THE QUESTION OF WHEAT. 



77i 



Interesting as has been the record of wheat imports into the 

 United Kingdom for the twenty years from 1871 to 1890, the course 

 of events since has been sensational in their number and suddenness. 

 The famine of 1891 in Kussia crippled her export trade for the time, 

 and, indeed, threatened to destroy it by the necessity of creating 

 deposits of grain to guard against the recurrence of so dread a visita- 

 tion. A series of poor crops in India raised domestic prices of grains 

 to a point at which shipments became unprofitable, and this weak- 

 ening of wheat supply culminated in the plague and famine which 

 wiped Indian wheat out of the European market. Argentina began 

 to fulfill its promise of production, and after a meteoric progress col- 

 lapsed in disaster, its entire crop being destroyed by a plague of 

 locusts. Russia and the United States alone remained as a source 

 of supply, and under the stress of demand the price of wheat rose 

 rapidly in 1897. These various conditions may best be related in 

 the next article. 



The English wheat acreage meanwhile has gone steadily down 

 under the strain of outside competition. In 1895 only 1,417,483 

 acres were returned as under wheat a loss of nearly 2,000,000 acres 

 since 1867. The prediction that the United States could not export 

 wheat under 48s. per quarter has been answered by continued ex- 

 port with wheat at 22s. per quarter. A royal commission on agri- 

 culture can make no definite suggestion for its betterment, and the 

 following tables express more eloquently than could any words the 

 kaleidoscopic changes in sources of imports since 1890, all of which 

 have depressed wheat-growing in England, while shuffling these 

 outside sources of supply in a manner truly remarkable. As a rec- 

 ord of sudden change, these figures could hardly be matched in 

 recent economic experience : 



A period of stress such as English agriculture has passed through 

 leaves its permanent results, and the social changes wrought in the 

 British Islands have been great and trying. The landowner has 

 seen his rents fall to a point below which no profit can accrue from 



