ABSTRACT
The marvellous improvement in transport and cost of freight, which rendered it cheaper to send grain from the far West to London than to send it from the Lotb.ians, had its practical disadvantages for Great Britain in the effects which it produced upon that w bich is still the greatest industry in this as in other countries. Agriculture in the form of grain-growing became unprofitable in these islands except upon the better soils, and the system of landownership and land cuHivation in England does not allow the greatest advantage to be taken even of favourable opportunities. Grain-growing fell off more and more, and the numbers of live stock were materially reduced. Hence, although the workers of the cities found t!Ja.t their wages went further when they were wholly or partially employed, and the well-to-do classes were able to purchase all the articles needed for the supply of their households from 25 to 40 or 50 per cent. cheaper than ever before, yet the working-classes as a whole had little to congratulate thetnselves upon. Their uncertainty of employment became wo•·se and worse. The agricultural labourers who were unable to get employment on the land, partly owing to the increasing severity of American competition, and partly owing to the introduction of labour-saving machinery into agriculture in this country as elsewhere, crowded into the cities ant! still fu1·ther intensified the competition for employment in periods of stagnation by swelling the numbers of those out of work. Tho
same causes were at work at the same time among the small farmers and peasant proprietors of France, Germany, and Austria. There also the machine-sown and machine-reaped grain of America was bringing about the ruin of the agriculturists, a.nd attempts were made to lessen by taxation the damage done to this class by the unprecedented invasion of the European markets by cheap food from America and later from India. The protective duties imposed with this object in view had, of course, the effect of raising the cost of subsistence to the urban population.
