FISCAL POLICY AND AGRICULTURE 341 



idol of free trade. It had no effect whatever on the 

 price of corn or bread. The yield of the tax was a 

 pure gift, a bounty, to the over-sea producer of grain. 

 The amount of the gift at the time was about one 

 million sterling a year. In 1902 the Chancellor of 

 the Exchequer, Sir Michael Hicks- Beach, reimposed 

 the duty. 



When Mr. Ritchie, in March, 1903, took the ill- 

 advised step of abolishing the shilling duty on the 

 imports of wheat, he deliberately sacrificed a revenue 

 of about ;^ 2, 500,000 sterling, without lowering, in the 

 least, the price of bread. Indeed, within a few 

 months (in August) after the duty was taken off, the 

 price of bread went up. The only real effect of the 

 abolition of this small tax was to transfer any advan- 

 tage which might belong: to it from the British farmer 

 to his over-sea competitor, and thus to increase the 

 profits of the latter by a quarter of a million sterling 

 a year, which had to be made good by the taxpayer 

 at home. 



But supposing that the price of bread were influenced 

 by Mr. Chamberlain's proposed duty of 2s. per quarter 

 on foreign corn, and that the consumer had to pay the 

 whole of the extra price, that extra price would be so 

 small that there is no coin of the realm small enough 

 to represent it. The "man in the street" can make 

 the calculation for himself. Six and a half bushels of 

 wheat, on which the proposed import duty would be 

 IS. 7id., produces one sack (280 lb.) of flour. A sack 

 of flour produces on an average about ninety-four 

 quartern loaves, so that the is. 7^d. duty, divided by 

 ninety-four, gives the additional cost of the 4-lb. loaf.^ 



^ The exact number of loaves depends on the quality of wheat used 

 and the weight of the bushel, which varies in different parts of the country. 



