4 INTRODUCTORY 



devoted to cereals were being abandoned, and wheat - 

 growers were declaring themselves ruined. 



In some respects the foreigner was more ready to 

 recognise these changes, and to avail himself of the 

 wider opportunities so offered in our own markets, than 

 the British producer was, while the foreigner had the 

 greater reason for sending his increasing surplus to us, 

 either because of the lack of a home population of 

 sufficient dimensions to absorb his products, or because 

 countries other than Great Britain set up against him 

 the impediment of hostile tariffs. Want of enterprise 

 or of adaptability among British agriculturists thus 

 played into the hands of the foreigner ; and it so played 

 still more as shrewd English traders, who (i) were alive 

 to the trend of events, (2) realized the conservative 

 instincts of the British farmer, and (3) despaired of 

 gathering in at home the large quantities which they 

 knew our markets would take, themselves went abroad, 

 established depots in various centres on the continent 

 of Europe and elsewhere, collected supplies from the 

 peasantry over a large area, sorted, graded, and con- 

 signed them to England in large quantities under the 

 best conditions, and thus worked up a remunerative 

 business, to the advantage both of themselves and of 

 the consumer, while many a British agriculturist was 

 still bewailing the unremunerative price of wheat. 



All the same, the awakening came in our own country, 

 and so well especially of late years have British 

 agriculturists of the more progressive type responded to 

 the aforesaid newer wants and enlarged opportunities 

 that, concurrently with the continued decline in cereals, 

 there has been a resort to alternative crops or industries 

 to an extent that hitherto the British public have failed 

 entirely to realize. The tradition of agricultural depres- 

 sion has been kept alive in the press by 'gentlemen 



