cultivated plots into strips for assignment to the tenants. To every land-holding inhabitant of the manor was assigned a number of the strips, not contiguous, but lying in different fields, and frequently in different parts of the same field. . . The origins of this practice are obscure, and several conflicting theories respecting them have been advanced. There is no need to assume that they were everywhere the same. The basis of the strip system seems very generally to have been, however, the desire to ensure equity of allotment. Fields were likely not to be uniform in fertility and ease

tem was universal. An arable field was thus made up of any number of blocks of strips set at right angles or inclined one to another, presenting the checkered and variegated appearance of a patchwork quilt. On every manor were meadows sufficient to produce the supply of hay required for the sustenance of the live-stock through the winter months. Sometimes these lay in a block; sometimes they comprised two or more tracts interspersed with the cultivated fields."-F. A. Ogg, Economic development of modern Europe, pp. 18-22. See also FERTILISERS: Origin.

of cultivation, and their minute division into strips was calculated to prevent the more desirable areas from being monopolised by favoured or fortunate persons. In large portions of England the strips were arranged to be forty rods, or a furlong (i. e., a 'furrow-long,' or the normal length of a furrow), in length and four rods in width, giving an area of one acre. Strips two rods wide contained a half-acre and one rod wide a 'rood,' or quarteracre. The strips were separated by narrow belts of unploughed turf, or simply by little ridges, which might be marked also with stones. ridged surface of the fields in many districts to-day bears testimony to the employment of these primitive division lines, or 'balks.' On the continent · arrangements varied in detail, but the strip sys

The

"While the manorial type of rural organization as a method of land tenure was undoubtedly a great advance upon the servile system, farm implements and methods of tillage on the other hand showed but little improvement upon those in use in the days of the Roman Empire. Ploughing was still done by oxen, usually three times a year, in the autumn, in April and in midsummer; the furrows were a foot apart and the plough went no more than two inches deep. Seed was still scattered by hand, grain harvested by sickle and threshed by flail or oxen. Crops were consequently not only uncertain and uneven, but pitifully small. "The amount of wheat, rye, beans, and peas usually sown to the acre was only two bushels; and of oats and, strangely enough, of

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barley, four bushels. The yield of wheat rarely exceeded fivefold, or ten bushels to the acre; that of leguminous crops ranged from three to sixfold, or from six to twelve bushels to the acre; that of oats and barley varied from three to fourfold, or from twelve to sixteen bushels to the acre. Considerable care was exercised in the choice and change of the seed-corn, which was often one of the produce-rents of the tenants. Wheat rarely followed a spring grain crop. The most important crops of the farm were the corn, crops of wheat, rye, and barley, which were raised for human food and drink. For such ready money as he needed, the lord looked mainly to the produce of his live stock. For their consumption were grown the remaining crops the hay, beans, peas, and oats; though oats were not only used for human tood, but in some districts were brewed into interior beer. Horse-farms appear in some estate accounts; but they probably supplied the 'great horse' used for military purposes. As a rule, nxen were preferred to horses for farm work. Though horses worked more quickly when the ploughman allowed them to do so, they pulled less steadily, and sudden strains severely tested the primitive ploughgear. On hard ground they did less work, and only when the land was stony had they any advantage. Economical reasons further explain the preference for oxen. . . . The winter-keep of horses was about four times that of oxen. In addition to this, the more delicate construction of horses required careful attendance and greater expense than did the stolid and less usceptible oxen. Then again the ox, when no longer available for work, made excellent food, while the horse at that time was only worth his hide. Lack of feeding stuff for live stock made fresh butchers' meat a rarity, as the common pasturage ground supplied no more food for the cattle than was sufficient to keep the animals alive, never enough to fatten them. . . . The dairy produce was a greater source of money revenue, though the home consumption of cheese must have been very large. But the management was necessarily controlled, like the management of the stock, by the winter scarcity. The yield of a cow during the twenty-four weeks from the middle of April to Michaelmas was estimated at fourfifths of her total annual yield. Sheep were the -heet anchor of farming. But it was not for their mutton, or their milk, or even for their skins, that they were chiefly valued. Already the mediæval agriculturist took his seat on the wool-sack. As a marketable commodity, both at home and abroad, English long wool always commanded a price. It was less perishable than corn, and more easily transported even on the worst of roads. From Martinmas to Easter sheep were kept in houses, or in movable folds of wooden hurdles, thatched at the sides and tops. During these months they were fed on coarse hay or peashaulm, mixed with wheaten or oaten straw. For the rest of the year they browsed on the land for fallows, in woodland pastures, or on the sheepcommons. Diseases made sheep-farming, in spite of its profits, a risky venture. Swine were the almost universal live stock of rich and poor. As consumers of refuse and scavengers of the village, they would, on sanitary grounds, have repaid their keepers. But mediæval pigs profited their owners much, and cost them little. A pig was more profitable than a cow. For the greater part of the year pigs were expected to pick up their own living. When the wastes and woodlands of a manor were extensive, they were, except during three months of the year, self-supporting.

AGRICULTURE, MEDIEVAL

They developed the qualities necessary for taking care of themselves. The ordinary pigs of the Middle Ages were long, flat-sided, coarse-boned, lop-eared, omniverous animals, whose agility was more valuable than their early maturity. . [The keeping of poultry, too, was at the time universal, so much so that, when sold, they were almost absurdly cheap. The keeping of fowls, ducks, and geese must, however, have materially helped the peasant in eking out his food supply, or in paying that portion of his rent which was paid in kind.] On the outskirts of the arable fields nearest to the village lay one or more 'hams' or stinted pastures, in which a regulated number of live stock might graze, and which therefore supplied superior feed. Besides the open arable fields, the meadows, and the stinted hams, there were the common pastures, fringed by the untilled wastes which were left in their native wildness. These wastes provided fern and heather for litter, bedding, or thatching; small wood for hurdles; trec-loppings for winter browse of live stock; furze and turves for fuel; large timber for fencing, implements, and building; mast, acorns, and other food for the swine. Most of these smaller rights were made the subject of fixed annual payments to the manorial lord; but the right of cutting fuel was generally attached to the occupation, not only of arable land, but of cottages. The most important part of these lands were the common pastures, which were often the only grass that farmers could command for their live stock. They therefore formed an integral and essential part of the village farm. No rights were exercised upon them by the general public. On the contrary, the commons were most jealously guarded by the privileged commoners against the intrusion or encroachments of strangers."—R. E. Prothero, Manorial husbandry (E. G. Nourse, Agricultural economics, pp. 38-43).

The medieval manor was thus from one point of view "a compactly organized, economically selfsufficing, and socially independent unit. Defects, however, are obvious. The acquisition of land by small proprietors was rendered difficult. The dealings of the lord, or of his steward or bailiff, with the tenants were likely to be arbitrary and harsh. The scattered character of the holdings involved waste of the cultivator's time and effort. The lack of permanent fences tempted to trespassing and produced much quarrelling. The rotation of crops, the time of ploughing and sowing, the use of meadow and pasture, the erection and removal of hedges, and the maintenance of roads and paths were determined entirely by the community, on the basis usually of rigid custom, and the individual enjoyed little or no freedom or initiative. Experimentation was almost impossible. In consequence, largely, of the restraints which have been mentioned, agriculture continued throughout the Middle Ages to be extremely crude. It is doubtful, indeed, whether prior to the eighteenth century the soil was cultivated again in any considerable portions of Europe with either the science or the practical skill which were common in rural husbandry in the best days of the Roman Empire."-F. A. Ogg, Economic development of modern Europe, pp. 24-25.

14th-17th centuries.-Displacement of serfdom by free tenantry.-Growth of enclosures for pasturage.-Beginnings of the contractual system. By the middle of the thirteenth century in England, a remarkable change had begun to affect the condition of the serfs or villeins under the manorial system, a change not effected or the Continent till three centuries later, "by v

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villeins became free tenants, subject to a fixed money rent for their holdings. This rent was rapidly becoming a payment in money and not in labour, for the lords of the manors were frequently in want of cash, and were ready to sell many of their privileges. The change was at first gradual, but by the time of the Great Plague (1348) [see also ENGLAND: 1348-1349: Black Death], money rents were becoming the rule rather than the exception, and though labour rents were not at all obsolete, it was the ill-advised attempt to insist upon them unduly that was the prime cause of Wat Tyler's insurrection (1381). [See also ENGLAND: 1381: Wat Tyler's Insurrection.] Before the Plague, in fact, villeinage in the old sense was becoming almost extinct, and the peasants, both great and small, had achieved a large measure of freedom. The richer villeins had developed into small farmers, while the poorer villeins, and especially the cottars, had formed a separate class of agricultural labourers, not indeed entirely without land, but depending for their livelihood upon being paid for helping to cultivate the land of others. . . . At the end of the thirteenth century we can trace three classes. of tenants-(1) Those who had entirely commuted their services for a fixed money rent; (2) those who gave services or paid money according as their lord preferred; and (3) those who still paid entirely, or almost entirely, in services. Throughout the whole of this period the vast majority of the population were continuously engaged in agricultural pursuits, and this was rendered necessary owing to the very low rate of production consequent upon the primitive methods of agriculture. [In England the displacement of serfdom by free tenantry bore a very close relation to the great increase of sheepfarming which took place after the Great Plague (1348)]. This from two causes. The rapid increase of woolen manufacturers, promoted by Edward III, rendered wool-growing more profitable, while at the same time the scarcity of labour, occasioned by the ravages of the Black Death and the consequent higher wages demanded, naturally attracted the farmer to an industry which was at once very profitable, and required but little paid labour. So, after the Plague, we find a tendency among large agriculturists to turn ploughed fields into permanent pasture. instead of turning portions of the 'waste' into arable land. Consequently from the beginning of the fifteenth century we notice that the agricultural population decreases in proportion as sheepfarming increases. . . . One consequence of this more extensive sheep-farming was the great increase in enclosures made by the landlords in the sixteenth century. So great were those encroachments and enclosures in north-east England, that they led, in 1549, to a rebellion against the enclosing system, headed by Ket; but though more marked perhaps in Henry VIII's reign, the practice of sheep-farming had been growing steadily in the previous century. . . . In fact, it is very clear that at this time a great change was passing over English agriculture, and the old agricultural system was becoming seriously disorganised."-H. De B. Gibbins, Industry in England, pp. 111119. The second great stage in western European agriculture, the medieval manorial system, was fast giving way before the encroachments of its successor, the modern contractual type of agrarian organization. "During the changes that had been taking place the villein had finally disappeared. He was now in many cases a copyholder, and like his neighbour, the yeoman, held his own estate of from 20 to 15c acres, and in the smaller farms

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worked it mainly by the help of his family. The yeomanry, who formed something like one-sixth of the population, found in the seventeenth century their golden age. Their estates varied considerably in size and importance; the best of them were scarcely inferior in status to the country gentry. To be counted a yeoman, a man had to possess an income of at least forty shillings a year derived from his own freehold land. An act of Parliament of 1430 had made this the qualification for the parliamentary vote in the county areas, and the yeomen were proud of this privilege and showed their independence in the exercise of it. The tenant farmers were also prosperous and occupied a good position, though their social status was inferior to that of the yeomanry. As for the labourers, if they were poorly paid they were in most cases well fed, and, as we have already pointed out, they still had domestic industries and small holdings of land to help them. Unmarried servants of both sexes lived in the houses of the farms on which they worked, and shared in the food of the household. Married labourers supplemented their wages by domestic industries, and could obtain a postion of their food from the little plots of five or six acres attached to many cottages, and from the possession of a cow which they could graze upon the common lands. Their wives and children shared in this work and also in agricultural work generally. One of the worst hindrances of the labourer was the Act of Settlement of 1662. This prevented his movement from one district to another in search of higher wages and better employment, and might mean his having to journey a considerable distance to his work owing to the action of landlords who kept out the undesirable poor by forbidding the erection of cottages upon their estates."-F. W. Tickner, Social and industrial history of England, pp. 336-339.

During this period from the fourteenth century to the seventeenth, as we have seen, there had begun in England a gradual disintegration of the manorial system which was destined to be com pleted only through the tremendous forces of the agricultural revolution of the later eighteenth century. In the meantime, however, two oppos ing tendencies were noticeable: on the one hand the displacement of serfdom by free tenantry with its accompanying development of small hold ings and a self-sufficing yeomanry; on the other the transformation of arable manor land and commons into sheep-farms for the production of raw wool for continental markets. The growth of enclosures for pasturage reached its climax, however, during the sixteenth century, while the number of small holdings continued to increase during the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. when new methods and new forces introduced the modern period of agricultural development.

MODERN PERIOD

General survey. Agricultural progress in modern times has been profoundly affected by the great revolutions which have occurred in the last two hundred years, particularly those in science. mechanical devices, and transportation. Although unlike the European and American countries, Asia has maintained the use of rude implements, her agriculture has not been untouched by the deeprooted changes of modern times. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries economic forces were at work both in England and on the Continent which were destined to change the entire system of agrarian organization as it had existed

AGRICULTURE, MODERN

during the Middle Ages. It was in England that these forces first became apparent, and there, too, that the resultng changes were soonest effected; but the movement spread rapidly during the early nineteenth century to France, Prussia and other continental nations, and while it presented in each country slightly differing phases due to local economic and social conditions, the directing forces and the changes wrought, with some noteworthy exceptions, parallel very closely those to be observed in England.

"A principle woven deeply into the American national system at its beginning is that of full and free industrial opportunity. For an American, therefore, it is difficult to conceive how completely the agriculture, the manufactures, and the trade of France, Germany, and other continental European countries were shackled but four or five generations ago by status, by custom, and by contractual arrangements. The guild, the manor, the state, and even the Church, imposed each its peculiar restrictions, and the industrial status and prospect of the individual were determined quite as largely by agencies beyond his power to control as by his own habits of enterprise and thrift. It is only within decades comparatively recent that the mass of men in Europe have acquired substantial freedom of industrial initiative and achievement. If the key-note of the economic history of the United States since 1789 has been expansion, that of the economic development of continental Europe during the same period has been liberation. Speaking broadly, one may say that the first great advance in the direction of liberation was accomplished by the Revolution in France in 1789-1794 [see FOOD REGULATION: 17931794]; that a second was realized under Napoleon, though accompanied by a certain amount of retrogression; that the period 1815-1845 witnessed small progress, except on the side of industrial technique; but that after 1845-1850 the triumph of the liberalizing principle was rapid and thoroughgoing. The transformations by means of which liberation has been wrought took place within all of the three principal fields of economic activity,-agriculture, manufacturing, and trade; and in any attempt to measure the progress of the average man during the period in hand the nature and extent of the changes in these three fields must continually be taken into account.

"Since 1789 the acreage of land cultivated in most continental countries has been enormously extended and new appliances and methods have been introduced, with the result of an increase that is remarkable in the yield both of foodstuffs and of materials for manufacture. Even more important, however, has been the sweeping readjustment of the position occupied by the tillers of the soil themselves. Emancipated from oppressive dues and services to landlord and state, and enabled to acquire land of their own, the rural inhabitants of almost every continental country have been brought up to a status vastly superior to that which their ancestors occupied a century and a half ago. The first nation within which the agricultural liberation took place was France. As has been indicated, one of the earliest decisive achievements of the Revolution in France was the abolition of all survivals of feudalism and serfdom; and this reform was accompanied by the conversion of numerous tenants, dependent cultivators, and ordinary laborers into independent, self-sustaining landholders. It used to be supposed that the multiplicity of little proprietorships which lends distinction to France to-day was wholly a

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consequence of the Revolution. Research has shown that this is not true-that, in fact, the breaking up of the agricultural lands of France into petty holdings was already under way long before 1789. Some students of the subject have gone so far as to maintain, indeed, that the number of landed proprietorships in France was scarcely smaller prior to 1789 than it is to-day. There can be no question, however, that during the Revolution the growth of little holdings was greatly accelerated, notably through the sale of estates confiscated from the crown, the nobility, and the Church; nor that the general effect of the Revolution was to enhance the agricultural prosperity of France. . . . Throughout modern times France has been preeminently an agricultural country, and to this day the nation's enormous wealth is derived principally from the products of the soil rather than from manufactures and trade. Nearly one-half of the population of the republic to-day is employed upon the land, whereas in England and Wales the proportion is but one-tenth. No business has come to be better understood than husbandry, and the nation not only is entirely self-supporting in the matter of foodstuffs, such as cereals, meat, and dairy produce, but exports these articles heavily to other portions of the world. The great mass of cultivators are proprietors of little estates ranging in area from five to fifty acres. Three million proprietors occupy holdings of less than twenty-five acres apiece. Of waste land very little remains.

"In considerable portions of Germany agricultural advance in the earlier nineteenth century followed a course roughly analogous to that observed in France, although the remarkable expansion in Germany since 1871 of industry and of trade has brought that nation into an economic position fundamentally unlike that which France now occupies. At the beginning of the [last] century Germany was even more purely agricultural than was France. In 1804, 73 per cent of the population of Prussia was rural, and throughout Germany as a whole the proportion of the population engaged in agriculture was not less than 80 per cent. The natural resources of the country were then, as they are now, less favorable for agriculture than those of France, and agricultural methods were very poorly developed, with the consequence that the product was inferior and agricultural wealth meagre. Advance in technique, even past the middle of the nineteenth century, was distinctly slower than in France, but the changes wrought in the status of the agricultural laborer were in no small measure the same. The Napoleonic era became in Prussia a period of economic transformation, involving the abolition of serfdom. Throughout other portions of Germany serfdom had all but disappeared prior to the close of the eighteenth century, the serfs having obtained their freedom in some instances by purchase, but more frequently through the simple evaporation by imperceptible degrees of the traditional seigneurial rights. The non-existence of serfdom was recognized in all of the states, by 1820. In Germany, as in France, the beginnings of petty peasant holdings antedate the nineteenth century, but by the rise of the agricultural population from dependency to freedom the tendency toward the multiplication of these holdings was greatly accentuated. Just as in France, however, the small-holding idea did not work out everywhere alike, so that the holdings of the northwest became, on the average, considerably larger than those of the south, so in Germany the principle was very variously applied, and, in truth, in some

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important portion of the country was not applied at all. In the northeast, beyond the Elbe, the same thing happened that happened in the England of the eighteenth century, namely, the concentration of land in estates even larger than those which had prevailed in earlier days. But in both the northwest and southwest the number of holdings was increased and their average size decreased, the principal difference being that in the north the holdings were as a rule larger than in the south. In the northeast, especially in Mecklenburg and Silesia, such small holders as there were fell pretty generally, by 1850, to the status of landless agricultural laborers, and their holdings were absorbed in the large estates, the consequence being that sharp diffentiation of landlords and rural wage-earners which to the present day has comprised one of the principal problems of the east Prussian provinces. Agricultural development in Germany during the course of the nineteenth century was notably inferior to that which took place in France, and the state of German agriculture to-day is by no means wholly satisfactory. Between 1816 and 1887 the acreage under tillage was increased from 23,000,000 to 44,000,000, and in the same period the production of grain was more than doubled. The three decades from 1840 to 1870 were, on the whole, an era of rural prosperity, marked by an increased price of products and a decreased cost of production, arising principally from the introduction of agricultural maIchinery and of scientific methods of cultivation. About 1874-75, however, there set in, as at the same time in England, a pronounced agricultural depression, from which there has never as yet been any considerable recovery. The fundamental cause of depression, as also largely in England, was the decline in the price of agricultural products arising from the competition of American grains and meats. Despite tariffs designed to counteract competition, the price of wheat and of rye fell between 1876 and 1898 by 14 per cent and that of barley by 11. Other contributing causes, however, have been the scarcity and irregularity of labor, the necessity of paying increased wages, the heavy mortgages which to-day encumber half of the agricultural land of the country, and the unbusinesslike methods which long operated to impede the conduct of agricultural operations. Through the spread of education among the agrarian classes and the establishment of cooperative societies, the state of agriculture is tending somewhat to be improved, but it is still by no means favorable. In 1900 only 47.6 per cent of the area of the country was under cultivation, as compared with upwards of 80 per cent in France. In respect to foodstuffs the nation is not self-sufficing, and there is every reason to suppose that its dependence upon supplies obtained from the outlying world will tend steadily to be increased. Since 1900 the importation of cereals alone has averaged from 4.500,000 to 6,000,000 tons a year." -F. A. Ogg, Social progress in contemporary Europe, pp. 98-106.

Australia. See AUSTRALIA: Agriculture; NEW SOUTH WALES: 1855-1893; SOUTH AUSTRALIA: 1896.

Baltic Provinces. See BALTIC PROVINCES: 1920. Belgium: 1918.-Reconstruction. See WORLD WAR: Miscellaneous auxiliary services: XII. Reconstruction, b, 1.

Bosnia-Herzegovina: Land tenure. See BosNIA-HERZEGOVINA: 1878-1008.

British Isles: 16th-18th centuries.-Capitalistic enterprises. See CAPITALISM: 16th-18th centuries: Agriculture in English capitalism.

British Isles: 17th-18th centuries.-Adoption

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of root crops and improved methods of farming. -Growth of the domestic system of industry.— Its effects upon agrarian organization.-During the seventeenth century in England "several improvements were made under the influence of foreign refugees. . . . The inhabitants of the Low Countries . . . now introduced into England the cultivation of winter roots. . . . The introduction of hops also was of great importance. . . . As the use of winter roots had been the special feature of the seventeenth century, so the feature of the eighteenth was the extension of artificial pasture and the increased use of clover, sainfoin, and rye-grass; not of course, that these had been hitherto unknown, but now their seeds were regularly bought and used by any farmer who knew his business. At first, like all other processes of agriculture, the development was very slow and gradual, but it went on steadily nevertheless."H. De B. Gibbins, Industry in England, pp. 266270. "Many new crops were introduced from Holland, where the advantages of turnips and such artificial grasses as clover, sainfoin, and lucerne were well known. Potatoes, too, began to be an important field crop after the middle of the seventeenth century, though they had not become a common food but remained rather a delicacy even at its close. . . . Attention was also paid to the implements employed, and the older crude and clumsy tools began to be replaced by better ones. The plough was improved, and drills for sowing began to be employed. The Dutch also taught the importance of the use of the spade. . . . Improvements were also effected in the use of manures. Liming and marling were renewed, and new forms of manuring were adopted. The use of sand, seaweed, oyster shells, and fish as manures was now known, and these were employed wherever the situation of the land made their use possible. The newly formed Royal Society paid much attention to the question of agriculture, and made many useful and profitable suggestions. But the greatest difficulty in the way of improvement was the innate conservatism of the farmers, who objected to new crops and new methods and tried to retain the customs of their forefathers. Where the land was still open-field progress was well-nigh impossible; on the enclosed farms there were enlightened agriculturists who were leading the way along better lines."-F. W. Tickner, Social and industrial history of England, pp. 337338. "The pioneers of this improved agriculture came from Norfolk, among the first being Lord Townshend and Mr. Coke, the descendant of the great Chief Justice. The former introduced into Norfolk the growth of turnips and artificial grasses, and was laughed at by his contemporaries as Turnip Townshend; the latter was the practical exponent of Arthur Young's theories as to the advantages to be derived from large farms and capitalist farmers. With improvements in cultivation, and the increase both of assiduity and skill, came a corresponding improvement in the live stock. The general adoption of root crops in place of bare fallows, and the extended cultivation of artificial grasses, supplied the farmer with a great increase of winter feed, the quality and nutritive powers of which were greatly improved Hence with abundance of fodder came abundance of stock, while at the same time great improvements took place in breeding. This was mainly due to Bakewell (1760-1785), who has been aptly described as 'the founder of the graziers' art.' 'He was the first scientific breeder of sheep and cattle, and the methods which he adopted with his Leicester sheep and longhorns applied through