The Coming Reign of Plenty.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 859, 17 August 1888, Page 10

The Coming Reign of Plenty.

Prince Kropotkin, in the ‘ Nineteenth Century.’ The chief causes of the American competition are in a superior, labour-saving organisation of the culture, as also in low land rents and, to a great extent, in speculation ; but the latter two'causes will act only for a short time to come. Landlordism grows in America as well »3 elsewhere, and grows at an American rate. As to speculation, it is well known that the railway companies transport wheat at a loss, in order to raise the value of the land they own along tho railway lines ; and yet the cost of transport of a quarter of wheat from Chicago to Liverpool is not less thau 4s. But speculation is no solid basis for agriculture, and therefore we see that, while landlordism grows, while the railway companies distribute high dividends to their shareholders, and tho money-lenders make fortunes by lending money to the farmers of the wheat-belt at the rate of 3 percent every month during the crops, the farmers toil at a loss, and rapidly become hired sesvauts to capital. Out of each four farms of Illinois, three are mortgaged, and the loss of the Illinois farmers during -the last five years is estimated by the official reports at fifty million dollars. Wheat and corn growing in America are carried on at a loss. Such is the net results of the formidably swollen exports of the last few years. Bnt, strange enough, the same complaint comes from all parts of the world, excepting, may be, India, where the natives are reduced to work at any price, or starvo. In France, Germany, Italy, and even Russia, agriculture * does not pay.’ English, French, German, and Russian landlords and farmers cry. loudly for protection. And so we have come to that utterly anomalous, but most characteristic state of affairs, under which nowhere does it * pay ’ to grow food for the steadily increasing populations of the civilised world. Whatever the system of land-tenure—the Innd-lord-and-farmer system of this couDtry,_the small peuaant proprietorship, the American right of first occupation, or the Russian landlordism with partially enslaved labour—the complaints are the same. A rich crop is considered a curse ; and only tnose peasants bless it who grow cereals for their own use. The very generality of the complaint is moat suggestive, and, as shown elsewhere, its generality depends upon a general cause—namely, that the landlord, the State, or the money-lender, take for themselves so considerable a part of the produce grown by the farmer—from one-fourth to one-third, and more—the agriculture cannot go on under such circumstances : the tribute levied upon it is too high, and it is rendered still heavier by the tribute levied l.y the manufacturer. But these are social causes : they do not depend upon the unproductivity of the soil nor upon over-population. And these causes cannot last. The'Russian peasant will not always sell hi 3 wheat and live on sarrazin and rye; he will not sell even hi 3 rye and live for four, six, and sometimes eight months every year by mixing birch-bark and auroch grass with a handful of flour. The Hindoo will not always labour for a few onnoes of rice ; and the American railway speculation will consume itself very soon ; while, on the other side, the labourers of the manufacturing nations of West Europe, with their curtailed wages and uncertainty of employment, cannot afford topaytenshillings of tribute to the landlord, and several shillings more to the manufacturer and middleman, for every quarter of wheat which they consume. At the same the manufacturing nations no longer find agriculturists who will readily give them a heap of corn for a few yards of cotton, nor islanders bringing gold nuggets and handfuls of pearls for a looking-glass or a knife. They will be compelled to till the soil themselves, and to organise their economical life so as to combine agriculture with manufacturing. And from the combination both can only be winners. Intensive agriculture is possible only at the gates of the manufacturer: every day the modern farmer applies for more and more help from industry. And manufacturers—we are learning it now at a heavy ccst—can thrive only when their high chimneys rise amid the golden fields. Modern civilisation is blotting out the old antagonism between the city and the country ; and after the haughty city has vainly tried to live ■without the field, it must return to it; it must recognise that industry and agriculture are two interdependent forms of human activity deriving force from mutual support. As to the grateful soil, it will not refuse to support the human multitudes; all it requires from them is care, study, and labour; and its requirements meet the tendencies of modem industry towards moral decentralisation. But here we come again upon a vast field of research, as to how both requirements can be best combined. This may be the subject of a separate study hereafter.