, in many cases, barely holding on. The 'last man' in the village promises to be the farm-worker or the publican. Even the farm-worker's position is insecure. Without any subsidiary employments for bad times or slack seasons, he has become entirely dependent on the purchasing power of his agricultural earnings. If the land cannot pay his wages, he has no alternative

resource.

Alone among European countries, England attempts to charge the land with the exclusive support of agricultural workers. The failure of this comparatively new policy is evident in the decay of villages and the congestion of towns. If agriculturalists have connived at it in order to secure the dependence of labourers, they may have cause to regret their want of foresight. Foreign nations pursue the opposite course. Take, for instance, France and Germany. France has never let go of her rural industries. Apart from her peasant proprietors, she employs some three million agricultural workers. Of these, 600,000 resemble our own men in being landless earners of weekly wages by farm-work. But there is this important difference. The great bulk of them also have subsidiary remunerative employments in rural industries. They are not troubled by winter slackness on the farm, nor is the industry hampered by the overhead charge of paying wages at a season when

they cannot be earned. More valuable to us is the experience of Germany, because the amazing prosperity -I speak only of pre-war conditions-of her minor industries is the fruit of recent and deliberate policy. Founded on a Report on economic conditions in 1875, a special Department was set up in 1882 to promote the industrial development of rural districts, to level up conditions as between town and country, and to foster the progress of intensive farming. In all three objects success has been remarkable. Numerous whole-time and half-time employments, many of which are seasonally supplementary to farm-work, have been revived or created on economic yet profitable lines.

The experience may be useful. Without increasing means of occupation and of livelihood, nothing can revive English villages. 'Rural industries' inadequately express employments which are only rural because they are carried on in the country, and the expression has a bad name. Nevertheless the subject has an important bearing on two urgent problems-unemployment and agricultural depression. A third may be added. It is through their minor industries, carried on in wholesome conditions, that France and Germany have absorbed their disabled soldiers. It is because we have nothing similar that we have relatively failed.

One point may be added. Under the Development Commission, a small organisation has been for three years at work. It consists of two branches working closely together. One is an intelligence branch, exploring the economic possibilities of industrial development in country districts, including all handicrafts and domestic industries, whether new or old, and whether mechanical processes are used or not. The other is a co-operative trading association for the purpose of placing orders, disposing of produce, supplying material, and other similar objects. They have proceeded with the greatest caution, and on a small scale. But, whatever may be the future of land, their work will not be wasted.

At present prices, neither agricultural workers nor small holders can neglect the supplementary employments and domestic budgets' by which other countries retain their rural populations on the land.

ERNLE.