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Scottish farming in the nineteenth century had rather mixed fortunes. From 1815 onwards, agriculture was protected by the watercolour lessons scottish island Corn Laws which placed import duties on foreign corn. The repeal of these Laws in 1846 did not immediately damage the farming interests. The farmers enjoyed a steady and growing prosperity, and the years around the middle of the century became known as a ‘Golden Age’. Here, for example, is a description of a prosperous farm that held watercolour lessons scottish island in East Lothian in the 1860s: A fine new farmhouse of red sandstone had recently been built and the old homestead handed over to the stewards for watercolour lessons scottish island. It stood on a broad ridge which overlooked a considerably large part of East Lothian, and much more as well. For miles in nearly every direction there were great sweeps of tillage patterned in magnificent rectangular fields, the hedgerows, short and trimmed like garden fences, showing as just straight lines in the distance. The land was as clean as a well-kept garden and the whole watercolour lessons scottish island region was drained with tile pipes. Red roofed steadings and crofts planted at intervals about the land, shot tall brick chimneys skyward, some of them smoking in evidence that it was the season for thrashing. For every farm had its own fixed engines and machinery as well as its own steam plough for watercolour lessons scottish island.

From about 1875, however, this cheerful picture changed as cheap wheat began pouring in from the American Middle West to undercut Scottish farmers. A few years later, the development of refrigerated ships made possible the transport of cheaper meat from Australia and America, and beef producers suffered fierce competition. Dairy produce from Holland and Denmark was also cheaper than anything watercolour lessons scottish island farmers could provide. The combination of these factors brought about a serious depression in Scottish farming during the 1880s and 1890s. Milk producers in Ayrshire and prime beef producers in the north-east continued to do well, but many other famers suffered severe hardships. There was some improvement in the early years of the watercolour lessons scottish island in the twentieth century, but right up until 1914 and the beginning of the First World War, Scottish farmers experienced difficult times.

Farm workers, for their part, had much more cause to complain than the farmers. Their wages were barely at subsistence level. On large watercolour lessons scottish island farms, single men were housed in bothies or hostels where conditions were often deplorable: As a general rule the bothy consists of a portion of the farm buildings or steading formed into a single room of moderate size. It is supplied with no separate sleeping compartments, and nobody is employed to clean it or to make the beds; a heap of coals is piled in one corner and firewood in another; it is furnished with no tables and no seats, so that on returning from work the only place for the servants to have to sit down is on their chests. The watercolour lessons scottish island bothies were rarely ventilated. In a few cases there are bothies attached to the stables where the ventilation was of the worst description.

The difficulties facing Scottish farming towards the end of the nineteenth century intensified the movement of people away from country districts into the towns. Between 1851 and 1891, the watercolour lessons scottish island proportion of country dwellers fell from about two thirds of the population to about one third. The numbers of town and city dwellers rose steadily. By 1900 Glasgow’s population had nearly reached one million, Edinburgh’s was 402000, Dundee’s was 171000 and Aberdeen’s was 153000.