years of one sixth of the area. There was a recovery of about 200,000 acres in the years 1877 and 1878, but not only was this recovery lost in 1879, 105,000 acres more went out of wheat cultivation. The crop returns of these years tell a doleful story. In 1875 they reported "much under average"; in 1876, "under average"; in 1877, "much under average"; in 1878, "over average"; and in 1879, thought to be the culmination of a series of bad years, "much under average." From 1866 to 1870 the average yield per acre was 26
12
bushels, but from 1875 to 1880 this average was twice touched, and in 1879 the complete returns gave a yield of only 18 bushels to the acre, a record that marked a year of disaster.
It will be of interest to show how far these adverse conditions were due to natural causes, and therefore beyond the power of farmer or legislator to modify or even to forecast. The weather of 1875 was "cold, ungenial, and unsettled. The spring was one of the coldest, bleakest, and most backward of the century. In July came heavy, chill, and destructive rains, destroying the hay and the roots, and blighting the prospects of any abundant corn crops."[1]In the next year, 1876, the hot weather of June and July came too late to mature the crops, and the result was not satisfactory—a crop "of a very imperfect character."[2]
Conditions were brighter in 1878. The crop was only an average one, but that seemed grateful to the farmers after three bad harvests in succession. Whatever hopes were raised by favoring markets and improved returns were dashed in 1879, a year of disaster in agriculture, and giving the worst crop of wheat since 1816[3] As agriculture represented one tenth of the total produce of the country, and hardly a branch of agriculture escaped injury, the mischief was so pronounced as to call for an examination by a royal commission. The London Statist, a conservative and able judge, thus summed up the agricultural operations of 1879, a year that many thought marked the total ruin of the British farmer: "There can be no doubt as regards the corn crops that last season was one of the worst on record. After the harvest each succeeding estimate of the yield of the wheat crop appeared to be worse than its predecessor, and these low estimates have been fully confirmed by the remarkable falling off in the quantities brought to market. The reduction of yield must have been at least thirty per cent below the average. . . . The barley harvest has also been most deficient, the result being peculiarly disastrous to the excise revenue. In minor crops, such as hops, there has been quite as serious failure. The season has also been far from favorable to green crops and live stock."[4]
