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Excerpt from Co-Operative Labour Upon the Land (and Other Papers): The Report of a Conference Upon Land, Co-Operation, and the Unemployed, Held at Holborn Town Hall in October, 1894
Two closely-related problems press with growing weight upon the attention of all who are interested in our industrial and social growth; these are the decay of the English industry of agriculture, and the persistent phenomenon of unemployment.
The decline of agriculture during the last quarter of a century has been rapid and continuous, whatever mode of measurement we apply. The fall of prices of English grain has, with two short periods of recovery, been operative since 1850, but the year 1877, the last year in which wheat was officially recorded as reaching 50s per quarter, marks the beginning of the collapse which has ruined arable cultivation throughout the country. Rents of landowners and profits of farmers have been generally and largely reduced, and the wages and other industrial conditions of the life of rural labourers have made no such progress as is visible in the case of most classes of town labour. Two facts, however, relating to the character and quantity of land cultivation, mark with startling emphasis the nature of the change.
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