TOPICS OF THE DAY
THE GREAT AGRICULTURAL CONFERENCE.
THE organisers of the Agricultural Conference, held in London on Wednesday and Thursday, achieved in one way an undoubted success. They brought together an unusually representative meeting. Some two thousand proprietors, farmers, and delegates, including among them some of the greatest persons in England, and a number of the most successful agriculturists, presented themselves on Wednesday to debate the causes of agricultural de- pression, and did debate them seriously and anxiously for six hours. Unhappily, the only result of their debate was a decision in favour of an impossibility. As to the magni- tude of the depression, the meeting was substantially unanimous. They agreed all round with Mr. Chaplin's figures and quotations from official reports, which show that even in 1889 landlords and farmers had lost a third of their incomes, and labourers 10 per cent. ; and that since that date everything had gone from bad to worse. This year, in particular, may be described as one of pure loss. Wheat has sunk to 28s. a quarter as an average, and in places below that point ; the harvest has been insufficient in quantity ; and from the sudden reduction in the prices of stock, even the grass- lands, which hitherto have yielded fair returns, have ceased to show a profit. The farmers are living on their capital, and those landlords who have not incomes derived from other sources, declare that their rents do not main- tain them, and fear that all but the very best land will speedily go out of cultivation. The capitalist classes, in fact, affirm unanimously that they are growing corn and meat at a loss, and that, unless a remedy can be found, there must be a " catastrophe,"—by which they mean, we believe, that agriculture, as now carried on, will be abandoned. In these statements the whole meeting agreed, and, allowing something for the natural tendency of men who are suffering to pity themselves, the statements may be accepted in the mass, and for the moment, true. It must be recollected that agriculture is a " periodic trade,"—that is, a trade in which the results of a period of years must be considered, and not the results of any one year ; but this wave of depression has covered a period, and there is still no symptom of recovery. Mr. Chaplin, indeed, anticipates a still greater reduction in prices, talking even of 20s. a quarter for wheat, and on all hands an opinion was expressed that no one could say when, if ever, a cycle of recovery would commence. So far all was clear, and, as all knowledge must be in- structive, the meeting was beneficial ; but when the two thousand representative men came to remedies, nothing was forthcoming but dreamy views. Mr. Chaplin himself thought that bimetallism would be the panacea; but if that is so, why does not monometallism kill all trades, as well as agriculture ? The bimetallist countries are suffering from low prices just as much as Great Britain is, so that the most conspicuous of them, France, is taxing food in sheer despair of making their greatest industry pay, except by a national subsidy ; and a rush of fresh currency all over the world, which is the bimetallist desire, will not diminish the severity of competition. If Messrs. Marshall and Messrs. Shoolbred are both to receive coals instead of cash for their goods, they may both be im- poverished or enriched; but they will both stand, as respects each other, exactly where they did. We ourselves, though we defer to the great experts, are inclined to think that the supply of gold is hardly sufficient for the new volume of business, produced by new intercommunication, and that a supplementary currency might be beneficial ; but the notion that if the improvement were universal, it could alter the conditions of competition, seems to us ridiculous. Mr. Chaplin does not hope, we presume, to establish bi- metallism successfully in England alone. It is competi- tion, not the currency, which is killing English agriculture. Then Mr. Riley, a young man who represented the labourers, maintained that the landlord robbed both the farmer and the labourer, and did nothing for either ; but he made no attempt to prove his case, and, as a matter of fact, his hinted solution is worse than worthless. He would drive the capitalist, who has put up all buildings at a loss, from the soil, and leave it in the bands of a poorer class, who could no more fa:* the foreign competition than their richer rivals could. The little cultivators of France. and Belgium are just as much beaten by the flood of foreign produce as the British landlord and farmer, and, indeed, are more closely menaced, for they do not breed stock on such advantageous terms. They have, it is true,- saved themselves for the time, but it has been by Protec- tion,—that is, by taking, through legislative action, part of the earnings of the general community. Finally, the meeting, which listened to Mr. Chaplin and his currency fad with respectful bewilderment, and to Mr. Riley with uproar and fidgetiness, expressed its real sentiment, and voted almost unanimously for Protection. That is certainly sense as far as the landlord is concerned, and might be sense even for the farmer if the landlord would let him have half the difference, but it is utter nonsense for the labourer and for the community. The former would pay in the cost of his food much more than he would get back in increased wages—wages were never so low as in Protec- tion times—while the latter would be simply paying a. heavy bounty on every ton of food consumed, to a particular set of tradesmen, the owners and cultivators of the soil. The body of the people see no reason for doing that, and are perfectly certain not to do it ; and the meeting, in accepting that as the only remedy in which they believed, simply reduced the Conference to a nullity. They cannot even form themselves into a party, prepared, like the Parnellites, to force Parliament to try the experiment, for farmers and labourers will not agree ; but even if they could carry out Lord Winchilsea's plan, they would get nothing by their selfish exclusiveness. They were all' united in 1840-45, and had no labourer vote to worry them, and were beaten in the open field. If the Conference has nothing more feasible than Protection to propose, its utility is nil, and everything must go on as it is going now,—that is, landlords must consent to immensely diminished incomes, farmers must work harder on diminished profits, and labourers must make out of allotments and gardening of various kinds a supplement for their wages. Palliatives may be found in getting rid of middlemen, and selling some farm products direct to the consumer—though the farmers, we fancy, under-estimate the cost of house-to- house distribution—but there is nothing whatever in any other suggestion. It is possible, at ruinous cost to the com- munity, to defeat competition by prohibiting it, or taxing it ; but there is no other way.
Some of our contemporaries seem to think there is, and, with the Chronicle at their head, point to rent as the heavy burden which is to be taken off the farmer. Well,. that is a theory like another, and there may be refuge in it, if only they will tell us exactly what they mean. How do they propose to get rid of rent, except by the haggling of the market, which in some places, as Lord Leicester showed in the Telegraph of Tuesday, has killed it already ? He has been compelled to let two of his farms for the tithe, reserving nothing for himself at all. Everybody knows that that experience has been repeated in Essex over a large area ; and what does it mean except that the farmer starves on the land, earning no surplus, and that for improvements, new drainage, new farm buildings, new cottages, and repairs, there is no money at all ? The land- lord used to do all that ; but with no rent he has also no- means, while the tenant, having no surplus—or he would pay rent—has nothing to sink in bricks. Our contem- poraries, we presume, do not mean to confiscate the land, for if they do, they menace the whole community with un- limited loss for the benefit of farmers,—the whole com- munity suffering by the shock given to the security of property. Every Insurance office in the Kingdom, for example, must instantly close its doors. If, on the other hand, they mean to buy the land, they must either tax the whole community for the interest on its purchase-money, or they must charge the tenants for it, to those tenants' ruin. For the State could not get that great sum under al per cent., and the landlords all over the country are letting the farms at 2 per cent. It would be cheaper for the community in the long-run, to give a bounty on every ton of corn grown, and so know, at all events, what amount of taxpayers' money it parted from. Apart altogether from morality, there is no true economy in such proposals, and we doubt if there is much benefit in the other two ideas just now in favour. What is the use of fixity of tenure, unless a profit is procurable ; and why should a Parish Council be the most lenient of land- lords ? It can be, of course, if it pays all losses out of the rates, but, then, that is Protection over again ; in other words, national taxation spent to make the farmer com- fortable. If, on the other hand, it is to get its expenditure back out of the tenant, it will be simply the hardest of land- lords, for it will have to spend a fresh and enormous sum on the buildings necessary for little holdings, build- ings to be put up at a cost which we are told. on good authority, will, if Union rates are paid, be exactly double what it would have been forty years ago. The plain truth of the matter is, that to secure cheap food to our swarming hive, we have made agriculture the least profitable of occu- pations, and that we have to accept that datum as for the time unalterable, and get on as best we may. If anybody, be he big farmer or little farmer, or small freeholder or labourer, can make farming pay, he will get the land, and if he is only let alone and land transfer is made easy, he will get it fairly by bargain in open market. There is some little hope in better cultivation, more economy, and new articles to be grown ; but if John can sell at sixpence what it costs Tom ninepence to make, no device of the human mind. will make Tom's dealing a profitable transaction.
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