Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 6.djvu/446

416 CORN TRADE policy, and the general movement with which it was asso ciated, opened an extraordinary demand for other farm produce than corn, of which our agriculturists were not slow to avail themselves. The estimate of live stock in the United Kingdom, antecedent to 1846, did not approach the accuracy to which M Culloch, by his careful analysis, had reduced the estimate of acreage under corn and its produce. Conjectural enumerations of the various kinds of live stock were current which, on the first agricultural census, were found to have been almost double what could possibly have existed. The agricultural returns will reduce all uncertainty of this kind to a minimum in future. But there has been no uncertainty as to the increasing value of live stock and its produce on farms, or as to the remarkable degree in which this appreciation has tended to modify and enrich the agricultural system of the kingdom, during the whole period of free trade. The price of meat, of dairy produce, and of wool, as well as other minor articles in the same category, has increased at least 50 per cent. ; nor has there been any sign of abatement in this rise of value, notwithstanding increasing imports of foreign live animals, and of preserved and more or less manufactured produce of foreign live stock. Mr Caird in 1868 estimated the annual value of home produce of corn consumed at 84,700,000 ; of the foreign supply of corn consumed at 25,000,000 ; of home beef and mutton, 47,200,000 ; of foreign supply, 6,500,000 ; of home butter and cheese, 30,100,000 ; of foreign supply, 8,400,000. And this does not include wool (8,000,000), green crop not used on farms, and various other considerable articles of domestic farm produce, which have, and always must have, a great superiority in English markets. Relation of Home and Foreign Supply. Since the home produce of corn stands in the general proportion to foreign supply of 84 to 25, the yield of the domestic harvests continues mainly to regulate price, and in conse quence also the amount of import for home consumption. One or two successive inferior harvests in the United Kingdom are accompanied with a rise of price, amounting in extreme cases to 20s. or 25s. per quarter of wheat. These higher prices bring out more extensively the surplus pro duce of other countries than lower prices would do ; but with fairly abundant domestic harvests, and the resulting lower range of prices, the import from abroad does not abruptly cease, but continues fully equal to the supply of the domestic consumption, on an equilibrium of value, which appears to have satisfied on the whole both domestic a.nd foreign producers. According to all the authorities on the subject, the consumption of bread in the United Kingdom does not vary much from one year to another, and certainly does not vary in the ratio of the price of bread. The difference, however, between a 6d. and 9d. quartern loaf is so considerable that it must have some effect in the house hold economy. In 1863, when the price of bread was at the highest, the average annual consumption of 20,800,000 quarters of wheat in the previous six years fell to 19,780,000 quarters, which is about equal to a fall of 1 per cent, of consumption for 10 per cent, rise in price. It is difficult to give any mercantile problems of such magnitude a definite solution, but the necessary consumption of corn in the United Kingdom, under all variations of price, rests on a solid basis ; and given the number of acres under crop, and the average produce per acre in weight, it would not be impossible to determine the amount of foreign corn for which there would be an effective demand in the United Kingdom in any year within calculable ranges of value. The trade has been solving these questions in its own practical way. Many vessels laden with corn, from trans atlantic and other distant countries to England, are stopped at Cork or Falmouth for orders from the consignees in England as to what port in Western Europe they shall dis charge at. It is necessary to read the markets to the latest points of time ; and imports are made into the United Kingdom for re-export as well as home consumption. The great markets for import of corn in Western Europe exhibit little variation owing to the convenience with which supplies may be sent from one port to another ; but even in this limited though densely peopled sphere, there are elements of disturbance in supply and demand which have to be taken into account. France, for example, has pro bably the largest wheat area, in proportion to population, of any European country ; and yet the average produce of wheat per acre in France is so low 15| bushels that a bad harvest makes France a large importer, and an abundant harvest a large exporter, of wheat and flour. An increase of 1 bushel per acre in France is equal to 2,000,000 quarters. Were the average produce of wheat, by any better system of culture, to be increased in France from 1 5 to 18 bushels a not immoderate attainment she would be able alone to supply all the requirements, so far as they have been developed, of the United Kingdom. 1 This sur prising effect of the difference of a bushel or two per acre in the average yield of any harvest applies equally to all the large exporting countries, such as Russia or the United States. The latter country was even an importer of wheat from England so late as 1859, but the great extension of agriculture in the Western States and in California, and the extending practice in the Southern States of raising corn as well as cotton, may be believed to have placed a similar abnormal occurrence at a great distance. The question naturally arises how, from such widespread sources and under such immense effects of good or bad harvests in increasing or diminishing supply, the trade is so adjusted as to produce any equable degree of value and steady production of grain? Of this apparent difficulty there are two explanations first, the regions favourable to the culture of wheat in both hemispheres are so extensive that it seldom or rather never occurs that there is a general abundance or general failure of harvests. Nature distributes this inequality so variously that the more the commerce in corn is extended, the less is abundance or scarcity of harvest felt in any one part of the world. And secondly, the large corn-exporting countries, though they may have no market so extensive as the United Kingdom for their surplus produce, have many other markets, not only in Western Europe, but within their own more im mediate spheres the ports of the Black Sea, for example, having the countries of the Mediterranean to supply, and the United States not only the inequalities of production within its own vast area, but parts of Canada, the West Indies, Mexico, and South America. Cost of Transport. Harbour dues, freight, and insurance form an important element in the transport of grain. Their amount affects directly the price accruing to the producers, while at the same time they require careful calculation on the part of the merchants or shippers. Where large crops have to be moved many vessels have to be chartered 1 M. de Lavergne, whose valuable work on the Rural Economy oj Great Britain and Ireland is well known, has given the following explanation, in a letter to Mr Caird, of the state of wheat culture in France : " The official returns give a mean yield of 14^ hectolitres per hectare, the actual yield being more above than below the estimate. Eight departments Le Nord, Oise, Aisne, Somme, Seine-et-Oise, Seine-et-Marne, Seine, and Eure-et-Loire have a yield equal to the English average ; but the forty-five departments which form, the southern part of the territory do not yield more than 10 hectolitres to the hectare. This feeble yield is caused in many of the departments by bad cultivation, and in the south by the dryness of the climate in spring. The statistical returns also show 5,148,000 hectares of fallow (say 12,000,000 acres), which is in fact the third of the surface, sown with cereals." The proportion of bare fallow in England is greatly

less, and has been undergoing reduction.