The Sun.
London, England, 1858-12-18 00:00:00

AGRICULTURAL PRICES.

(From the Derbyshire Courier.)
The farmer is now again realising the effects of
free trade and a fettered currency. The price of
wheat is, as the Mark-Lane Eexpress states, "ex-
tremely low." " The average for the week ending
Nov. 27th of the 290 towns making returns was
41s. 2d. on 103,981 qrs., the lowest since Nov. 1852
—en the 19th October in that year it was 375. 10d.
on 114,833 ars." The report of Monday's prices
on the Corn Exchange, Mark-Lane, is very dis-
couraging. There is, in fact, a downward ten-
dency in agricultural produce generally. The com-
paratively small quantity of wool which is still in
agricultural hands commands a remunerative price,
but this is nearly the sole exception. Great quan-
tities of wheat, the staple commodity of the farmer,
have been sold this year at less than the cost of
production. The crop of beans and peas was so
deficient that present prices scarcely repay the
producer. Many a farmer is selling his mutton
for less than it cost him some months since. Pork
is very low. Altogether the agriculturist cannot
but regard the present state of things with gloomy
apprehension, and to the smaller farmer the ap-
proach of rent day is a subject of serious alarm.
Such always has been, and such always will be
the effects of a monetary crisis. After the panic of
1847 the average price of wheat for the five sue-
ceeding years—from 1848 to 1852—was barely 435.
a quarter. And though the improved state of trade
gave, some time ago, a hope of a more remunera-
tive scale of prices for the food producer, yet such
hope has since then materially declined.
The agricultural labourer feels the ill effects of
this unremunerative cheapness. Ask any sensible
working man what is best for him and his family,
and he will reply, " Neither very cheap nor very
dear bread." When bread is very dear the wages
of the labourer never rise in proportion. -Wheat at
80s. a quarter and wages at even 15s. a week leave
the working man only a bare subsistence. The
high price of food, and consequently of the other
necessaries of life, deprives him of the power of
making the least provision for the future. When
bread is very cheap, the wages of the labourer ne-
cessarily decline. Farmers in general are then disin-
clined, and many unable, to employ more labour than
A) is absolutely necessary. Wheat at 40s. a quarter
:41
765 and wages at 10s. a week are bad for the poor man.
867 The rent of his cottage, the contribution to his
763 sick club, the school
45 Pence for his children, are
)t6 fixed money payments, and these, and similar de-
-93 auctions, consume a large proportion of his small
24
17 wa es.
75 -what is good for the master is good for the man,
and that is a fair, remunerative, steady price.
,917
199 The system which our Money Laws have called
43 into existence is exactly the opposite to this. At one
94
time we have high prices, commerce inflated, trade
14 stimulated to the utmost, speculation of every kind
12857 and sort aroused. All is unhealthy excitement
139 and reckless enterprise. In the manufacturing
- districts enormous mills and factories rise up as if
101
173 by magic, in which thousands of men, women, and
1,C47 children, stimulated by high wages, work day and
2'696 night in an unwholesome
3,486 atmosphere, and subject
1,441 to every kind of contaminating and immoral influ-
-2,34s once. This is the time for bubble banks, bill-
-1,4847
84 accommodation merchant
2°5 tors. s, and swindling direc-
‘, Their palaces rise like exhalations, and
,12 their equipages glare like meteors." In the mean-
-62
9 while the agriculturist cares little about a rise in
i'35,RO his rent. He improves his land, buries his capital
in -the soil of its owner, adopts a system of high
*3 farming, and a better breed of cattle. This
r
par-
ticular phase of the monetary system' induces
3 every agriculturist to a liberal outlay of capital.
3 Observe, it is the state of the money laws which
5
leads to this temporary prosperity. Very shallow,
unreflecting persons, who learn nothing by the ex-
perience of the past, talk of such prosperity being
the effect of " the war." War with Russia was
proclaimed on 28th March, 1854, and up to the
last hopes were strongly entertained that it might
be avoided. But the " prosperity" of the country
had commenced the year before. In March, 1853,
Lord Aberdeen declared, at the Lord Mayor's
Banquet, in the City, that "all the great interests
of the country were prosperous and flourishing
to a degree almost unparalleled." Free trade was
said by many to be the sole cause of this. Free
trade had, incleed, at this time come into full opera-
tion ; and let the agriculturist remember that
during a time of peace and with free trade in full
operation, the prices of every description of agri-
cultural produce were amply remunerative, and
that as-to wheat, the first quality sold in Oct., 1853,
at Uxbridge, at 100 s. a quarto..
It was not the war, .4 anything connected with
•

9,409
7,112
2,410
4,088

58,209
40,689
35,772