174 



PRODUCTION 



areas. One or two social factors, which are really independent of 

 this prime factor, will be discussed below. 



It has been noted in the introduction above that there is no hard 

 and fast distinction between animal foodstuffs and other kinds of 

 agricultural produce, so far as production is concerned. Animal 

 industries are only one branch of general agriculture, and attention 

 may be given to them or withdrawn from them, within certain 

 limits, more or less at will. 1 It follows, therefore, that at any given 

 time the same general relations hold for animal foodstuffs 

 between supply and demand, as for other kinds of agricultural 

 produce. It is true that in some instances land is suitable only for 

 maintaining food-producing animals, or has such special advantages 

 for that purpose, that other forms of agriculture are more or less 

 unprofitable ; but the great bulk of the world's supplies of animal 

 foodstuffs is not produced on such land. In any case, cheap trans- 

 port for food cereals and for feedstuffs tends to level out such differ- 

 ences in the utility of land. Owing to changes in the methods of 

 production, however, the prices of various kinds of foodstuffs 

 show different rates of advance in the period from 1896 onwards. 

 In this matter the application of machinery and the adoption of 

 simpler methods of production have played an important part in 

 special instances. The table below shows that meat has risen 

 faster in retail price in London than wheat, and both have risen 

 faster than dairy produce, in the production of which machinery 

 of different kinds has greatly reduced the human labour in- 

 volved. 2 The production of meat, on the other hand, has rather 

 become a more complicated process owing to the comparative 

 decline of ranching and the corresponding increase of special 

 feeding. 3 



Retail prices in London, taking those for 1896 as 100 : 4 



1 Compare Marshall, Principles, V., viii., para. 4. 



2 See Chap. ix. above, pp. 151-3. The actual rise in the prices of dairy 

 produce from other sources in London in the period 1900-1913 may be 

 masked to some extent by the growing imports of cheap Siberian butter. 



8 The London prices for meat in the period 1900-1905 were perhaps abnor- 

 mally depressed by American supplies wliich were sold at what were to some 

 extent " dumping " prices. See (Cd. 2644) QQ. 4084-4117 and 4125-7. 



4 Adapted from the Board of Trade Index Numbers by converting from the 

 year 1900 as base to the year 1896. 





