* * * * The extinction of these mills is
a disaster to local farmers, and consummates a movement that gives imported grain a very heavy preference over British. The biggest and most efficient mills are nearly all found at the coast, chiefly on the West Coast. It is as cheap and easy (it is sometimes, indeed, cheaper and easier) for a farmer on the East Coast of the American continent to send wheat to an English mill as for a British farmer in, say, Northampton. Both send to Liverpool, but the importer sends by cheap ship and the home farmer by dear train. The importer sends in bulk, the home farmer in partial quantities. The bigger price, the smaller weight of the quarter of imported grain, the cheaper transport, the more sympathetic treatment by the miller, the greater capacity for bargaining are all on the side of the importer. The vanishing of these little old mills, of which the very last have now a precarious hold on life, is the last act in the sacrifice of the small British farmer.
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