Page 130 - clra62_0019-(GIPE)

RECENT RATE OF MATERIAL PROGRESS IN ENGLAND. 123
period just before that. What is wanted is a new cause
beginning to operate in or about 1875, and the shorten-
ing of the hours of labour and the growth of a dis-
position to take things easy do not answer that descrip-
tion sufficient1y. Something of the apparent change
may be due to an acceleration in recent years of the
growth of a disposition to take things easy, but on the
whole the explanation halts when we make a strict
comp61rison.
Another cause which may properly be assigned as a
vera causa of a check to the rate of material growth in
the country is the unfavourable weather to agriculture
and the generally unprofitable conditions of that in-
dustry in recent years. Pro tanto such influences would
make agricultural production less to-day than it would
otherwise be. Employment in that industry would also
be diminished comparatively, and perhaps absolutely,
and a check to production generally would take place
while labour was seeking new fields. But the check
arising in this manner, as far as the general growth is
concerned, has obviously not been very great. More
land in proportion has been turned into permanent pas-
ture, but very little land has gone out of cultivation
altogether, and even the amount under the plough has
not much diminished. Agricultural labour, in somewhat
greater proportion than before, has been obliged to
seek other employments; the flow of population from
country to town has been increased somewhat; but
nothing new has happened to diminish production
generally to a serious extent, and it is a new cause, it
must be remembered, for which we are seeking. As
far as unfavourable weather is concerned, again. that
is only a temporary evil. One year with another, the
weather is not worse now than at any former time; the
remarkably unfavourable weather which lasted from
1874 to 1880 has passed. The other conditions un-
favourable to agriculture, especially foreign competi-
tion, are more enduring; but these seem much more
unfavourable to rent than to production itself, which is