The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1879-09-06 00:00:00

DEFICIENT HARVESTS.

The Tinges of Wednesday. in a leader, makes the following
observations on the anticipated deficiency in the wheat

crop:—

If the fine weather which the country has enjoyed
for a few days past should last a little longer, the
actual yield of the harvest of 1b79 may be some-
what greater than farmers have hoped or statis-
ticians calculated. But at the very best it is certain
that the wheat crop, and, too probably, the other
crow also, will fall short of the average; and the
deficiency, we fear, can hardly be less than 25 per
cent. At the same time low prices rule in every
market. The importation of food supplies, and espe-
cially of corn, from the United States has surpassed
all former experience. The American harvest has
been as plenteous as ours is scanty, and the ma-
chinery for distributing the surplus produce of the
New World in European countries has received such
an amazing development in recent years that in a
season like the present the British farmer cannot hope
to be compensated by high prices for deficient crops.
There is such a wide difference between the present
difficulties of the agricultural classes in this country,
and those through which they have struggled success-
fully in past seasons or cycles of adversity. In 1849
and thenceforward to 1852 the harvests were de-
ficient, but the loss was felt at least as much by
the consumer as by the producer, No such division
of the burden can now be expected, and for many
reasons this is matter for congratulation. The case of
the farmers deserves all our sympathy, but, looking at
the economical condition of the whole community, we
perceive that a serious danger has been averted by
the abundance of the imported food supplies and the
consequent maintenance of prices at a low level. Dur-
ing nineyears, including the present, there have been
seven deficient harvests, and the years of greatest
scarcity were coincident with the stagnation of trade
and the paralysis of industry. What would have
happened if during that period of adversity the cost of
the people's food bad been augmented? We should un-
doubtedly have had to deal with an amount of popular
suffering to which, fortunately, the present generation
of Englishmen has seen no parallel. With suffer-
ing we should have had discontent, and probably dis-
turbances, which would have propagated distrust and
alarm. Capital, always accessible to panic, would have
shrunk from new ventures and withdrawn by degrees
from existing employments. The hope of a revival
would have been shattered almost before it was dis-
tinctly formed. In the long run, the farmers them-
selves would have been rather worse than better off.
Agriculture in England owes its prosperity to the in-
dustrial and commercial life with which it is asso-
ciated, and any blow to industry and commerce is telt
inevitably by the agricultural interest.

Sir Garnet Wolseley, when he was at Durban to.
wards the end of July, visited nearly every ward of the
large hospitals established there, and found the Stafford
House nurses 4 ,ing good work. The doctor in charge
told him that he regarded their arrival as a great blessing,
and that earnest gratitude was felt to those who had scut
out Dr. Ross and the staff of nurses. The cases of sick-
ness, although numerous from the regiments which have
been operating near the coast line, were mi,stly slight
attacks of fever and of debility the result of fever; and
change
_ot air soon set the aim up wan. Ail the ME and
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