520 



THE FARMER'S MAGAZINE. 



hand, all produce is dear, the supply of which is inferior to 

 the demand ; and it is scarce on the market, in spite of the 

 eagerness of the purchaser, when the means of production 

 are insufficient— in short, native production, active and 

 large, is a necessity, when foreign industry, otherwise in- 

 sufficient from the same causes, is unable to supply the po- 

 verty of neighbours. 



Such, we believe, is the present condition of the butcher's 

 trade. The question of Customs has nothing to do with it 

 now : all the limits of the problem involved in it, belong to 

 the domain of agriculture. 



Meat is dear in price, and insufficient in quantity : that 

 is an established fact. It will be so a long time yet, because 

 the number of consumers increases in geometrical propor- 

 tion, while production progresses, with great trouble, in a 

 proportion simply arithmetical. On the other hand, the 

 removal of the population, which continually increases in 

 the cities, and sensibly diminishes in the rural districts, 

 multiplies the great consumers of meat, at the same time 

 that it takes from the fields a part of the strength necessary 

 to produce it in greater abundance. 



The commerce of the butchery, I repeat, is only the lesser 

 side of the question. Let us take from it nothing of its 

 real importance, but let us not forget the agricultural side 

 We have done well to re-establish " the common right, in a 

 profession in which privilege and exception are no longer 

 justifiable ;" but the monopoly of the butchery was only a 

 very weak part of the evil to which it was proposed to 

 apply a remedy, and the greater evil has not yet been at- 

 tacked at its source. 



The most urgent and necessary economic reforms may 

 become a cause of trouble, in not producing the good effects 

 which were promised from them — at any rate, they are in- 

 efifectual when they are incomplete. In 1848, for example, 

 the abandonment of the right of town dues upon meat bene- 

 fited 60 little the consumer, that, in order to make the city 

 of Paris one of the elements of his budget of receipts, the 

 Minister suddenly re-established the tax ; and the price of 

 meat was not affected by it. The measure was inoperative 

 so far as exercising no influence on the market, because it 

 was incomplete. It remedied not the evil, which since then 

 it has aggravated, it being essential that all reforms of this 

 kind should have a counterpart. Those which have been 

 effected in England at different periods have never been 

 checked in their effects, since, by aiming at the cause, they 

 have always guaranteed the utility, the benefit. Those 

 which are prepared in France are not now presented under 

 one only of their aspects ; and they promise more and better 

 results. We may hope that they will embrace them all in 

 their operation, and that, after having been at the bottom 

 of things in what relates to the exterior Customs, for 

 example, they will apply themselves, with not less practical 

 utility, to all that concerns the interior management, in 

 which we find a Customs law at once very complicated and 

 very burdensome. 



Has the suppression of the butchers' monopoly in Paris 

 been advantageous to the grazier of cattle and the consumer 

 of meat ? Evidently, no ; and the complaints are renewed, 

 The grazier sells at a price so little profitable, that the 

 certainty of the market and the activity of the demand exer- 

 cises hardly any influence on production. We find that the 

 benefit remains, on one hand, too much with the middle- 

 men—that the butcher enriches himself too quickly at the 

 expense of those of whom he buys and those to whom he 

 Bells. This double operation causes severe recrimina- 

 tion ; Rud «s it is general, and bears upoe the 



consumers of all classes, and in all parts of France, they 

 demand on all sides at once a more immediate and effectual 

 intervention in the surveillance of the butchers' trade— now 

 monopolized, in fact, by a few, to the injury of the masses. 

 This is, therefore, a question to be taken up again, for it has 

 been neither completely elucidated nor completely solved. 



In 1858 the Society of Agriculture, Commerce, Sciences, 

 and Arts, of the Department of La Marne, had proprosed it 

 for consideration in the following terms : " JVh at have been 

 the causes of the advance in the price of butchers' meat, and 

 what means should be employed to bring it back to a mo- 

 derate rate ?" 



Amongst all, we may allow onrselves to state, in passing, 

 the Agricultural Society of La Marne distinguishes itself by 

 the practical character and importance of the subjects to 

 which it yearly calls the attention of reflecting men and 

 publicists. Unfortunately the slenderness of its resources 

 does not allow it to offer to competitors rewards which 

 would be proportioned to the researches it proposed to them } 

 and, on the other hand, its means of publicity are too con- 

 fined to summon to the work all those who might give them- 

 selves up to it with advantage. The consequence is, that 

 the meetings are really only half-successful ; whilst else- 

 where the reports, analyzed and certified, remain nearly 

 ignored. Thus are many efforts lost. 



In the meanwhile the meeting on the question of the 

 butchery has produced two memoirs. The society considered 

 them sufficiently remarkable to divide the prize and award 

 distinction to each of them. They do not say that the 

 question was completely elucidated, but they have admitted 

 that it was conscientiously studied ; and they thought that 

 this double work would certainly furnish to those who 

 might wish to resume it valuable elements for a new exami- 

 nation and a satisfactory solution . The laureats, Messrs. 

 Ch. Gillet and Felix Mennesson, will think it no harm that 

 we should draw our inspiration! from their studies in the fol- 

 lowing passages, since it is a means of making them known: 



With them the question of the butchery is not only ad- 

 ministrative and commercial, but, above all, agricultural, 

 and is bound up in the most effectual manner with the pro- 

 duction of cattle. They then ask by what means this ob- 

 ject should be pressed forward in the path most conducive 

 of progress. Agriculture has already realized great improve- 

 ments and advances towards perfection ; an end removed 

 from its efforts in proportion to its resources. Unfortunately 

 these are not in accordance with the extent of its require- 

 ments, and there is but little hope of adding to its proper 

 forces the help of those which would be needed to enable it 

 to fulfil the task with which it is overloaded. 



The soil requires large advances to raise it to the maxi- 

 mum of fertility. The advances are of two kinds — labour and 

 capital. Labour has not, up to the present, been wanting ; 

 but capital has never been furnished in sufficient amount. 



The agriculture that makes the smallest return, is that 

 which receives the least; in tins it yields to the common 

 law. The most productive animal is that upon wluch we 

 expend the most; but the principle is barren when the ap- 

 plication is impossible. The hectare of land in cultivation 

 in England yields 152 francs, in Germany 130 f., in Bel- 

 gium 120 f., and only 68 f. in France. Between the first 

 and last of these figures the difference is 84 f. to the advan- 

 tage of England, where for additional produce they employ 

 only ten days' labour, where we employ thirty-three. This 

 is assuredly a proof of the inferiority of our implements, that 

 is, of the insufficiency of the resources which admit of ac- 

 quiring implements of greater power, But we way make one 



