THE RISE IN WHEAT.

Timaru Herald, Volume XC, Issue 13299, 30 May 1907, Page 3

THE RISE IN WHEAT.

RELATION TO TOWN INDUSTRIES,

(Now Zealand Herald.)

The rapidity with which mankind becomes accustomed \o cnange in conditions is nowhere more strikingly portrayed than in the completeness of our acceptance of ]ov prices for wheat-. "The present news that the quotation in Chicago exceed " a dollar a bushel" has caused a sensation throughout the 'civilised' world, yet in the decade of the '"?C's" th-3 average quotation in Chicago wasl.Cs dollars pa- bushel and in the previous decad.- ranged up to i,wict? that price. With amazing forgetfulness it is assumed in the United Kingdom that cheap bread was a result of the abolition of the Corn • Duties, whereas it did not arrive until a full generation after Cobden. had convinced the- English towns ol the value .of'"his panacea. Cheap bread became possible only when the opsning up of the American 2sorth-West' brought land into ' cultivation which with comparatively little difficulty could be made, to produce wheat and other cereals. A tremendous , rush took place to this region; the; vast output broke down prices until small farmers with little capital barely earned labourers' wages and the North-Western States of the American Federation seethed with agrarian discontent ,In the early "90's" wheat values in Chicago Went below 60 cents per bushel, and as a. result the world saw the " .Silver Party" with its plan for the artificial inflation of values sweep the wheat belt and almost seat its candidate in the Presidential Chair. During the last few years there has been a sttady recovery, for the United States has not only settled most of its easily-ploughed land but the growth of its urban population is reducing the proportion of its wheat crop available for export; thus any reduction in the surplus of other exporting countries enables an increased price to be demanded for the American article.. A perception of this comparative smallness of the wheat, surplus has been behind recent attempts to "corner" it. The present disturbance may be associated with another such attempt, but though this association is very probable it does not affect and should not obscure the reality of the situation. The truth is that with the presentpurchasing power of the sovereign and with the wages earned in and the incomes derived from the city industries, and with lha manifest material advantages attached to the city life, wheat cannot be permanently produced at anything like half a crown ■ per bushel. At that price, bread bang the staple food and conditions be : inw as they are, it is much.more advantageous to live in the towns than in. the country and it is not possible to keep under wheat any but the mfH suitable hold—suitable being as often, cneap lands that- can be conveniently stripped of their fertility as rich lands that repay generous ■ fertilising and high-class farming. (The first result of this we see all , over the world in the abnormal growth of big cities: a second; i'esult is evident in the upward tendency of wheat and bread; nor will it he long before the agricultural industry will be perceived to bs absolutely esyentia! to the existence of cities and therefore to be encouraged, not hampered, even by those' who have no ambition to live ou\side metropolitan areas. . ' That the Empire would gain enormously by a reasonable rise in wheat prices, provided the advantage accruing to the producers by such a riso were retained within itself, can only be doubted by those' who cling blindly' to the Manchester Doctrine tha° to buy in the cheapest and to Bell iu the'dearest marked is the sum of economic wiidoni and national colony of ours is not lor the -time being within the wheat countries, not becauac ifc cannot grow wheat we 11,,, but because at'ths desperately low prices at which the great oeieal has been produced in other countries it" pays our larnu'lrs' very much better to grow something ehe for export. But at anything like a steady 4s to bn per bushel, New Zealand would again become a wheat/exporter, while Canada and Australia would increase their outputs untL they easily supplied all British require - ments. .Unless preference is given -to Imperial wheat farmers the increased price of wheat advantages the foreigner as much its it does 'die colonist and chus does not v ; secure that reciprocating trade which woula increase British employment. and turn the inevitable increase in the price of bfead fromj a curse into a- bles'hig. England cannot possibly go on buying the cheap, leaf, for the very sufficient- reason that it does not pay to produce it as proportiont'tely well as it pays to buy it; sho : mus-t. soon le;im, -what-sha should have learned long ago, that"-no political economy h :-.ouno whichis based upon 'tlici unemployed millions-have to be fed and underpaid workers provided for at below' a lair cost price: As a matter of fact, one of the very worst "dumpings" that have ever taken place to the ruin of British industry ii the amazing "dumping" of wheat "for ■ a whole generation which has been regarded as so advantageous to the United Kingdom. Bread has become unprecedentedly cheap under a syttem which has made the bread consumer . averagely much better off than the bread-producer with the result: that emigration gradually. slackened down until it almost ceased — the' present Canadian "bepm" being the accumulated issue of stagnant years; that the lands of England gradually went under grass instead of remaining under plough or under the old rotations: that the unemployed became an; institution in the towns arid were swollen or the employed displaced by the influx of rthose for whom/ there was no work in the country; and that the foreigner with . his drar loaf floods the British market while Englishmen starve idly on their cheap one. Whatever else may happen, it is clear that a marked increase in the- price of bread, resulting from a healthy rise in the price of. wheat, must tend to drive men from the crowded lands into the new lands and from the towns into thv country. As we have said, it must alter th;i whole attitude of the urban to the agricultural populations, for th = buyer always despisas the seller who is easier to -sell and has a fitting respect for one, who •is sufficiently independent to make a fair bargain. When once it is thus popularly understood that the, man who tills the land ; 'is the jnan who/fends off hunger and that by his buying as well as by his selling "tha towns prosper, and without him cannot exist, we shall have no more stupid, attempts to load him with innrious and unreasonable tenures and we shall look back upon Mr McKab's Land Bill as one of the curiosities of a farmerbaiting age.