The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1880-11-20 00:00:00

MR. JAMES CAIRD ON AGRICULTURE.

The first ordinary meeting of the present session of the
Statistical Society was held in the Society Rooms, King's
College, London, on Tuesday, when the President, Mr.
James Caird, delivered the inaugural address. There was
a fair attendance, and amongst those present were Sir
Wilfrid Lawson, Sir George Balfour, ana Sir R,feh4rd
Temple, the last-named gentleman being admitted a member
of the Society.

Mr. Caird's address related to the agriculture of
this country as affected by American competition.
He stated that 4 close study of Mr. Brassey's recent
paper on the agriculture of the United States, of
Mr. Shaw Lefevre's account of the state of agripnl-
ture and the causes of its depression, and of the
report of Mr. C. S. Read and Mr. Pell on America,
as well as of the whole question, had led him
to a conclusion different from that of the Assistant
Commissioners. He held that the actual prices of the
last ten years and the imports from Canada showed
that prices had very little control over the quantities of
grain sent forward. A fall of 118. per qilarter had no
effect whatever in diminishing the volume, while there
remained the great prairies of the West which were
only beginning to be tapped, and which comprised
a district of immense fertility compared with the
old fields of the East. In the East the acre pro-
duced only forty bushels of potatoes, whereas in the
new prairie district the yield was 300 or 400 bushels
an acre. He calculated that the saving to the pnblic
of the United States between the years 1873 and 1879
by the reduction of freights alone was equal to
ninety millions sterling. A halfpenny per ton per
mile was now the average railway charge for convey-
,ing produce, and this would be still further reduced
by the water carriage, as the country had every ad-
vantage whieh nature could bestow in its magnificent
rivers and canal, From Chicago, for example, to the
seaboard grain was carried at half the rate ho had
mentioned, and in like manner the ocean freight,
instead of being increased.by a larger traffic, would be
reduced for the inward and outward voyages. There was
thus no probability of the price being increased by any
permanent increase on the cost of transport, and when we
turned to the area of production, and the quality of the
soil with which European produce was hz ought into coin-
petitioit, we could hardly fail to see the immense advant-
age possessed by the New World. The production of corn
in the United States was about six times that of the
United Kingdom. The quality of the American soil
was its real grand feature. It was so extremely
favourable for machine cultivation that no man need
be employed except to direct the machinery from the
time the seed was sown till it was ready to be cent on
ship-board; and besides all this there were vast
mineral resources lying underground. At so low a
figure could produce be transported from Chicago that
a barrel of flour or beef could be sent thence to Liver-
pool at a cost of two days' wages of an artisan, or four
days' wages of a labourer in this country. To the
consumers this was an enermous benefit; but to the
oducers of food in this country it wa.sa fact of
momentous importance, with which we must prepare
to reckon.

Turning to the question of the province of produc-
tion in which this competition was likely to be success-
ful, Mr. Cairid expressed the ,pinion that such articles
as wheat and Indian corn might be expected to be the
articles of earliest export. Between the years 1870
and 1879 he found that the article of import from the
States which had increased most was corn, and that
the increase in weight was nearly nine times the weight
of all the cattle which had been imported. The weight
had doubled in ten years, and was already three times
what was required by the ratio of our population. Yet
the price at the end of the period was the same as at
the beginning. Next to corn in the quantity ex-
ported_ came bacon and hams. In ten years the in-
crease in the exports from the States of pork had been
nine-fold, notwithstanding a great increase in the
price. The increase of live stock and meat had not in-
creased in the same proportion, and the large importa-
tion of these appeared to be equal to two ounces a day
per head of the population of the United Kingdom.
The cost of removing corn from the prairies to this
couutry had been reduced about 9d. per bushel. This
was a gain to us of ten millions sterling-, which could
be spent on other articles of food produced at home.
After some observations on the existing land laws
in England, he referred to the-agricultural distress in
Ireland, and instituted a brief comparison between it
and that which had been experienced in England.
From the Humber to the Solent, he said, the loss of
tenants' capital had been unprecedented in our time.
There were few parishes in all that district in which
some farms had not been surrendered to their
owners, and in which farms were absolutely tenant-
less. One local journal in September last con-
tained a hundred advertisements of farming stock
for sale on farms given up by tenants. Within
a mile or two of thriving towns hundreds of acres
of clay land had been entirely deserted. The
tenants had left the neighbourhood, the em-
ployment of labour had ceased, and the landlords
and their agents had little hope of obtaining profit by
farming the land themselves where hard-working
farmers had failed. So much had England suffered,
that the loss of capital in Ireland would not bear any
comparison with the loss which had been sustained
by English agriculturists. There could be no doubt
that there would ultimately be a large increase
of owners cultivating their own land', and the
more so if the same privileges were offered to
tenants in England and Scotland which were about
to be offered to tenants in Ireland. Room also
would be found for peasant proprietors, so that
the agricultural labourer would get a footing upon
the land of the country. He had little fear of
such a result, if due care was taken that no Govern-
ment money was given for this object except where
the climate was favourable and the land was of good
quality. The system of peasant proprietary would
not only give free play to skilled labour, but would
elicit qualities which generally lie dormant when men
work under mechanical routine.
At the close of his address, which was warmly
applauded, a vote of thanks was unanimously passed
to Mr. Caird,
The medal for the society's prize essay was then
presented to Mr. Potter, who had travelled three hun-
dred miles to receive it, after which Dr. Mouat read a
paper "On the Tenth Census of the United States."