130 PEASANT PROPRIETORS 



of barrack life, the monotony of tlie country. Girls will 

 not work like tlieir mothers, but become dressmakers or 

 shopgirls. In France, as in England, politico-economical 

 questions are chained to the car of party politics ; no one 

 dares to investigate the principles which regulate com- 

 mercial dealings. In France, as well as in England, a new 

 privileged class has been created, that of the rentier^ who 

 escapes the taxation which crushes the agriculturist. As 

 in England, so in France, through railway rates are said 

 to favour the foreigner ; and in both countries the cry 

 grows louder that the cheapest loaf becomes the dearest 

 when no one has money to buy it. If French peasants 

 and tenant farmers have suffered less than their English 

 brethren, it is because the land has never been called upon 

 to produce two gentlemen's incomes, and because large 

 employers of labour are never ashamed of the blouse and 

 the sabot. In Germany, again, the business of farming is 

 in a most depressed condition. A United States consul 

 of great experience reports that farming properties in 

 districts which are remote from large cities, and where the 

 consumption of milk and other perishable produce is small, 

 may be purchased at fifty per cent, of their former value. 

 Farmers who bought land at the high prices of 1871-74, 

 have sunk half the capital thus invested ; those who raised 

 the purchase-money on mortgage have suffered still more. 

 The cause of this downward tendency is the low price of 

 corn and cattle. Increased import duties have not directly 

 benefited farmers. It is only under the new tariff law, 

 which provides that a portion of the income derived from 

 income duties shall be paid over to district authorities, 

 and credited against their bills for local taxation, that they 

 gain by the taxes on produce. A programme was 

 adopted by a farmers' meeting at Cassel in 1883, which 



