A PESSIMIST VIEW OF AGRICULTURE. T HE outbreak of what is
called in Germany "Agrarian" feeling is of interest in one way to Germans, and in another to all Europeans and North Americans. It looks very much as if the tie between the Hohenzollerns and the "Country party" in Prussia were at last giving way to economic pressure. Ever since the establishment of the Constitution, the Crown has been able to rely upon the country party, the landed aristocracy, squires, free peasants, and better-off cultivators of the soil. They sent up a solid block of representatives who took their cue from the dynasty, supported it in all its acts, and, in the last resort, almost paralysed the action of the Liberals. They enabled the King, for example, to reorganise the Army in 1862-65, in spite of Parliament, which, though always resisting, always resisted weakly. They could be counted on always for war, for great military Bills, and for any measures which, like those making up the Cultur- katnyt expressed what we should here describe as Orange feeling. They are, however, now irritated beyond mea- sure, and though they make of Count Caprivi their scapegoat, it is well understood that the irritation ex- tends to his master also. The "agricultural depression" has extended itself to Germany, the squires, free peasants, and cultivators are all alike distressed for want of money, arising from low prices, and they have fixed upon Free- trade in corn as the ultimate cause of their suffering. They denounce, therefore, all the treaties which have 'recently lowered the protective duties established by Prince Bismarck, they rage against the treaties promised with Russia i and. Roumania, and they threaten, unless Count Caprivi s dismissed and the Bismarckia,n policy again adopted and strengthened, to vote against all measures promoted by the Court, to reject all financial reforms in the Prussian Diet, and all treaties in the German Reichstag, and even, horribile dictu, to refuse or modify the new Military Bill, which hitherto they have accepted as a. measure properly within the control of the prerogative. They will probably, when it comes to the push, reconsider themselves ; but, intermediately, they have allied themselves with the Anti-Semites, a powerful party which regards Jews as ulcers in the com- munity, with the Bimetallists, and even with some true "Agrarians," who would remodel tenure, and they hope, in their combined strength, to force the Emperor to give way, and secure to agriculture, at any cost to city populations, some substantial economic relief.
That is a very curious development in German politics, showing that the" pivot of power," as the Emperor William once styled his prerogative, is losing some of its hold upon classes hitherto devoted ; but it has a wider interest than that. Almost everywhere, certainly in England, France, Germany, Italy, Scandinavia, and the 'United States, the agriculturists, formerly so instinctively Conservative, arc becoming fiercely discontented, declare that they gain less by civilisation than any section of the community, and are looking about for remedies of the most drastic character. In England, they are hoping for aid from Councils of all kinds, with control over the distribution of land ; in France, they have put on protective duties, which have been in- creased in vain twice over; in Germany, they have put on and relaxed similar duties, and are screaming for them again ; in Scandinavia, Denmark more particularly, they limit the aggregation of land ; and, in the United States, they create organisations like the Grangers, the Farmers' League, and the "Populists." the central ideas of all which are that the State, whether Federal or Municipal, ought to clear off mortgages with money lent to the cultivators at 2 per cent., reduce or even abolish railway rates, and transfer much of the taxation to the "rich,' that is, in fact, to the urban classes, who are supposed to "skim all country milk "—the real assertion of the Anti-Semites. The pro- posals hitherto made in America have been too wild to do much harm ; but there will be working proposals by-and- by—guaranteed land-banks, for example, to reduce the interest on agricultural loans—and in Europe, if the peasants have a majority, they can if they please, and they do and will please, draw bounties from the rest of the population in the shape of duties on cereals, which will soon be discovered to be "insuffic:ent." That is a strange condition of affairs,—the existence of a discontent leading to action in the usually quiet base of the community ; and it must, if it lasts, lead to notable results of some kind. There is a theory in England that it will not last ; but if peace is to be main- tained, the evidence for the hopeful view is of the slightest character. Outside a huge factory like Great Britain, the majority will always cultivate, because there is nothing else for them to do ; if they cultivate they will produce ; and if they produce, with the new and rapidly increasing facilities of communication, food will be cheap,—the very origin of the agricultural discontent. The immense popu- lations of farmers, annually increasing, cannot drift away to other occupations in sufficient numbers ; they and their sons must, for the most part, cultivate ; and the process will not stop until the production is not only unprofitable, but so unprofitable that imperative demands, such as taxes, cannot be met. The Asiatic and Russian populations, for example, go on cultivating, though half of them get nothing out of their labour except bare bread, often bad bread, and in Asia scarcely any clothes. In the latter quarter of the world, a year's drought means premature death to millions who are never three months "before the world." The land cannot be left desert, unless the population dies or emigrates ; and it is not so left, the result being that the world is maintained in a plenty, as regards food, which a hundred years ago would have been considered luxurious, but the food-producers groan with discontent, and sometimes, as in Ireland in a bad year, or as in Russia last autumn, are exposed to positive e and grave suffering. The picture s all the more lurid, because, as yet at all events, no remedy seems to alter it at all. Protection only transfers the burden without apparently relieving the . special classes which suffer, and in many countries, Russia for example, all North America, and Asia throughout its length and breadth, Protection, as against the introduction of cereals, is absolutely meaningless, for they are never introduced. It looks, in fact, as if, in regard to agriculture, civilisation- if civilisation be described as the condition which allows of progress—were more or less of a failure, that its im- provements, in fact, by " pooling" all agricultural produce, tend to establish everywhere an average so low, that food- producers cannot ever, except in war-time, feel well-off. Of course, it must be admitted frankly that much of the distress arises from an increase in the standard of comfort, and could be cured by a return to a "simpler," that is, a more savage, kind of life among the cultivators ; but then, that is a retrogression in civilisation, and the dis- comfort produced by the process only increases the discon- tent. We also admit that ultimately, as America fills up, the supply may slacken, though that may depend upon Asiatic and South American crops ; but looking forward for only one generation, and excluding causes not yet visible, it would certainly seem as if a process were going on amidst the whole White population of the world, which has not received the half of the attention it deserves. That the agricultural class should be every- where the restless, disturbed, discontented class, ready for change, and dreaming of great experiments, is a change as unwelcome as it is unexpected. We in England are partly accustomed to it, because we have Ireland constantly before our eyes, and in Ireland this has been the situation for years past ; but we are not accus- tomed to it as a general phenomenon. Even thirty years ago, the ownership of land was the position involving most of placid security, and now everywhere—even in America, except in favoured districts—it involves the least. As security decays, the whole class of bankers who used to advance money to farmers as the safest of customers, withdraw their assistance, until the cultivators, im- poverished by low prices, are further impoverished by high rates for loans or positive inability to obtain necessary capital. The total result is fretfulness in the upper ranks, which feel acutely the amazing change in their social position ; bitter care in the middle ranks, ending in demands for State aid ; and in the lowest ranks demands for alterations of tenure, which are, in fact, widespread, though orderly, confiscations of property in the soil. If the process continues, and we at least have little hope of any rapid change in the situation, the White population of the whole world will be face to face with "agrarian" questions in the old signification of that word, with questions, that is, as to property in land, as to rent, and as to the cost of transmitting produce such as Ireland would have raised had she not been moderated, or controlled, whichever you will, by the weight of the British Legisla- ture. A new class of questions will come up for settle- ment, at least as difficult as any raised by the artisans ; and they may not be settled everywhere without revolu- tions, or, at least, without the legislative votes, which are their modern equivalent. Agricola, as he thinks, knows his blessings very well, and, looking round, asks where they are, and whether the cities have not, by some jugglery or other, carried them all away.
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