THE "CHEAP" LOAF CRY 139 



Further Evidence against Free-trade cheapening Bread. 



Here is, however, the evidence of another writer, who is 

 honestly striving to point out to the people of this country the 

 clanger they are incurring in running after this cheap loaf 

 spook — 



" Anti-Fiscal reformers are never tired of reiterating that Free- 

 trade gave the people cheap food ; heart-rending pictures of the 

 misery of the people under ' Protection ' are painted ; in nearly 

 every village some old inhabitant remembers ' when bread was a 

 shilling a loaf,' and firmly believes, and states, that 'Protection' 

 was the cause. As a matter of fact, they remember the price of 

 bread during the Crimean War, when it reached a price not attained 

 since 1814, with the one exception of the single year 1847 — the year 

 after the repeal of the Corn Laws. The following information, 

 taken from the ' Agricultural Returns of Great Britain,' shows 

 what a small effect on prices the repeal of the duties had. The 

 average price of wheat for the three years prior to the repeal of 

 the duties, viz., 1843-4-5, was 51s. per quarter, and bread for the 

 same period ruled at l'85d. in London, and at G'lbd. per loaf in 

 Edinburgh. For three years after the repeal, viz., 1 847-8-!) wiieat 

 averaged 54s. lOd. per quarter, and bread in London 8"(!6f?., and 

 Edinburgh I'hOd. A considerable advance in each case. Excluding 

 the three years of the Crimean AVar — 1854-5-6 — when wheat reached 

 the abnormal average of 12s. \d. per quarter, and bread 10i,V/. per 

 loaf, the average prices from 1847 to 1877, both years inclusive, 

 were for wheat 505. 9d per quarter, or just ?)d. per quarter below 

 the prices before the repeal, and bread — mark this well — was higher, 

 at 8* 13d per loaf. When thirty-one years of Free-trade could show 

 no better result than this, it is surely reasonable to attribute the 

 subsequent decline to other causes. What really reduced the price 

 of wheat was the opening up of fresh sources of supply in Russia 

 and America, the tapping of those supplies by railways, the re- 

 placing of sailing ships with steamers, the introduction of agricul- 

 tural machinery and elevators; in short, to the all-round cheapening 

 of the means of production, liandling, and transit. If, however, you 

 do not adopt Fiscal Reform and stimulate production in your own 

 Empire, your food will touch higher prices in the near future than 

 the present generation has known. You procure nearly a ([uarter of 

 all the wheat and flour you use to-day from the United States ; 

 within a very short time, if the present rate of increase in their 

 population is maintained, the United States wnll require all the grain 

 they produce to feed their own people." * 



Tariff-reformers on "Cheap Bread" 



In further corroboration of the folly of still believing in 

 this shadowy phantasm of cheap hrcad, the following is taken 



* " Imperial Prosperity and its ' Open, Sesame,' " pp. 7, 8, 



