'4 



54 to 60 marks per 100 kilos in September, 1906, to 

 29.30 — 32 marks in the autumn of 1907, and the poor 

 peasant had to lament the duties on fodder, which render 

 a steady course of production and sale impossible. This, 

 by the way, is the reason why the prices for cattle and 

 pigs do not move in a regular manner, but are subject 

 to violent fluctuations. 



Along with the duties on fodder the small farmer has 

 only too often to lament the high duties on living animals 

 which he requires for rearing or breeding purposes. It 

 is largely the practice of the peasantry on the Eastern 

 frontier — in Posen, East and West Prussia, and in Upper 

 Silesia — to acquire young and lean animals and rear them 

 or fatten them, as the case may be, and afterwards re-sell 

 them. The high prices for live animals have rendered 

 this hitherto pretty safe business exceedingly speculative 

 and placed great difficulties in the way, especially of the 

 smaller farmer. It equally applies to cattle and pigs, and 

 still more so to horses, the breeding of which by the small 

 farmer has now been almost entirely abandoned, the duty 

 on horses amounting to 50-75 marks per head. 



It is not otherwise with the improvement of the stock 

 which is of particular importance in the dairy industry.* 

 Dairy farming is still carried on by the small farmer to a 

 large extent, owing to the high prices for milk, butter, 

 and similar produce. But here, too, he has to contend 

 with ever-increasing difficulties. The climate of Germany 

 is generally dry, and with the gradual shrinkage (if 

 meadow land, consequent upon the extension of corn 

 culture (of which we shall yet have to say a word or two 

 below), the small farmer has to fall back more and more 

 upon the system of feeding his cattle in sheds. This has 

 a detrimental effect upon the cattle and renders the intro- 

 duction of new blood by foreign breeds indispensable. 

 But how can the small farmer afford foreign varieties 



* Gothcin, I.e., p. 10. 



