arable, and adopt labour-saving machinery, rendered a vast number of labourers superfluous, and originated their migration into the towns. That is not quite accurate. The most modern research has shown that from 1860 to 1880, when times were good and farming boomed, the labourers were passing into the towns at a faster rate and in larger numbers than at any period since. The true cause of their departure was that their wages were at that date so low that, in the face of the high prices then ruling, they had little option but to seek the better remuneration of industry. From 1880 onwards, however, the impulse came rather from the side of the farmer who, confronted with a growing scarcity of labour as well as a fall in wheat, turned arable into grass and sought to replace labour by machinery. But, whatever the exact sequence of events, the fact remains that agriculture, theoretically the most stable of occupations, and the most obviously necessary in a country which does not attempt even remotely to produce enough food for itself, was for many years a rude and cruel stepmother.
But now this evil is lessening in some degree. The scarcity of labour has resulted in an upward tendency for wages; and as so much arable has been converted into pasture, more labourers obtain the somewhat higher wages got from tending the stock of the farm. Besides, by private goodwill and by public statute worthy efforts are being made to forbid the absolute divorce of the labourer
