MONTHLY 



JOURNAL OF AGRICULTUEE. 



VOL. II. AUGUST, 1846. NO. 2. 



REPEAL OF THE ENGLISH CORN-LAWS. 



ITS EFFECT ON AMERICAN AGRICULTURE. 



Our readers will readily believe that we take no pleasure in cautioning them 

 (which we consider a matter of duty) not to be too sanguine in their estimate of 

 the benefits to be realized by American wheat-growers from the long talked of 

 and much wished for repeal of the English corn-laws. 



For the following, among other reasons, it may not prove for us the horn of 

 plenty that some may have been led to imagine. 



1. Wheat, there is reason to apprehend, can be produced in Europe, and sent 

 and sold in England, cheaper than we can do it — if for no other reason, because 

 of the lower price of labor and of freights. 



2. The readiness with which the thousands of foreigners who are daily arriv- 

 ing can obtain our richest lands, almost for the asking. Immigrants accustomed 

 to living on potatoes or pumpernickel (black rye bread) — will augment the pro- 

 duction of wheat here in a manner to keep down the price to the lowest point of 

 depression, and yet do better and live a thousand times better than they have ever 

 been accustomed to do at home. 



3. The act itself — the repeal — is not the out-and-out liberal and self-sacrificing 

 measure, on the part of the British Government, which some have been taught 

 or inclined to consider it. 



In reference to the wages of labor and the sort of living in vogue among our 

 rival wheat-growers on the Continent, what does the reader imagine these to be ? 

 In an essay on German and Dutch Husbandry, recently published under high au- 

 thority in Scotland, founded on a tour of personal observation, of late date, it ap- 

 pears that, in the neighborhood of Dantzic, a sort of "black rye bread," called. 

 " pumpernickel," is the principal food used by the poorer classes ; and their 

 wages for the year, out of which they find themselves in everything except a 

 house for shelter, is not more than would sutRce to buy in this country the work- 

 ing and Sunday clothes of a thrifty slave on a Southern plantation. 



This pumpernickel is known, too, to constitute not only the principal food 



used by all the poorer classes in Germany, but in Westphalia " it is to be found 



on the tables of the rich and poor." In those countries the plowmen receive \2\ 



cents, women 7 cents, and girls 5 cents per day — not more, at the most, than. 



one-fourth of what is paid for agricultural labor in this country. 

 {l\o] 4 



