Introduction – Recent events have reminded me of the words of Prime Minister Gladstone to struggling farmers. I will explain this further. If you read my blog articles you will see me share a few side-bars that I discovered when researching “Marsh Fen and Town – South Lincolnshire and Beyond” that develop out of the rabbit holes I sometimes chase down in my research.
The Setting – Although the exact dates are open to interpretation and debate that late nineteenth century from about 1873 saw an Agricultural Depression in the UK with farms failing and land going derelict in some areas. Like all Depressions this was unevenly spread across the country, but all areas were affected at some time or another and the reality is that anything approaching a full recovery did not occur until the late 1940’s.
Free Trade and the development of large scale agriculture in America, Canada, South America, Australia and large scale peasant farms in Russia combined with the speed and lowering cost of transport as steam ships and railways were developed. For example the cost of shipping a ton of grain from the US to Britain reduced by a third from 1874 to 1884. Grain was flooding into the country from Canada, USA, South America, Russia and even India.
At the same time Britain saw a series of bad harvests from 1875 to 1878 which were not compensated by higher prices as foreign imports undercut the UK farmer. In addition a series of extreme weather events saw droughts in the last quarter of the nineteenth century with subsequent floods. The period from 1870 to 1914 saw the acreage of wheat shrink by 50% whilst the population grew by the same amount.
It was a very similar story for livestock with American and Argentine beef entering the country from 1880 whilst at the same time UK livestock was hit with diseases such as rinderpest, TB and anthrax. However British business prospered as farming declined and the trade in wholesale food grew using imported produce and meat aided by refrigeration.
As the UK beef herds contracted so did the supply of dairy resulting in milk and butter becoming more expensive.
The nature of government in an Industrial Society is to focus on the economy and needs of the urban areas where Industry and Commerce is based. Disraeli was aware of failing farms and ordered a Royal Commission into the Agricultural Depression that reported to the subsequent government under Gladstone in 1882. This Commission recommended reducing the tax burden on farms, but Gladstone did nothing other than order a second Commission into the Agricultural Depression that ran from 1894 to 1897 which largely agreed that the Depression was caused by a fall of farm prices. One has to marvel at the genius of government. Commissions, investigations, Acts of Parliament and laws are meaningless without actions.
Gladstone telling Farmers to Farm Jam: It is against this background that in 1884 we see the repeated mantra from William Gladstone that farmers should “make jam” or to quote him in some instances “farm jam.”
His reasoning was that sugar[1] was cheap, fruit easy to grow and jam was a cheaper substitute for butter. Despite the criticism and ridicule this brought upon the elderly Prime Minister he doubled down and repeated this mantra. Also consider this was an era when the concept of the nationalism of farmland was advocated by the American economist Henry George and the German philosopher Karl Marx. Fellow liberal Joseph Chamberlain (Neville Chamberlain’s father) was reported to be attracted to the idea. Joseph Chamberlain was a self-made man making screws and had low regard for any form of inherited wealth and contended that each agricultural worker should be given, “three acres and a cow” through a nationalization of the soil. Such a view shows his vast urban ignorance of the practicalities of farming perhaps stuck in some fanciful ideal of the English yeoman. Liberals of this era are described as reformers, but this title shrouds their leanings towards the left wing of politics that would realize the roots of the Labour Party in 1900.
On 9th January 1884 Gladstone gave a speech at a dinner in his then home town of Hawarden in Wales which when reported in the Press of the time illustrated to many farmers how out of touch the Prime Minister was with their plight. In this speech he praised the Ground Game Act of 1880 for “bringing more pheasants to market” – this gave limited rights to tenant farmers and occupiers of land to kill ground game i.e. hares and rabbits. He then praised the Beer Act [2] which moved the tax burden on malting barley from the barley to the finished product depending on strength. This enabled brewers to use a wider range of products other than the traditional barley and hops to brew beer and farmers claimed it effectively undercut the valuable malting barley market to farmers detriment. It is perhaps a sign of ineffectiveness that in 1884 he is praising Acts taken four years previous as achievements.
Gladstone continued in this speech to propose that jam was an acceptable substitute for more expensive butter[3] and that “he would have every Welsh farmer a happy jam producer under his own currant bush and blackberry hedge,” because sugar was cheap.
This tirade of ignorance continued as he suggested that farmers could make a 12% return on capital if they went in for jam, eggs, apples and strawberries ignoring the working capital and cost of labour of such operations.
Hawarden in Flintshire, under the shield of his wife’s wealthy background in the area, was possibly a safe haven for Prime Minister Gladstone to talk bollocks about agriculture. However, as Prime Minister Gladstone was as much monitored in the press as any modern day Prime Minister and he suffered the wrath of critics in many areas, not least those that understood Jam making.
Within days on 22nd January H.W. had a letter in the Yorkshire Post pointing out that commercial jam making was filled out with carrots and turnips and pointed out what was obvious was that “the fine old gentleman’s suggestion for farmers to make jam was merely a sop to the aggrieved and grumbling agriculturist.”
Gladstone’s speech at Hawarden came under further ridicule because in it he claimed that jam was cheap because it was imported due to supply not meeting demand. Several of the leading jam manufacturers wrote to the Prime Minister pointing out that nearly all jam consumed here was made in Britain and foreign imports were negligible. They also pointed out that any fruit that they used that was imported to make jam tended to be of sorts not grown in our climate.
Despite all this Gladstone stubbornly doubled down on repeating this rubbish ignoring all advice, criticism and ridicule. Naturally the Conservatives made hay with this stupidity , for example, at a rally and parade in Oldham there was a wagon towed with a giant jar labelled “Gladstone’s Jam” and at the end of the parade were two boys , one carrying a giant roast beef labelled “Gladstone’s Promises”, the other a large decaying fish labelled, “Gladstone’s Red Herring.”
Gladstone had been schooled in Eton, went to University and aged 22 was given a Parliamentary seat at Newark. As such he was a career politician with little real life experience but was ensconced in the political classes, out of touch with real life, and worse than that, failed to listen to ordinary people.
[1] It should be understood that one of the reasons for sugar becoming cheaper was that Germany was starting to heavily subsidize sugar production from Sugar Beet, effectively weaponizing sugar production to undermine that of the British Empire. See connected post on Spalding Sugar Beet Factory.
[2] The Free Mash Tun Act
[3] This has the feel of Jacob Rees-Mogg praising Nanny’s marmalade
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