r farm labor.
The extension of tillage over much land formerly laid to pasture as
well as that which had never been plowed at all is sufficient cause
for doubting a prohibitive increase in wages. Moreover, in modern
times, wages lag in general rise of prices. Unless conclusive evidence
is presented to show that this was not the case in the seventeenth
century, it must be assumed to be inherently probable that the
increased wages of the time were more than offset by the rapidly
advancing prices.

During the seventeenth century, then, when it is admitted that the
high price of wool was not the cause which induced landowners to
convert arable to pasture, it cannot be shown that the high price of
cattle or exorbitant wages will account for the withdrawal of land
from cultivation. This is an important point, for historians
frequently support their main contention with regard to the enclosure
movement (_i. e._, that it was caused by an increase in the price of
wool), by the statement that increasing wages made landlords abandon
tillage for sheep-farming, with its smaller labor charges. It has been
shown that the conversion of arable to pasture in the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries cannot be explained by the price of wool, but it
may still be urged that agriculture was rendered unprofitable by high
wages. Indeed, it is usually stated that the withdrawal of land from
cultivation which took place in the fourteenth century was due to the
scarcity of labor caused by the Black Death. In the fifteenth century
population was reduced by the Wars of the Roses; and throughout the
period under consideration, agriculture had to meet the competition of
the growing town industries for labor. Is it not possible that these
influences caused an exorbitant rise in wages which would alone
account for the substitution of sheep-farming for tillage?

The obvious character of the enclosure movement makes it impossible to
accept this hypothesis. The conversion of arable land to pasture was
caused by no demand for higher wages, which made tillage unprofitable.
The unemployment and pauperism caused by the enclosure of the open
fields are notorious, and it is to these features of the enclosure
movement that we owe the mass of literature on the subject. Enclosures
called forth a storm of protest, because they took away the living of
poor husbandry families. The acute distress undergone by those who
were evicted from their holdings is sufficient indi