Key Arguments

• Small proprietors previously maintained themselves by produce and commons (sheep, poultry, hogs)
• Enclosures convert them into men who must work for others
• They are forced to go to market for necessities they previously produced
• This displacement drives people to towns and manufactures

Source Quotes

It is acknowledged by even the writers in defence of enclosures that these diminished villages increase the monopolies of farms, raise the prices of provisions, and produce depopulation…and even the enclosure of waste lands (as now carried on) bears hard on the poor, by depriving them of a part of their subsistence, and only goes towards increasing farms already too large.’ ‘When,’ says Dr Price, ‘this land gets into the hands of a few great farmers, the consequence must be that the little farmers’ (previously described by him as ‘a multitude of little proprietors and tenants, who maintain themselves and families by the produce of the ground they occupy by sheep kept on a common, by poultry, hogs, etc., and who therefore have little occasion to purchase any of the means of subsistence’) ‘will be converted into a body of men who earn their subsistence by working for others, and who will be under a necessity of going to market for all they want…There will, perhaps, be more labour, because there will be more compulsion to it…Towns and manufactures will increase, because more will be driven to them in quest of places and employment. This is the way in which the engrossing of farms actually operates.

He sums up the effect of the enclosures in this way: ‘Upon the whole, the circumstances of the lower ranks of men are altered in almost every respect for the worse. From little occupiers of land, they are reduced to the state of day-labourers and hirelings; and, at the same time, their subsistence in that state has become more difficult.’ In fact, the usurpation of the common lands and the accompanying revolution in agriculture had such an acute effect on the agricultural labourers that, even according to Eden, their wages began to fall below the minimum between 1765 and 1780, and to be supplemented by official Poor Law relief.

Key Concepts

• converted into a body of men who earn their subsistence by working for others
• under a necessity of going to market for all they want
• Towns and manufactures will increase, because more will be driven to them in quest of places and employment
• From little occupiers of land, they are reduced to the state of day-labourers and hirelings

Context

Marx citing Dr. Price to explain how the engrossing of farms created the necessary labor force for industrial capitalism