The full effect of this momentous change was not to be felt for a generation, but the immediate effect was an agricultural panic apparently justified by falling prices. In 1850 wheat averaged 40s. 3d. and in 1851 38s. 6d. On the other hand, stock farmers were doing well. But on the corn lands the prices of the protection era had to come down; many farms were thrown up, some arable turned into pasture; distress was widespread. Owing to the depressed state of agriculture in 1850, the _Times_ sent James Caird on a tour through England, and one of the most important conclusions arrived at in his account of his tour is, that owing to protection, the majority of landowners had neglected their land; but another cause of neglect was that the great body of English landlords knew nothing of the management of their estates, and committed it to agents who knew little more and merely received the rents. The important business of being a landowner is the only one for which no special training is provided. Many of the landlords, however, then, as now, were unable to improve their estates if they desired to do so, as they were hopelessly encumbered, and the expense of sale was almost prohibitive. The contrast between good and bad farmers was more marked in 1850 than to-day, the efforts of the Royal Agricultural Society to raise the general standard of farming had not yet borne much fruit. In many counties, side by side, were farmers who used every modern improvement, and those who still employed the methods of the eighteenth century: on one farm wheat producing 40 bushels an acre, threshed by steam at a cost of 3s. 6d., on the next 20 bushels to the acre threshed by the flail at a cost of 9s.[639]