Agricultural Depression and Agricultural Crisis

Abstract

The great depression in English agriculture during the the last quarter of the nineteenth century is, as I emphasized in my former article published in this journal, a historical process of such complexity that it cannot be translated simply into agricultural crisis. But it does not follow from this that the phases of agricultural crisis must be denied entirely. As a matter of fact, it may be considered that the remarkable decline of prices in agricultural produce and the stagnation or the curtailment of agricultural production itself, both of which were clearly observable particulaly in the sections producing raw materials in the years of 1878-79 (in America, around '83) and early 'nineties, were, in many respects, the direct reflection of two general crises of 1878 and 1890-93, though it is difficult to find such correlation in '73-74. This means it was not until the time of the prolonged agricultural depression that agricultural crisis as a constituent element of general economic crisis revealed itself to be verified historically. On the other hand, the great depression in agriculture was not overcome by the moderate recovery of national economy from the crises till the improvement in the methods of agricultural production and the capitalistic change in the landownership were, somehow or other, obtained the desired effect. In a word, the reduction of the cost of production in agriculture by means of technical improvements and the rationalisation of farm management and the security of capital in agriculture, established by the statutes enacted with relation to tenant right, landlords' right of distress, and strict settlement were the most important remedies without which English agriculture would be unable to get rid of the great depression. In this article, the author, using such historical source materials as the Reports and Minutes of Evidence of the two Royal Commissions on Agriculture together with those of R.C. on the Depression of Trade and Industry and the Agricultural Returns, etc., attempts to clarify, in the first place, the correlation between the general economic crises and the phases of agricultural crises during the Great Depression; in the second place, the characteristics of such improvements as (i) the transition from arable farming to grazing, (ii) the adoption of new agricultural machinery, and (iii) the concentration in the holdings and the increase of the area occupied by capitalist farmers at the expense of that of owner-occupied land; and in the last place, the role of the land law reforms played in the course of getting rid of the great depression of agriculture and their socio-economic significance.