The Elk County advocate. [volume] (Ridgway, Pa.) 1868-1883, 1872-09-19
Tho Mont Famine in England.

Food is the ultimate measure of pop
ulation. Nautilus holds that population,
increasing geometrically, will always
keep pace with the supply of food and,
in spite of his crotchets, the marriage
check philosopher is shrewd thinker
on all matters relating to economical
science. Indeed, England at this time
is presenting, in a meditied manner, the
phenomena he oontemplates. In that
country there is beef-famine. The
agricultural laborer seldom eats beef
and it is one of his misfortunes that he
has learned to live on bacon and potatoes
without complaining. 1t is the handi-
craftsmen and their families who are
undergoing the pressure of scarcity.
Since bread became cheap in England,
the artisan classes have increased in
geometrical ratio. Their wages have
been sufficiently good to command for
them share in the luxuries of life; and,
for twenty years, the skilled workmen
of England have realized the traditional
idea as to beef-fed Englishmen. But a
check on their prosperity has now come
in the article of meat. Beef and mutton
cannot be imported into England as
grain is imported; and the farmers,
forced out of the monopoly of wheat, try
to make another of cattle and sheep.
At their bidding, but as a consequence
of the rinderpest, Parliament has re-
strained the trade in livestock with the
Continent of Europe and all the pasture
| lands of Ireland, the moors and dales of
Scotland, and the meadows of England,
will not produce sheep and oxen in suf-
ficient quantity to satisfy the require
ments of the people of the three king
doms. AS for the timed beef and NUT
ton from Australia, Englishmen of all
grades turn from it with something like
disgust, in spite of the pmans Of the
| doctors, the superintendents of lunatic
asylums, and the governors of convict
| prisons. The result is, dear meat in
England-meat at twenty-five cents per
pound, or, reckoning New York values,
forty cents; and womens meetings from
the Humber to the Tees to denounce the
butchers, and to bind themselves to buy
no more beet until it is again from ten
to fourteen cents per pound. The hus-
bands support their wives.
The men, who have compelled their
employers to advance their wages and
to reduce their hours of work, are now
also endeavoring to prevent the neces-
sary operation of the law of scarcity.
They will fail; but England has no
cause fo- fear. Famine is not imminent
in the land, and cannot be while bread
stuffs are abundant. In truth, this out
cry for beef is a sign of new era of
plentiful food. Bread-riots mean star
vation-and England has had too many
of these; but dear meat only indicates a
privation that is not intolerable.
The worst that will happen to Eng
land in consequence of it is, that it will
induce more of the better class of work
men to emigrate to America and Austria
liza and we shall so far gain by Eng
lands loss. Yet there will be remedy
Civilized nations cannot initiate the
cannibal Maoris, and, when they have
no oxen, open shambles for /" long-pig )
but, with unbounded pasture-lands or
this continent and in Australia, there is
no reason why either the Old World ol
the New should lack suffciency o.
animal food. Some better and more
satisfactory method of meat-preservine
is possible, and an English project fol
shipping live cattle from Buenos Ayres
in steamers specially built for the trade
has a good prospect of success. Th'
problem is to bring the abundant mea
there is in the world to the men ant
women who are hungering for it. It il
not surely an unsolvable problem, ant
the man who solves it will not only ranl
among the benefactors of his kind, bu
will open for himself an inexhaustibl
source of wealth.