They wanted good shorthorn cattle—­he sold them cattle; they wanted sheep—­he sold them sheep.  They wanted wheat, and he sold them the standing crops, took the money, and so cleared his profit and saved himself trouble.  It was, in fact, a period of inflation.  Like stocks and shares, everything was going up; everybody hastening to get rich.  Shorthorns with a strain of blue blood fetched fancy prices; corn crops ruled high; every single thing sold well.  The dry seasons suited the soil of the estate, and the machinery he had purchased was rapidly repaying its first cost in the saving of labour.  His whole system was succeeding, and he saw his way to realise his cent. per cent.

But by degrees the dream faded.  He attributed it in the first place to the stagnation, the almost extinction, of the iron trade, the blowing out of furnaces, and the consequent cessation of the demand for the best class of food on the part of thousands of operatives and mechanics, who had hitherto been the farmers’ best customers.  They would have the best of everything when their wages were high; as their wages declined their purchases declined.  In a brief period, far briefer than would be imagined, this shrinking of demand reacted upon agriculture.  The English farmer made his profit upon superior articles—­the cheaper class came from abroad so copiously that he could not compete against so vast a supply.

When the demand for high-class products fell, the English farmer felt it directly.  Cecil considered that it was the dire distress in the manufacturing districts, the stagnation of trade and commerce and the great failures in business centres, that were the chief causes of low prices and falling agricultural markets.  The rise of labour was but a trifling item.  He had always paid good wages to good men, and always meant to.  The succession of wet seasons was more serious, of course; it lowered the actual yield, and increased the cost of procuring the yield; but as his lands were well drained, and had been kept clean he believed he could have withstood the seasons for awhile.

The one heavy cloud that overhung agriculture, in his opinion was the extraordinary and almost world-spread depression of trade, and his argument was very simple.  When men prospered they bought freely, indulged in luxurious living, kept horses, servants, gave parties, and consumed indirectly large quantities of food.  As they made fortunes they bought estates and lived half the year like country gentlemen—­that competition sent up the price of land.  The converse was equally true.  In times of pressure households were reduced, servants dismissed, horses sold, carriages suppressed.  Rich and poor acted alike in different degrees but as the working population was so much more numerous it was through the low wages of the working population in cities and manufacturing districts that the farmers suffered most.