6 - Agricultural labour and the industrious revolution

Summary

Great earnings operate, as I have already explained, in bringing people to work who otherwise would have continued idle …

It is for these reasons, which are founded upon the most simple of all principles, the common emotions of human nature, that no industrious nation need ever fear a want of hands for executing any the most extensive plans of public or private improvement.

Arthur Young, A Six Month Tour through the North of England

Since most labourers' work came from farming it is important to attempt to try to estimate how much demand there was for agricultural labour and how it changed over time. Labourers could only have worked more days, or increased the intensity of their work, if the demand for work was there. The earnings worked out in the last chapter represent fairly full employment, but many day labourers appear in account books working fewer days. Of course they might have been working on their own farms or moving between farms as labour was needed, but this cannot be reconstructed from accounts. However, a global estimate of demand for labour can be made by estimating the number of days of labour required per acre to produce crops and animal products, and then multiplying this by estimates of the number of acres devoted to pastoral and arable farming in England, as was done earlier for women.