The Evening Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, and Echo. TUESDAY, DECEMBER 13, 1392.

Auckland Star, Volume XXIII, Issue 296, 13 December 1892, Page 4

The Evening Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, and Echo.

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 13, 1392.

For Go oanso-that lacks assistanofl, i';ir tho ■yronj that noeds resistancu, I'or the future in the distance. And th« gcod thatwa oan ao.

The Agricultural Conference now sitting in England is a significant sign of the times. At one of ita latest sittings, Mr Chaplin, ek-Minister1 of Agriculture, said the losses incurred by landlords and tenants during recent years did not fall short of forty-two millions. During 1891 produce shrank seventy-seven millions in value, and stock also fell heavily. The causes were the foreign competition that had recently sprung up, anil the rise in cold. He was in favour of partial protection. Lord Winchelsea urged fanners to combine and compel Parliament to provide a remedy. These statements are but the terse expressions of the enormous losses suffered by j English farmers during recent years ; they also point to the direction of the remedy. They indicate the losses of American and Colonial farmers incurred by shipments of grain and meat to the English market, for, if English farmers with their greatly reduced rents and their small carriage j rates have loft> so heavily under the [ unusually low prices for agricultural pro- ] duce current of late years, what must the I looses have been to farmers, nearly all of • whom pay heavy rents in the form of in- \ terest on their mortgaged farms, with the cost of transit added over long distances by sea and land. They reveal a condition of things, the i like of which lias never before been ] known. That condition is, that the | producers of food have boen steadiiy impoverished and ruined by their efforts ; to provide consumers with the etafi of life. During this period of low prices manufacturers havu been making j fortunes, and their workmen have been earning good wagos ; wealthy and well to do poople, together with all dwellers in towns, have been consuming the necessaries of life at prices far belovv the cost of production, at the expense of an immense number of industrious people all over the world, who, though they work hard during ] very long hours, cannot avoid sinking into debt, and who, if such low prices continue, cannot escape ultimate ruin. Now it is impossible thah one half the world can contrive to destroy itself, in order that the other half may live in ease and comfort. Already the signs are plain enough that everywhere wheat lands are becoming impoverished, whilst under the low prices for wheat so long prevailing, nothing ia being done to restore their fertility. A3 this goes on the yield ot wheat per acre decreases, and the cost to procure it increases. This is burning the candle at both cuds with a vengeance. Wheat-growing has so long been one of the chief features of English agriculture, that farmers have held on to it, hoping against hope for years, in the belief that the longest road has a turning-. But in the loss on wheat growing there has been no turning. However strong ancient prejudice or long custom may be, farmers cannot go on for ever producing wheat at a loss. The poorer lands drop out of wheat cultivation, the poorer farmers drop into ruin and become labourers, with the result that the area under wheat in Great Britain has diminished during the last twenty years nearly two million acres, or about one-half. Under the continuance of the present ruinously low prices ot about 28s per quarter or 3s 4d per bushel, the lowest prices ever known, wheat growing in England will diminish year by year until, before long, it will disappear altogether, and specimens of the King of English grains, in some coming time, may have to be looked for in museums amongst the other specimens of forgotten thiDgs which usually find a home there. So long as England remains mistress of the seas, bread eaters will care as little as they care now, where the wheat they use comes from, or how many industrious people are ruined in order that they may £$>t their, " cheap loaf." For the gospel of English trade has become the gospel- of Cain. •. No mancarea for his fellow-further than to t^ke away h»a trade by selling his wares at a lower price than be. To quit his calico at ontf-sixteenth of a farthing ipwer than his neighbour, to buy bis

materials for less than they can beaup* plied, to know no friendship in trade, are all thedireco outcome of free trade which, since ib became a fetish, like other false creeds, has a slang of its own. " Buy in the cheapest market," "every man for bimself," "competition is the soul of trade," "money is king." These are the detestable dogmas which appear to form the code of modern English trade. For a long series of years trade increased, and nob a word againsb free trade and its mercenary maxims would be listened to.

The Fair Traders were the first to sound a.note of warning, bub nobody heeded. Ihe .hmpire Trade League came next, and a ree Traders greeted its ideas with derisive laughter. Meantime, every foreign nation was year by year excluding from its markets more and more of English manufactures. The Colonies finding themselve3 treated like foreigners, adopted the exclusive trade policy of foreigners, and levied heavy import duties on English manufactures. Serene in their conceit tho English middle classes were impenetrable to the important chances occurring on all side?. No matter how difficult the operation of adapting every changing trade exigency to the inflexible free trade theory, the attempt was made to do ib, on the lines of the old Gresk bandit Proerustefis, and who, having bub one iron bed, shortened or stretched out the limbs of every guest till they fitted his iron frame work. History is silent as to whether the victims liked it. Probably they didn't for the practice fell into disuse.

j Ab last, there are signs of a coming \ change in policy. English trade, both home and foreign, has not been so bad for many years. AsalreadystatedvEnelishagriculture is worse than ever before, and the conviction is spreading and deepening that something must be done, if greater disasters are to be prevented. The serious condition of trado and agriculture cannot longer be safely ignored. The English working classes, into whose hands political power is rapidly passing, are not such tools as to receive blow upon blow from I every foreign nation with the mercenary stolidity which has marked the English '■ middle classes. Foreign protectionists j may probably have an opportunity !of learning thab if they will give _ nothing they will get nothing, that if they continue to tax so enormously and so unjustly every English manufacture, their day of shipping their products to England without a sixpence of duty being levied is coming to an end. When it is considered that' in her Colonial Empire England possesses a greater area of fertile iand in the temperate zones than all the foreign nations combined, in which ahe has the power to produce ail the the food she requires, with nearly every raw material she needs, -without any contribution from the selfish and hostile foreign nations whom she has so long and so tamely allowed to plunder her at their pleasure ; when these conditions are remembered, Englishmen all over the world may well wake up to the necessity of casting aside tho narrow, mercenary, and unpatriotic ideas which, have punished them so long, and combining their strength stand shoulder to shoulder againsb the world. The first step to the Imperial Federation which shall secure all this and more, is Commercial Federation, which means, ultimately, perfect freedom of trade aud commerce between every part of the Empire, and the taxation of the products of every foreig-n nation whom we have hitherto parmitted^to heavily tax our products Vith impunity, as though Englishmen weredotrs to be kicked, or .fools to be plundered. When this British Commercial Uinon.this Imperial Zollverein, has been fairly begun, we shall hear loss of tho losses by farmers in Great Britain ,and the colonies than.we have heard.for many a yanr, and tha grand circle of the British I cnl.inies will really be—what is sometimes ! claimed for ifc — tho heritage of every ; Englishman, however poor he may be.'. •""