THE AGRICULTURAL CRISIS.* CONTINENTAL agriculture is undergoing a crisis no
less severe than that which has so long prevailed in these islands. For several years the occupying owners of France and Central Europe, though suffering from the same causes as the tenant- farmers of England—short crops and American competition— suffered less acutely, except those of them whose vineyards were devastated by the phylloxera, and they suffered more. Their harvests were not quite so bad, and the prices they obtained for their grain were not quite so low. Freights to Continental ports are generally higher than to English ports ; and the heavy land carriage to the South and Centre of Europe confers on the agri- culturists of those regions several of the advantages of Protection, without its drawbacks and its odium. They have consequently been somewhat less harassed by American competition than their English con.Nres. But at the prices now ruling, wheat can nowhere—not even in the virgin lands of the Far West—be grown to a profit. In this extremity, the peasants of France, as Frenchmen when in trouble or perplexity invari- ably do, are appealing to the Government for help ; and the Government, after the manner of French Governments, are lending a favourable ear to their petition. In other words, M. Jules Ferry has promised to tighten the protective screw, which, neither in France nor elsewhere, has produced even a modicum of the prosperity which its advocates so persistently promise to their dupes. This, too, at a time when the workmen of Lyons, St. Etienne, and other industrial centres have not the where- withal to buy bread, cheap as it is, and are denouncing protec- tionism as the cause of their misfortunes. "It may be said with- out exaggeration," writes M. Leroy Beaulieu, in the Economisle Francais," that the industry of Lyons is the victim of protec-
• Die Landwirtheohaftlic]e Krisie: ihre nahlrlichen, legitlativen. soeialen, 'and indiriduellen Ureechen. You Merrn Bnndesrath Droz. Anratt ; J. J. Christen.
tionism, the martyr whom it has most cruelly punished, not alone of French, but of American and Italian protectionism. The manufacturing interest of Lyons must have a singularly tough constitution to be able to withstand the efforts made by the Government to crush it. They deal in a manner at once the- most heedless, the most iniquitous, and, we will venture to say, the- most immoral, with this greit industry, which supports a million persons, by forbidding it to use the cotton yarns of the only two countries—England and France—which produce these articles
at a cheap rate We are creating in France two- categories of citizens—one whom the State protects, the other whom it sacrifices."
This is the case in all countries where Protection prevails; for even when an attempt has been made to protect everybody against everybody else it has signally failed, the most clamorous and influential interests always obtaining the greatest advantages. Even Colbert, the inventor of the mercantile theory, the very incarnation of protectionism, was compelled to own that he had failed to regulate trade to his satisfaction. Almost at the same time that hE. Jules Ferry received the deputation of agriculturists, he was interviewed by a deputation from Lyons to demand the repeal of the tax on cotton yarns. But they got very cold comfort. The Minister, while offering his condolences and protesting his sympathy, suggested that there might be two sides to the question, and hinted that before making any pro- mises he would have to hear what the cotton-spinners of Rouen had to say to their proposals, and the cotton-spinners of Rouen are the most fanatical protectionists in France. The Lyons people do not expect much good from the interview. Says the Courier de Lyon :—" The general impression concerning the visit to Paris of our seven representatives is that nothing is changed, either in Lyons or in France ; there is only one deputa- tion the more."
The peasants are likely to be more successful; they form a majority of the electorate, and a general election is looming in the near future. It must be confessed, too, that they have reason on their side, in the sense that they deserve Protection more, and have hitherto had less of it, than any other portion of the community. This is clearly shown in a pamphlet lately published by M. Numa Droz, once President of the Swiss Confederation ; now a member of the Federal Council. M. Droz treats of the agricultural crisis, and though he writes with special reference to Switzerland, gives much useful infor- mation, and makes many noteworthy observations, touching the condition of husbandry in neighbouring countries. The peasants pretty nearly everywhere, above all in France, bear the chief burden of taxation, which, seeing that being everywhere in the majority, they are the masters of the situation, can be explained only on the ground of their ignorance of economic science. The same phenomenon obtains in the United States, where the territorial democracy is the vile body of protectionist experi- menters. In France, the peasant gives more than he need do for nearly everything that he uses, in order that this or that industry may be protected against foreign competition. The direct taxes he has to pay are almost past belief. The land- tax, including the additional centimes for local purposes, is equal in some communes to an income-tax of 4, in others to an income- tax of 14 per cent. The cost of transferring land, including notarial charges and State taxes, the latter being far the heaviest, is fully 10 per cent.; when property descends from father to son the State demands a toll of 5 per cent., and small proprietors cannot raise money by way of mortgage without incurring charges which M. Droz estimates at 9 per cent. As most properties are small, the average size of a holding—including the large estates, of which there are still a fair number—being no more than forty acres, and as peasants are frequent borrowers, especially when times are bad, the last-named of 'these imposts is keenly felt. According to a statement lately mule by M. Pouyer- Quertier, the direct and indirect imposts levied by the State on the landed interest reach the enormous total of £33,800,000 a year. Even making every allowance for rustic simplicity, and the illiteracy of French yeomen, their ignorant patience of tax- ation is almost incomprehensible. The protected industries that profit by their stupidity do not even pay an income-tax ; and the fortune-tax, which plays so important a part in the finance of the Swiss Cantons, is equally unknown in France. This impost equit- ably—that is to say, universally—applied is probably the fairest and most scientific of all taxes. Being a tax on capital, it neither curtails production nor impedes circulation ; its incidence falling neither on what a man consumes nor earns, but on that which
he has, it is as ideally just as it is practically economical, and in a more scientific age will probably supersede every other impost.
Meanwhile, the French peasant must bear his manifold burdens as he best may; and seeing the ignorance on fiscal matters that exists in high quarters, it is no wonder that, instead of insisting on manufacturers being no longer protected at his expense, he should ask to be himself protected against foreign competition. What the starving weavers of Lyons and St. Etienne will say to a proposal to increase the prices of bread and butcher's-meat remains to be seen. They would be quite justified—and the suggestion has already been made by a society of French workmen—in demanding the imposition of a duty on all foreign labourers who come into France, or even in excluding them from the country altogether.
M. Droz is too wise a man to suggest Protection as a remedy for the existing distress. He does not believe that the prole- tariat would submit for long to a tax on bread. He looks rather to a more scientific system of-taxation, whereby agriculture may be relieved of some of the fiscal burdens to which it is now unfairly liable. Although an opponent of large estates, he thinks that both in Switzerland and in France the division of landed property has gone too far for good husbandry. Very few peasants can afford to buy machinery for their sole use; and they are either too prejudiced, too jealous, or too ignorant to work in co-operation. The present writer once asked a Swiss yeoman, who was complaining of the high price of labour at harvest-time, why he did not use reaping and mowing-machines. "Ali, those things may do in England and America," was the answer, "but they would not suit our country." And you might as well try to argue with a monument as with a middle- aged peasant.
M. Droz would prohibit the division of land below a certain minimum ; and this, in some of the Swiss Cantons, has already been done. But his grand panacea is a more scientific system of husbandry. Most peasants, like a great many farmers, work by rule of thumb. The Swiss economist, who is also a practical agriculturist, believes that improved methods would produce surprising results, and enable the yeomen of the Continent to hold their own with the freeholders of America. In this opinion he is probably right. Neither on the Continent nor in England is land turned to the best account. How many farmers, for instance, before buying their manure and sowing their crops, take the trouble to ascertain by chemical analysis the nature and requirements of the soil which they cultivate ? M. Droz counsels his agriculturist countrymen—and his action may be followed with advantage by agriculturists all over Europe—to establish in every important district schools for the teaching of practical and scientific husbandry. But when all is said and done, wheat cannot be produced at thirty shillings a quarter. On the other hand, the present state of things cannot last. American farmers are probably doing no better this year than our own. Production will fall off, with the usual result of an enhancement of prices ; aud if they do not rise to a paying point, the difference will have to be met by a more general lowering of rents, which, in many instances, are not yet down to the level of thirty years ago. As for dairy-farmers, if they are not doing well the fault must lie with themselves. Every- thing they sell is dearer, and nearly everything they buy cheaper, than in the middle of the century ; while as for rent, excellent grass-farms within fourteen miles of London are to be had at from ten to fifteen shillings an acre.
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