The Birmingham age-herald., 1907-06-03
DISTRESS AMONG
 WINE GROWERS
Regions of France Reduced to
 PitlabIe Poverty
FRAUDULENT COMPETITION
Sale of Spurious Wine Reduces Con- sumption-Want Suppression of Manufactured Product-Pop-
 uar Demonstration.

Paris, June 2.-The general and profound distress which has overtaken the wine growers of France, reducing some regions to pitiable condition of poverty, is due to variety of causes chiefly to over production and consequent low prices. The result has been agitation on the part of the wine growers for the complete sup pression of manufactured wine sold in competition with the natural products. The great popular demonstration recently held at Bezires and Perpignan had this as their direct object.
 The beginning of the trouble dates back to thirty years ago when two-thirds of the vineyards of France were practically destroyed by phylloxera. This scourge, 1t was found attacked only degenerate plants enfeebled by decades, if not cen turles of growth. The strong American plant was immune and 1t was used inl- versally in replanting the vineyards, the French varieties of grapes being subse- quently grafted upon the American roots. During the period of renewal, however, from 1876 to 1888, the production of natural wine was largely below consumption Re- sort was naturally had to adulteration, which first took the form of reinforcing the third wine pressings with alcohol and other chemicals.
 Fraudulent wine was at that tune deemed sort of public benefactlon as it enabled the poorer classes accpstomed to the beverage to obtain it at a reasonable price. But the deficit in the natural prod uct, besides inducing the planting of an immense area of new vineyards hitherto devoted to cereals, etc., led to various ex- pedients for increasing the yield of the vine
 The most effective means was ascer- tained to be the submerging of the yine- yards in the low valleys during a portion of the season. This method produced colossal results. A hectare which for merly yielded from thirty to fifty hec- tolitres, was made to produce 200
 Over production and fraudulent wine then steadily beared prices until the enormous crops of 1899 and 1900, 1t fell at one time to two ranes a hectolitre as against a normal price of from twenty to thirty This crisis was followed in the northern districts by the growth of the manufacture of wine to sugar and when the price of sugar fell after the de- nunciation of the Brussels agreement in 1903, the growers themselves were In the business of adulteration by the whole sale The amount of spurious wine sold also had the effect of reducing con- sumption and the substitution of busi- ness among the working classes Physl- clans found 1t deleterious and among the common people the first admonltion was always against the use of wine. Among the middle classes 1t led to the gradual increase of total abstinence.
 While the rigorous suppression of fraudulent wine will undoubtedly greatly relieve the situation of the growers, it is the opinion of the closest students of conditions that there will stil be over production and that the only effective remedy for the present distress will be the return of large area of ground now planted in vineyards to wheat, potatoes ana other products of agriculture.