THE ECONOMIC OUTLOOK. 585 



of Irish tenants to achieve. But since then, the fall of prices has en- 

 tirely changed the condition of affairs and made a reduction and per- 

 haps an entire abolition of the rents of arable land in Ireland an es- 

 sential, if the Irish tenant is to receive anything in return for his 

 labor. A French economist — M. de Grancey — who has recently pub- 

 lished the results of a study of Ireland, founded on a personal inves- 

 tigation of the country, is of the opinion that, although the popula- 

 tion of the island has been reduced by emigration from 8,025,000 

 in 18-17 to 4,852,000 in 1887, it is not now capable of supporting 

 in decency and comfort more than from two to three million in- 

 habitants. The same authority tells us that agricultural distress, 

 occasioned by the same agencies, exists to-day in France, in as 

 great a degree as in Great Britain. The peasant proprietors have 

 ceased to buy land and are anxious to sell it ; and in the dej^artment 

 of Aisne, one of the richest in France, one tenth of the land is aban- 

 doned, because it is found that, at present prices, the sale of produce 

 does not cover the expenses of cultivation.* 



Now, if it were desirable to search out and determine the primary 

 responsibility for the recent large increase in the number of the Eng- 

 lish unemployed, or for the distress and revolt of the Irish tenantry, 

 or the growing impoverishment of the French and German peasant pro- 

 prietors, it would be found that it was not so much the land and rent poli- 

 cy of these different countries that should be called to account, as the 

 farmers on the cheap and fertile lands of the American Northwest, the 

 inventors of their cost-reducing agricultural machinery, of the steel 

 rail, and of the compound marine engine, which, collectively, have 

 made it both possible and profitable " to send the produce of five acres 

 of wheat from Chicago to Liverpool for less than the cost of manuring 

 one acre in England." And, looking into this matter from a cosmopolitan 

 point of view, and balancing the aggregate of good and bad results, 

 how small are the evils which have been entailed upon the agricultural 

 laborers in England, Ireland, or elsewhere, in consequence of changes 

 in the condition of their labor, in comparison with the almost incalcu- 

 lable benefits that have come, in recent years, to the masses of all civ- 

 ilized countries, through the increased abundance and cheapness of 

 food, and a consequent increase in their comfort and vitality ! 



Another matter vital to this discussion may here and next be prop- 

 erly taken into consideration. As the evidence is conclusive that the 

 direct effect of material progress is to greatly increase and cheapen 

 production and to economize labor ; and as there is no reason to sup- 



* M. de Grancey is of the opinion that one of the most fertile sources of Irish misery 

 and degradation is the unauthorized and illegal subletting of farms. He states that he 

 met with cases where from forty-five to fifty persons lived in a state of semi-starvation 

 on a farm calculated to yield a comfortable subsistence to a family of five or six. In each 

 generation, the farm, in despite of special prohibitory clauses in the lease, is divided 

 among the sons. Where there are no sons, subtenants are found willing to take small 

 parcels of land at the most exorbitant prices. 



