his "General View of the Northern Counties," writes that the farmers :

never think of artificial grasses, have their lands under constant crops of oats, of that often three crops following, then barley and sometimes a little peas and potatoes. Their only pasture arises from some rigs (or ridges) of ley, so over-cropped that they can yield no more oats and therefore must be rested for want of manure, having no other mode of recovering their fertility.

The average yield per acre was less than half that of the present day. Methods and implements were almost incredibly cumbrous, and unskilled work was provided for an extraordinarily large number of people, especially women, who did most of the field work. In some districts the plough was preceded by another implement called a restle, which cut the turf; in others, every furrow was ploughed twice. The big "twal owsen plough" of Aberdeenshire required four men. Sinclair's typical farmer, who only cultivated a farm of about twenty acres, employed a man servant, a woman servant, and a herd.

Work in the fields, however, was very seasonal. It stopped immediately the harvest was got in, and no attempt was made to prepare the ground until it was hastily ploughed immediately before seed time. Little more was done until the harvest called for another "momentary exertion." The laziness of the Highlanders was proverbial. As Maculloch rather brutally puts it: "An ancient Highlander passed the half of his days dreaming, with an empty belly, by the side of a dyke."* The women, however, worked at spinning and knitting to clothe their own families and to make a little money.

The history of the agricultural revolution in Scotland has not been written. From the south, especially the Lothians, it spread up the east coast of Scotland, for the landowners and large farmers on the rich coast-wise land took it up; but it did not penetrate among the smaller tenants and into the upland straths till the nineteenth century.

The reduction in unskilled work, due to fencing and better implements, seems too obvious to require more than passing mention if it had not such an important bearing upon the prosperity of rural industries. The 1846 Statistical Account for

*John Maculloch, " The Highlands and Western Isles," p. 86.

Udny states that " fewer hands are now employed in agriculture than were formerly, in proportion to the extent cultivated. The improved methods of working, especially the threshing machines, have greatly diminished human labour." The 1906 Report on the Decline of the Agricultural Population of Great Britain gives the introduction of machinery as one of the reasons for the reduction of labourers in nearly every district of Scotland. In Haddington, the report states, "Binders have revolutionised harvest work (see Cmd. 3273).

The development of the new system of agriculture came at a time of great national expansion, and it affected the rural population in different parts in varying ways. There were the wholesale reductions in Ayrshire and the Highland "clearances." In other districts, such as Aberdeenshire, there was a considerable increase in the cultivated land. Thus, at Tarves, the population in 1755 was 2,346; by 1841 it was 2,397; but the extent of arable land had doubled, and the produce had increased tenfold.

The general prosperity of the people increased enormously. The description of the rising standards of comfort in Galt's "Annals of the Parish" might be taken word for word from the Statistical Accounts. In Fortingal, according to the Second Statistical Account: "Rents in 1750 were not much above £1,500, and the people were starving; now they pay £4,600, and there is fulness of bread." Instead of a very dense population, partly supported by agriculture, the result of the agricultural revolution was to produce a population less closely crowded on the land, but entirely supported by the whole-time work of the farmers. and agricultural labourers.

The eighteenth century was the heyday of the Scottish handicrafts. Early methods of agriculture still survived, but the Act of Union, by removing all trade barriers between Scotland and England and her colonies, had encouraged the development of Scottish trade and opened wider markets to the cheaply-made goods of the poverty-stricken country people. The situation was further helped by the road-making schemes undertaken for political reasons after the rising of 1715, and by the general pacification of the country. Exact figures showing the enormous volume of the cottage industries are not available, but after supplying their own needs the country women either sold their handiwork to wandering packmen or at the fairs that were held

all over the country. So general were these fairs that it is not easy to find a locality where one at least was not held during the course of the year within walking distance of the handicraftsman's home. Sir Henry Craik, in "A Century of Scottish History," estimates the number of packmen in Scotland in 1707 at 230,000, and their earnings often seem to have been considerable.

An essay, published by the Highland Society in 1803, describes Atholl as

A country enriched by raising flax and spinning it into yarn, which is the people's chief support and staple business for affording them cash to pay their rent, buy meal, pay their servants' wages, etc. . . . Besides their own consumption and what is bought by the yarn hawkers that travel from house to house, the people of Atholl sell yearly at the different markets and fairs of Dunkeld, Mouline, Kirkmichael, Blair, Foss, Dull, Weems, Aberfeldy, Kenmore and Killin no less than 250,000 spyndles of linen yarn, spun from lint of their own growing. .. Were it not for flax, Atholl were a poor district, and having little arable ground, and being scarce of grass, it cannot be called either a corn or a cattle country. The farms consist generally of from six to twenty acres of arable land; about the sixth part of which is sown with lint, and, at an average, every hundred acres of arable land, possessed by tenants, tradesmen and day-labourers, employs about forty spinners.

One can trace how the agricultural revolution pushed the flax spinning industry northwards. The linen industry of Scotland first began to be of importance in or about Edinburgh and Glasgow, and great quantities of yarn were made in both cities. But the improvements in agriculture in the Lothians, and the introduction of manufactures into Glasgow, provided better employment for the women, with the result that the spinning went north to Perth, Aberdeen and Banffshire, and the yarn came back to be woven in Glasgow or Edinburgh. The Aberdeenshire spinning industry became important about 1745. It was started among the artisans' wives in the town of Aberdeen, but quickly spread to country districts.

The thread manufacturers here give employment to at least 10,000 women in this and other northern counties in spinning linen yarn. Their employment in spinning, however, may be called occasional, because in summer they are generally employed in procuring fuel, and spinning wool and flax for family use. Their labour is also required

in the fields in harvest.*

*First Statistical Account for the town of Aberdeen.

Agricultural improvements became fairly general in Aberdeenshire on the larger farms after 1773, and by the end of the century Caithness, Ross-shire, Inverness-shire, Morayshire and Sutherland are spoken of as " the spinning counties." The Transactions of the Highland Society for 1799 include an essay by Mr. Mill, of Perthill factory, describing how he had to travel about Caithness to organize a system of agents, who gave out the flax which was imported from the Baltic, collected the yarn, and supplied spinning wheels on an easy payment system, in order to obtain enough yarn for his factory. In these counties, except on the farms of a few "improvers," cultivation seems to have been very backward until the second quarter of the nineteenth century.

Little has been written upon the decline of the rural flax spinning industry of the north of Scotland. The introduction of cotton goods doubtless affected it, but many facts seem to prove that linen spinning became a factory trade instead of a rural one, because the reform of agriculture had diminished the supply of workers. Flax spinning machinery was introduced about 1790, and came into general use fairly quickly. At Dundee it was first used in 1793, and by 1815 had entirely replaced hand work. In 1788, 20,506,310 yards of linen were sold, mostly made of homespun yarn. Yarn was also exported to England. In some districts the people's prosperity depended more upon the price of yarn than upon that of corn. Gradually, however, this great rural industry died, without, apparently, causing much loss or dislocation to the country people.

In the 1846 statistical account, it is surprising to find how seldom the decay of the spinning industry is even mentioned. Sir John Sinclair describes how, a century earlier, the parish of Cullen was raised from poverty by the introduction of the linen industry; yet the 1846 account describes Cullen as a flourishing agricultural parish, and does not even allude to changes due to the extinction of flax spinning. The 1846 Statistical Accounts for the counties of Perthshire, Aberdeenshire, Morayshire, Elginshire and Banffshire, all at one time famous for their spinning, only note the survival of the industry, or distress due to its decline, in nine parishes-and among solitary women only-and in each of these parishes there were exceptional circumstances to account for the survival. The accounts for Fortingal and Logie Rait mention the decline of flax spinning, but without

remarking upon any distress caused by this; yet in Fortingal, a hundred years before, the rents had been mainly paid by the earnings of the spinners, and in Logie Rait, about 1792, the industry was worth £3,000 annually. The description of the rise in the standard of comfort is very detailed for both parishes, and shows a wonderful advance. The parish of Mouline had an even greater increase in prosperity. A few old women there were said to be suffering because spinning had died out; but in 1792, the farmers' wives and women servants had often paid the whole rent by their spinning.

It is interesting to compare the decline of the rural industry of hand spinning with that of the urban industry of hand-loom weaving. Everyone has heard of the desperate plight of the hand-loom weavers in their prolonged struggle with the power looms. In the hand-loom industry itself, two interesting examples came within the personal experience of the writer. At one time there was a considerable industry in the town of Stonehaven, and among the older people very definite traditions survive of the distress and unemployment caused by its decline. In the agricultural parish of Kirkhill, in Inverness-shire, weaving was also carried on by the country people, but, although the industry, and even the sites of the weavers' cottages, are still remembered, there is no tradition whatsoever of distress among them when the trade died away about 1820.

In a few districts the general decline in hand spinning took place before the introduction of agricultural improvements, and in these places other rural industries sprang up to utilise the unemployed labour. In the south-west of Scotland, where dairy farming is more general than mixed arable and stock raising, the effects of the agricultural revolution were less immediate, and the sewed muslin industry was introduced near Glasgow and spread to Ayrshire. David Bremner, in his "Industries of Scotland," writes: "The pioneers of the trade began operations at a time when many women who had depended on the spinning wheel for a living were thrown out of work by the introduction of spinning machinery. There was, consequently, an abundance of willing hands ready to accept the new employment." The industry was founded by two or three private merchants. Its further development is interesting. About 1830, "when flax spinning ceased to be a domestic