THREE BOOKS ON THE ECONOMICS OF AGRICULTURE.*
PROFESSOR NICHOLSON deserves our gratitude for this excellent little book on a great subject. The economic student suffers much from big books on little subjects, and from volumes of disconnected facts of which the authors sometimes fail to explain the relevancy. We note this in the interest of the general reader rather than of the specialist ; for, in these days when we are implored by a chorus of dis- cordant voices to lead the labourer back to the land, it is an advantage to be taken by a competent instructor like Professor Nicholson over the history of his emancipation from the land, and to be given some insight into the economie problems which the process, prolonged through many centuries, still involves. Unlike some superficial handbooks compiled for a public which runs, but does not always read, Professor Nicholson's brevity is the result of a knowledge which enables him to set out the essential features of his subject with an economy of words. Apart from explaining to us the advantages and disadvantages of the rural exodus, his lucid and impartial narrative gives us a companion picture to correct the disordered prejudice with which a certain class of politician seeks to invest the principle of property in land. The typical precedent in history, according to a witty agricultural authority, for a return to the land, when that movement is not warranted by economic causes, is to be found in the story of Nebuchadnezzar, to whom the experience was not encouraging. In more philosophical terms, return to the land, under suoh conditions, is a return to status, and as Professor Nicholson well puts it, "the great agency of economic progress in the mediaeval period was the conversion of what is called a natural economy into a money economy." The practical question which we are invited to consider to-day is : What are the chances that the same principle of economic progress which dissolved status, the condition that in mediaeval times retained the labourer on the land, will again be able to offer adequate economic inducement to bring the labourer back to the land, and permit him to prosper there, under the modern system of contract and exchange. This is a question which only the future can answer. It is something, however, if Professor Nicholson's lucid analysis of events enables us to see how unwise it would be to apply a forced and reactionary solution.
The book consists of an historical review of the course of rents, profits, and wages in agriculture, with a final chapter on "Rural Depopulation." As between the landlord and the farmer, the author thus sums up :—" The villein or serf of the Middle Ages has become a substantial tenant farmer, and the feudal baron, who was formerly little better than a slave-owner as regards the masses of the oultivators, has become in many oases a model philanthropist." This last is a reference to the Duke of Bedford's book, A Great Agricultural Estate : being the Story of the Origin and Administration of Woburn and Thorney, from which it appears that the net revenue of that estate has fallen from as high as 214,000 a year in some of the earlier years of the century to an annual deficit of 22,000 and 2100 in 1894 and 1895. The case of the Bedfold
• (1) Th. Relations of Bents, Wages, and Profits in Agrfaultswe and thsir Bearing on Rand Depopulation. By J. S. Nicholson, Itf.A., D.Sc., Professor of Political Economy in the University of Edinburgh. London : Swan Sonnen- schein and CO. Ps. 64.]—(2) The Return to the Land, By Senator Jules Mdline. With a Preface by Justin McCarthy. London : Chapman and Halh [he. net.]—(3) The Conquest of Brood. By P. Kropotkin. Same publishers. 1106. 6d. net.,] estate is not perhaps normal, but it is typical of the trend of fortune with which those who make land ownership a business Lave to eontend.
Most interesting is the chapter on agricultural profits. In the earlier manorial economy, the capital required for the culti- vation of the land was largely supplied by the serfs. Work was remunerated, not by money payments, but by payments in kind, to be gathered in the course of the harvest, and this, as we understand it, is regarded by Professor Nicholson as an advance of capital made by the serfs. The implements of agriculture were undoubtedly the property of the serf, held on the limited tenure which was all the law allowed to his class. Relatively, the capital employed on the land was largely in excess of the capital value of the land itself. As an expedient to remedy the dislocation of this customary system which followed on the Black Death, the "land and stock" lease began to be popularly adopted. The large farms previously carried on by the lords of the manor came to the assistance of the derelict servile holdings, and a form of lease under which the tenant hired both land and stock from the lord was a step forward in approximating farming contracts to the modern type. Then followed a period, not yet ended perhaps, in which there has been a constantly varying responsibility, as between landlord and tenant, for the supply of capital to the industry, and there are still elements of the customary rather than of the contractual type in our English system of agricul- tural land tenure. "In conclusion," says Professor Nicholson, "to summarise the main results; taking the history of the relations of landlord and tenant in England from the time of the establishment of tenant farming, the rents seem to have been very reasonable compared with the profits of the farmer." Further, as regards the security of the farmer's capital, if the law was once in the landlord's favour, the position is now reversed, while the landlord's obligation for capital expendi- ture has admittedly become more onerous. Is this partnership, anomalous as it may appear from the purely commercial point of view, worth preserving P Professor Nicholson's opinion will commend itself to most of us. "It would be a great misfortune," he says, "for English agriculture if an attempt to make the letter of the law more favourable to the tenant were to destroy or injure the good relations that have hitherto subsisted ; or, on the other hand, to induce owners to take land into their own hands or to sell it on purely mercantile principles." Tenants' capital has quite enough to do, and can be better employed in the adoption of improved methods than if it is sunk in the purchase of land. "In spite of the fact that tenancy is the rule," says an American writer on agricul- tural economics quoted by Professor Nicholson, "the agri- culture of England is in many ways worthy of our emulation, and this advanced position of English agriculture is due in great measure to an excellent system of adjusting the relations between landlords and tenants."
Again, Professor Nicholson's survey of the course of agri- cultural wages is most suggestive. "The economic progress of the agricultural classes was relatively much greater in the mediaeval period than in the period from the reign of Elizabeth down to our present time" (p. 89). The period of progress, in fact, is contemporaneous with the period of enfranchisement and of the commutation of labour dues into money payments. The comparative eclipse of the fortunes of the agricultural labourer which began in the Elizabethan era, and has continued till comparatively recent years, is due to the revival of the servile economy and the adscription of the peasant to the soil, first by the laws of parochial settle- ment, and, after their partial abolition, by the confining force of the right to the parish dole, influences which finally brought the rural population to the verge of irreparable ruin in the disastrous years at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries. "In recent years," Professor Nicholson sums up, "wages in agriculture have risen in spite of the falling off in profits and rents consequent on the fall of prices. And the rise of wages can only be ascribed to the check to the supply, by the greater migration to the towns, and the cessation of the social muses which formerly induced the surplus to remain in the country" (p. 107). It is important, therefore; in view of the fallacious reasoning of the Protectionists, to notice that the conditions which regulate the rate of wages are quite distinct and independent of those which regulate rent and profit. The whole secret of the ascent of labour lies in its power to utilise its own free market, to avoid the less advantageous, and to ehoose the better remunerated, employments. The history of agricultural labour is a classical instance of this economic instinct. The fluctuation of the rate of progress, to which Professor Nicholson alludes, can be clearly explained by the perversity of the remedies applied, which from the time of Elizabeth have continuously interrupted the economic distribution and direc- tion of the labour force of the country.
Professor Nicholson reminds us that at the beginning of last century the " surplus " population was in the rural districts. The early Reports of the new Poor Law Commissioners are mainly taken up by detailed accounts of how this so-called surplus was converted into a force of efficient value when the imprisoning influence of the old Poor Law was removed. The surplus has now, by a series of experiments of which the notorious Poplar administration of the Poor Law is a type, been transferred to the towns, and it is equally certain that the malignancy of the evil would yield to an application of the same principle which in 1834 effected the emancipation of the rural labourer.
Such reflections, we submit, should make us more sceptical than we sometimes are as to the advantage to be gained from the coercion of industry in the interest of the labourer, whether by tariffs or Trade-Union restrictions. The true weapon in the labourer's hand, the weapon appropriate to the reign of liberty, is the intelligent development of the mobility and adaptability of his own powers. This path of increasing efficiency is most easily found by labour if attention is given to the discouragement of a falling market quite as much as to the encouragement of a rising market, and an essential condition of this is the absence of artificial restriction.
The keynote of M. Meline's volume, The Return to the Land, is to be found in the dictum of the Chinese philosopher whom he quotes :—" The well-being of a people is like a tree ; agri- culture is its root, manufacture and commerce are its branches and leaves; if the root is injured, the leaves fall, the branches break away and the tree dies." This, in M. Meline's view, justifies a policy of Proteotiou, which may be advantageous to the owner of the rents and profits of agriculture, but which is certainly a restriction on the mobility of labour. The peasant cultivator in France combines the office of landlord, farmer, and labourer in himself; and for that, as it appears to us, inadequate reason the iniquity of the Protective system to labour of all classes and to traders in every other industry is condoned. This fallacy should appeal less to us, among whom it is only in rare instances that the labourer is identical with the farmer and the landlord. M. Maine is more convincing when be urges the adoption of scientific methods and co-operation as things necessary to enable old countries to compete with virgin soils and modern facilities of transport. For ourselves, we believe that with an intelligent use of the improved methods suggested there will always be a steady and profitable return for agricultural effort if it will not insist in spoiling its own market by making life more expensive, through Protective tariffs, for its customers who are engaged in other industries.
Prince Peter ICropotkin lives in another world and talks another language. The central idea of his thesis is that "every society which has abolished private property will be forced, we maintain, to organise itself on the lines of Com- munistic Anarchy" (p. 31). Those who care to speculate on the basis of the hypothesis suggested may follow the argu- ment and learn how this differs from other forms of Socialism ; we can only find space to refer to his ideal for agriculture. When the Anarchist Commune takes command a few hours of recreative toil for a small portion of the community will give us all that the heart can desire of grain, vegetables, and fruit. We cannot quarrel with this ideal. In essentials it is that common to us all, and involves increased production, more equitable distribution, and a decrease of human toil. Our imagination, however, cannot soar with the pathetic dream of this distinguished Russian exile. Even be demands centuries for its realisation. For ourselves, we base our hopes on the inevitable, and, on the whole, beneficent, development of economic order as explained to us by Professor Nicholson, and on the improved methods described by Meline, to which also Prince ICropotkin himself pays eloquent tribute. The principles of private property and free exchange seem to us to lend themselves to a better distribu- tion of leisure and contentment with more certainty than do the unverifiable promises of Communistic Anarchy.
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