One hundred years ago
Mr Gladstone made a very fresh and interesting speech to his Hawarden tenants on Wednesday, at the annual dinner of the tenantry, on the subject of the present condition of English agriculture. He insisted that the farmer, as the producer of food and drink, has an almost indefinite opening before him, since, he said, 'the capacity of the human stomach is enormous.' He show- ed how vastly the amount of food im- ported for every member of the popula- tion had increased in the last generation. For instance, the number of eggs im- ported had increased from 100,000,000 in 1855, to 750,000,000 in 1880, — in- deed, the consumption per head of foreign eggs was in 1882 nearly eight times what it was 27 years previously. Mr Gladstone remarked that English farmers ought to compete with the Con- tinent more strenuously than they do in the supply of poultry, eggs, butter, fruit, &c; and especially as regarded fruit, he pointed out that the high price of butter was leading to a very large consumption of foreign jam, which could be bought for from 7d. to 9d. a pound, while but- ter costs from Is. 3d. to Is. 8d. a pound. He thought that this foreign jam ought to be more or less undersold by the English jam, and that the farmers should cultivate fruit with a direct view to the supply of good, wholesome jams, either better than those sent from abroad, or equally good and cheaper.
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