DOI Artikel:
Perkins, John A.: Harvest technology and labour supply in Lincolnshire and the East Riding of Yorkshire 1750-1850, 1
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.49000#0049
HARVEST TECHNOLOGY AND LABOUR
SUPPLY IN LINCOLNSHIRE AND THE EAST
RIDING OF YORKSHIRE 1750-1850
By
J. A. Perkins
Part One
“What a labrynth is Husbandry”.
(William Marshall).
On several occasions a few years ago, Dr. E. J.
T. Collins directed attention to the occurrence
of a ‘hand-tool revolution’ in the harvesting of
cereal crops in Britain between the 1790s and
1870s (Collins: Harvest Technology 1969,
453-472; Collins: Sickle to Combine 1969, 7,
10-12; Collins: Labour supply 1969, 62-65).
In part, and particularly until the 1830s, this
consisted of a shift from the serrated-edged
sickle, with which the harvest worker sheared
the standing corn held in his or her free hand
in a sawing action, to the smooth-edged sickle
or reap-hook, which the worker employed in
a sweeping motion to reap free-standing corn
in a process known as “bagging” or “fag-
ging”, or local terms such as “badging” as in
Staffordshire. Primarily, however, the
‘hand-tool revolution’ consisted of ‘a massive
substitution of the higher working scythe for
the sickle as the standard corn-harvesting
tool’. In the later eighteenth century, and for
some time thereafter in many districts, the
overwhelming majority of the wheat harvest
was gathered by shearing and increasingly by
reaping with the sickle; and the use of the
scythe was largely confined to the mowing of
grass for hay, and to a growing proportion of
the oats and barley harvests. Subsequently,
the sickle and more belatedly the reap-hook
steadily lost ground to the scythe as wheat-
harvesting implements, with the ‘majority
adoption phase’ of the diffusion process be-
ginning about the mid-1830s. By the late
1860s, when the horse-drawn reaping-ma-
chine was used to gather only a limited pro-
portion of the British harvest, the sickle and
the reap-hook were on the verge of extinction
as corn-harvesting implements (Collins: Har-
vest Technology 1969, 455, 457; Evershed
1869, 309; Johnson 1842, 149, 611, 1033-4).
In Collins’s opinion the ‘primary incentive’
operating to induce the substitution of the
scythe for the sickle and the reap-hook as
corn-harvesting implements was ‘provided by
a deterioration of the supply of harvest labour
relative to demand’. This conclusion fits the
tenor of Dr. E. L. Jones’ interpretation of
conditions in the English agricultural labour
market between 1790 and 1850, and the sub-
stance of that interpretation for the following
quarter-century (Collins: Harvest Techno-
logy 1969, 464; Jones 1963, 326-27, 332-333).
However, neither of these conclusions, and
more especially that of Collins, would appear
to fit the facts of agricultural development in
two English counties which played a leading
role in agricultural progress between 1790 and
1850: namely, Lincolnshire and the East Ri-
ding of Yorkshire. Certain districts of these
counties were characterized by the excep-
tionally early adoption of the scythe as the
standard corn-harvesting implement, while in
SUPPLY IN LINCOLNSHIRE AND THE EAST
RIDING OF YORKSHIRE 1750-1850
By
J. A. Perkins
Part One
“What a labrynth is Husbandry”.
(William Marshall).
On several occasions a few years ago, Dr. E. J.
T. Collins directed attention to the occurrence
of a ‘hand-tool revolution’ in the harvesting of
cereal crops in Britain between the 1790s and
1870s (Collins: Harvest Technology 1969,
453-472; Collins: Sickle to Combine 1969, 7,
10-12; Collins: Labour supply 1969, 62-65).
In part, and particularly until the 1830s, this
consisted of a shift from the serrated-edged
sickle, with which the harvest worker sheared
the standing corn held in his or her free hand
in a sawing action, to the smooth-edged sickle
or reap-hook, which the worker employed in
a sweeping motion to reap free-standing corn
in a process known as “bagging” or “fag-
ging”, or local terms such as “badging” as in
Staffordshire. Primarily, however, the
‘hand-tool revolution’ consisted of ‘a massive
substitution of the higher working scythe for
the sickle as the standard corn-harvesting
tool’. In the later eighteenth century, and for
some time thereafter in many districts, the
overwhelming majority of the wheat harvest
was gathered by shearing and increasingly by
reaping with the sickle; and the use of the
scythe was largely confined to the mowing of
grass for hay, and to a growing proportion of
the oats and barley harvests. Subsequently,
the sickle and more belatedly the reap-hook
steadily lost ground to the scythe as wheat-
harvesting implements, with the ‘majority
adoption phase’ of the diffusion process be-
ginning about the mid-1830s. By the late
1860s, when the horse-drawn reaping-ma-
chine was used to gather only a limited pro-
portion of the British harvest, the sickle and
the reap-hook were on the verge of extinction
as corn-harvesting implements (Collins: Har-
vest Technology 1969, 455, 457; Evershed
1869, 309; Johnson 1842, 149, 611, 1033-4).
In Collins’s opinion the ‘primary incentive’
operating to induce the substitution of the
scythe for the sickle and the reap-hook as
corn-harvesting implements was ‘provided by
a deterioration of the supply of harvest labour
relative to demand’. This conclusion fits the
tenor of Dr. E. L. Jones’ interpretation of
conditions in the English agricultural labour
market between 1790 and 1850, and the sub-
stance of that interpretation for the following
quarter-century (Collins: Harvest Techno-
logy 1969, 464; Jones 1963, 326-27, 332-333).
However, neither of these conclusions, and
more especially that of Collins, would appear
to fit the facts of agricultural development in
two English counties which played a leading
role in agricultural progress between 1790 and
1850: namely, Lincolnshire and the East Ri-
ding of Yorkshire. Certain districts of these
counties were characterized by the excep-
tionally early adoption of the scythe as the
standard corn-harvesting implement, while in