CHAPTER XXV 



FOREIGN COMPETITION 



THE question of foreign competition in agriculture is one which 

 looms on the immediate horizon of the future. Then somewhat 

 more remote than this question, but none the less real, is that 

 fundamental question of soil exhaustion and the future food supply. 

 The first of these questions, foreign competition, will be briefly 

 considered in this chapter. 



A Leaf from England's Notebook. We can view with great 

 equanimity economic revolutions in other countries. Our detach- 

 ment and perspective enable us to see and interpret, in a disinter- 

 ested fashion, important transitions in agriculture which are forced 

 on our neighbors. But may not the same revolutions and transi- 

 tions happen to 'us? Since the logical outcome of foreign competi- 

 tion is change in our own agriculture, in certain particulars, it is 

 extremely interesting and suggestive to observe the experience of 

 England when foreign competition forced her to pass through a 

 period of agricultural revolution during the twenty-five years 

 following our own Civil War. 



The opening up of the new lands of the United States, Canada, 

 Argentina, Australia, and elsewhere proved a disaster, for the 

 moment, to the English growers of wheat and live stock. Changes 

 were made which may correctly be termed an economic revolution 

 in English agriculture. Wheat was produced as the " pioneer 

 crop" on the virgin soils of the new countries in such volume and 

 at so low a cost of production that the English farmer simply 

 could not compete. Ocean steamships furnished cheap and rapid 

 transportation. The invention of cheap refrigeration opened up 

 the British markets to the almost limitless supplies of beef and 

 mutton from distant lands. At the same time occurred a steady 

 fall in the price of wool, owing to the cheap supplies from the 

 British colonies. And on top of all these disturbances came a 

 succession of unfavorable seasons. These and other causes, all 

 working together, shook the very foundations of British agricul- 

 ture. The old order was changing; a new order was coming in. 



The farmers who clung to the old order were ruined by the 



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