THE AGRICULTURAL DEPRESSION.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume XIV, Issue 2890, 4 February 1893, Page 2

THE AGRICULTURAL DEPRESSION.

Tn the brief forecast of the Queen's Speech cabled to us we find that sympathetic reference is made to the agticultural dass, and probably a commission to enquire into tlie best m«ans of granting relief will be set up. In the House of Lords, we learn from the same source that the Marquis of B*lisbury, criticising the policy ot the present Home Government, remarked that the agricultural class was suffering from want of confidence, and there was no country in the world where property was so insecure as in England. Tn a cablegram received yesterday, we are informed that Mr Jesse Collings, a statesman who takes an intense interest in agricultural matters, and is an authority of some standing on agricultural subjects, has an amendment on the Address-in-Reply before the House, affirming that a measure for the reUef of agricultural laborers ought to have precedence of Home Kule. All this goes to show that the stato of affairs among the agricultural classes at Home is far from satisfactory, and the prospects of the farmer for the future, as indicated from recent intelligence, are far from reassuring. Industry generally throughout Great Britain is depressed, but that depression can hardly be looked upon aB likely to be permanent, while the agricultural depression is the natural result of the relations that have subsisted between landlord and tenant farmer almost since the beginning of the present century. For the first forty years of the century the legislative power of the country was wholly in the hands of the landed people, and their all-prevailing idea was to keep rents high. To attain this object prohibitory tariffs were placed upon agricultural produce, and these tariffs, stimulating the production of grain to an abnormal extent, reacted upon themselves in a fall in prices below the minimum figure which, a high protective tariff was supposed to maintain, and as a result tenants were unable to pay the rents which were calculated upon this minimum; and which the tariff was supposed to guarantee. Then sliding scales took the place of the prohibitory tariffs, and grain gambling to a large extent followed, but prosperity to the farnKi- was not attendant. Then came' the repeal of the Corn Laws, and subsequently the discoveries i of gold in Australia and California, with the great rushes to these places of people requiring grain but producing none, followed again by a series of tremendous wasting wars of which the Crimean was the first. These wars had the effect of raising prices to a point as abnormally high as those of to-day are low, and the counteracting effect of turning attention to the undeveloped food producing capabilities of countries all the world ovuv. Cobdtn's theory that the British farmer would enjoy an ever-lasting protective tariff in the edst of carriage from these countries to the British seaboard and from the seaboard inland, was blown to the four winds of heaven by. the wonderful development of railways everywhere, and the immense ocean going fleets that were soon upon every sea. In 1860 the cost of grain carriage was 2d per ton per mile; to-day it is £d, farmers are not as a rule the most farseeing men in the world, and as the effect of the immense competition that was arising was not felt for some-years, there was a mad rush for land, and farmers were compelled to pay increased rents. From 1854 to 1874 rents increased 2G£ per cent. This was brought about by competition among farmers themselves and by the " booming" ability of land agents. Had. farmers been as well able to read the future from the figures which men in every other line of business keep for their safe guidance, farms would not have been taken at the formidable rents that were asked; but having once been taken, and in view of the heavy loss in capital that every tenaat must suffer in relinguishinghis holding—estimated by Professor Thorold Rogers at ten per cent, and by Sir James Caird at fifteen— farmers acquiesced in increases of rent, and strove by economy in the use of labor to meet those increase in rent. The tremendous increase of foreign competition began in 1874, and since then has gone on increasing to such an extent that, although the population has increased from twenty-seven millions to forty millions, and the average yield per acre by, improved farming from twenty-six to twentyeight bushels per acre, the British farmer grows only nine parts of the grain consumed in Britain, as against nineteen parts imported from foreign countries. Fifty years ago the Home growth was two-thirds of the consumption. Then a run of bad seasons was the farmer's fortune—only two really good crops being Invested between 1874 and 1882—wiiii uo percontra of enhanced prices to console the grower. Meat, wool, and dairy produce stili continued fairly profitable, but the agencies which ruined the prospects for grain have been at work in these also, and now, what with frozen meat from our shores, live meat from the Continent and America, wool from every quarter where sheep can exist and grow a fleece, and dairy produce landed from every pastoral quarter, prices in all these have been brought below the paying minimum. The position of the British farmer is a peculiar one to New Zealand colonists—a market of forty million people at his doors, yet beaten in the race by growers at the Antipodes ! Tithes, taxes, and rent have done the business for him, and his labor bill is also increasing. In regard to the latter, the best men have been driven off the soil by years of toil at starvation wages, and now the remnant are taking advantage of the opportunity which the labor market affords, and are demanding and obtaining increased wages. The farmer pan now no longer be a sweater and a middleman between the landlord and the laborer, whose toil alone could, give value to the landlord's land and produce, for him the rent he takes from it, and the whole world will watch with interest the solution of this great problem—a solution which seems to be in | the very near future.