Agricultural and travel writer, born in London, UK. He spent much of his life in Bradfield, Suffolk, where he rented a small farm, and carried out many agricultural experiments. In 1793 he became secretary to the Board of Agriculture. In his writings, he helped to elevate agriculture to a science, founding and editing the monthly Annals of Agriculture in 1784.
Arthur Young (September 11, 1741 - April 12*, 1820) was an English writer on agriculture, economics and social statistics. [See John Gazely's biography to see a discussion of Young's death, often mistakenly dated to April 20.]
Arthur was the second son of the Rev. Arthur Young, rector of Bradfield, Suffolk, who was chaplain to Speaker Arthur Onslow. After attending school at Lavenham, Arthur Young was in 1758 placed in a mercantile house at King's Lynn, but had no interest in commerce.
In 1767 he took over a farm in Essex, where he engaged in various experiments, describing the results in A Course of Experimental Agriculture (1770). Though Young's experiments were, in general, unsuccessful, he thus acquired a solid knowledge of agriculture. He had already begun a series of journeys through England and Wales, and gave an account of his observations in books which appeared from 1768 to 1770—A Six Weeks' Tour through the Southern Counties of England and Wales, A Six Months' Tour through the North of England and the Farmer's Tour through the East of England. He claimed that these books contained the only extant information relative to the rental, produce and stock of England that was founded on actual examination. In all, Young produced around 25 books and pamphlets on agriculture and 15 books on political economy, as well as many articles. He was famous for the views he expressed, as an agricultural improver, political economist and social observer. In 1768 he published the Farmer's Letters to the People of England, in 1771 the Farmer's Calendar, which went through many editions, and in 1774 his Political Arithmetic, which was widely translated. Young also acted as parliamentary reporter for the Morning Post. He toured Ireland in 1776, publishing his Tour in Ireland in 1780. In 1784 he began the publication of the Annals of Agriculture, which was continued for 45 volumes: contributors included King George III, writing under the nom de plume of "Ralph Robinson." Young's first visit to France was in 1787.
More recently attention has moved to the small print of his writings and Young has been studied for his methods of investigation. Richard Stone (1997) presents him as a pioneer national income statistician, continuing the work of Gregory King who had lived a century before. Young produced three estimates of the national income of England, in his Tour through the North of England, Farmer's Tour through the East of England and in his Political Arithmetic. Brunt (2001) emphasises the way Young collected his information and presents him as a pioneer of sample surveys. Young influenced such contemporary observers of economic and social life as Frederick Morton Eden and Sinclair.
Arthur Young was the greatest of all English writers on agriculture; but it is as a social and political observer that he is best known, and his Tour in Ireland and Travels in France are still full of interest and instruction.
He thought the soil of France superior to that of England, but noted that agriculture was neither as well understood nor as highly regarded as in England. Young saw the commencement of violence in the rural districts, and his sympathies began to take the side of the classes suffering from the excesses of the Revolution. This change of attitude was shown by his publication in 1793 of a tract entitled The Example of France a Warning to England. He strongly condemned the metayer system, then widely prevalent in France, as "perpetuating poverty and excluding instruction"—as, in fact, the ruin of the country.
But these sentences, in which the epigrammatic form exaggerates a truth, and which might seem to represent the possession of capital as of no importance in agriculture, must not be taken as conveying his approbation of the system of small properties in general.
The Directory in 1801 ordered his writings on the art to be translated and published at Paris in 20 volumes under the title of Le Cultivateur anglais. An interesting review of the latter publication, under the title of Arthur Young et la France de 1789, will be found in M.
Discussion
There is a chapter on Young as an economic statistician in
Richard Stone Some British Empiricists in the Social Sciences 1650-1900, Cambridge University Press, 1996.On Young as a survey statistician see
L. Brunt The Advent of the Sample Survey in the Social Sciences, The Statistician, 50,(2001),171-190.Resources and external links
Works by Arthur Young at Project Gutenberg Arthur Young's Travels in France During the Years 1787, 1788, 1789 from The Library of Economics and Liberty Travels in France and Italy During the Years 1787, 1788 and 1789 from Archive for the History of Economic ThoughtThe National Portrait Gallery has 5 portraits of Young
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