THE QUESTION OF WHEAT. $ 



products. For nine years the joint efforts were made to effect this, 

 resulting in the denouncement of commercial treaties and the fram- 

 ing of a tariff in 1892. " Accordingly, the Government constructed 

 two tariffs, a maximum tariff for the countries with whom France 

 should have no convention, and a minimum tariff, about twenty per 

 cent lower, for the countries with whom France should conclude one. 

 Duties upon agricultural produce were never to be subject of a con- 

 vention or to be admitted into the conventional tariff. And it was 

 laid down as a principle that the conventions of the future should be 

 conventions for a short period, and that they should be terminable 

 at a year's notice. By this device the Government hoped to secure 

 more industrial control, more stability, more elasticity. It would 

 go, for instance, to the Government of Switzerland and say, ' Re- 

 duce your duties and take our minimum tariff.' There would be no 

 complicated haggling; the brilliant diplomat could not sacrifice the 

 commercial interests of the country to a political coup. Switzer- 

 land would have to choose between either the minimum or the maxi- 

 mum rate, and both rates were fixed by the Chambers." * In prac- 

 tice this scheme has not been found practicable, as under the con- 

 stitution the President could conclude a commercial treaty on his own 

 authority. 



This policy of expressly excluding agricultural products from any 

 concessions in duty by treaty was significant of the feeling of the 

 agricultural population of France, and a fair measure of its immense 

 political influence. Before 1884 the " agrarians " had hardly suf- 

 ficient strength to make themselves felt locally. The question of 

 wheat growing in France had even then become important, for prices 

 began to fall in 1882. The peasant had noticed that wheat had 

 shrunk in value from twenty-two francs a hectolitre in 1881 to 

 eighteen francs in 1883, and 17. Y francs in 1884. But it was as 

 yet an economic problem, and not connected with political factors. 



A government commission was constituted, and from one of the 

 reports presented in 1884 may be taken some bits of prophecy as 

 gratuitous as that already quoted from the English presentation. 

 M. Rissler, director of the l^ational Agricultural Institute, expressed 

 an opinion that the wheat trade of America had arrived at the ex- 

 treme limit of its development, because the fertility of virgin soils 

 is becoming exhausted, and more expensive farming is necessary; 

 and because wheat is now grown in more remote districts, and could 

 not continue to be carried at unremunerative freights. India, like 

 America, was unable to produce wheat profitably at current prices. 

 In Australasia he thought labor was too high priced to permit it to 

 be turned to wheat cultivation at the prevailing price. Although 



* Fisher. The Protectionist Reaction in France. Economic Journal, September, 1896. 



