Farmers' capital was reduced from 30 to 50 per cent., and rents and the purchase value of land in a similar proportion. Poor clays only fit for wheat and beans went out of cultivation, though much has since been laid down to grass, and much has 'tumbled down'. In fact most of the increased value of the good period between 1853-75 disappeared.
The year 1879 will long be remembered as 'the Black Year'. It was the worst of a succession of wet seasons in the midland, western and southern counties of England, the average rainfall being one-fourth above the average, and 1880 was little better. The land, saturated and chilled, produced coarser herbage, the finer grasses languished or were destroyed, fodder and grain were imperfectly matured. Mould and ergot were prevalent among plants, and flukes producing liver-rot among live stock, especially sheep. In 1879 in England and Wales 3,000,000 sheep died or were sacrificed from rot,[667] by 1881 5,000,000 had perished at an estimated loss of £10,000,000, and many, alas! were sent to market full of disease. Cattle also were infected, and hares, rabbits, and deer suffered. In some cases entire flocks of sheep disappeared. The disease was naturally worst on low-lying and ill-drained pastures, but occurred even on the drier uplands hitherto perfectly free from liver-rot, carried thither no doubt by the droppings of infected sheep, hares, and rabbits, and perhaps by the feet of men and animals. Apart from medicine, concentrated dry food given systematically, the regular use of common salt, and of course removal from low-lying and damp lands, were found the best preventives.
Besides this great calamity, this year was distinguished by one of the worst harvests of the century, outbreaks of foot and mouth disease, of pleuro-pneumonia, and a disastrous attack of foot-rot. The misfortunes of the landed interest produced a Commission in 1879 under the Duke of Richmond, which conducted a most laborious and comprehensive inquiry. Their report, issued in 1882, stated that they were unanimously convinced of the great intensity and extent of the distress that had fallen upon the agricultural community. Owner and occupier had alike been involved. Yet, though agricultural distress had prevailed over the whole country, the degree had varied in different counties, and in some cases in different parts of the same counties. Cheshire, for instance, had not suffered to anything like the same extent as other counties, nor was the depression so severe in Cumberland, Westmoreland, Northumberland, and parts of Yorkshire. The rainfall had been less in the northern counties. In the midlands, the eastern, and most of the southern counties the distress was severe, in Essex the state of agriculture was deplorable, but Kent, Devon, and Cornwall were not hardly hit.[668]