RISE AND DEVELOPMENT 9 



charges for ocean transport, enormous supplies of wheat to 

 be sold here at prices with which the European grower could 

 not compete. 



STEAM TELEGRAPHY REFRIGERATION. 



By the application of steam to the propulsion of ocean- 

 going vessels a complete transformation was brought about 

 in our trading relations with distant countries, as compared 

 with the days when dependence had to be placed on sailing 

 ships. 



By the invention of the telegraph and the laying of ocean 

 cables there came a no less revolutionary change in the 

 facilities of communication, with a consequent further 

 great expansion in our foreign and commercial trade, and 

 especially so when other lands, developing their own 

 agricultural resources, began to have increasingly large 

 surplus stocks for which they sought an outlet here. 



Still another change in the situation was effected through 

 the use of refrigeration processes in the transport of perish- 

 able products from over-sea countries. 



As the outcome of this further application of science to 

 agricultural conditions, these perishable products, sent from 

 Australia, New Zealand, and Argentina, can be put on our 

 markets in perfectly sound condition, notwithstanding the 

 great length of the journey ; while under existing contracts 

 frozen meat is brought from Australia to London for nine- 

 sixteenths of a penny per pound, fresh fruit for seven-eighths 

 of a penny per pound, and butter for one half-penny per 

 pound. 



Thus refrigeration has annihilated distance, while the cost 

 of ocean transport has, from a marketing point of view, 

 become a negligible quantity. Producers in those far-off 

 lands are, for all practical purposes, and with various 

 advantages of their own, as much competitors of British 

 agriculturists as if their countries immediately adjoined 

 our own shores. 



