COST PRICE AND COSTS OF PRODUCTION 179 



coming. Since also intensive agriculture (including animal rearing 

 as the main feature) has begun to be practised most in regions of 

 dense population where manufacturing industries with their com- 

 paratively high rates of wages tend to compete with agriculture 

 for the supplies of labour, the general result is an advance in the 

 price of labour in the rural districts of intensive agriculture. The 

 time seems to be coming in the majority of temperate animal- 

 rearing countries when cheap labour, like cheap land, will be a 

 thing of the past. In certain regions where there does not appear 

 to have been any marked rise in agricultural wages, as in parts of 

 England and of the Continent of Europe, it is probable that the 

 average quality of the labour available has suffered through the 

 withdrawal of the more intelligent and able-bodied young men to 

 town factories or by emigration to the newer countries overseas, 

 so that the real price has probably risen considerably. The general 

 movement throughout the world in the direction of shortening the 

 hours of work may also react unfavourably upon animal industries 

 in which the business of tending animals often demands long and 

 tedious hours of work. In other branches of agriculture there has 

 been a more evident compensation for shorter hours of work 

 through an increase in efficiency with the utilisation of machinery. 



Closely connected with the above is the marked withdrawal in 

 all industrial countries, of cheap female and even child labour 

 from the land. The young women find employment in the towns 

 in factories or (with the rapid increase in the proportion of the 

 middle-class population) in domestic service ; the children are 

 kept longer at school, and, so far as they live in towns whither 

 their parents have migrated, their free time is not available for 

 miscellaneous farm work. Now the tending and feeding of animals 

 and poultry were often left to women and children under the system 

 common enough in many parts of Europe a generation or more 

 ago. The employment of such labour had for its chief, and perhaps 

 its only merit, that it cost little or nothing. 



Finally, in connection with the question of labour costs, since an 

 increasing proportion of the world's supplies of animal foodstuffs 

 has, during the last thirty years, been produced in the newer 

 countries, where labour is universally expensive, it follows that 

 am^ changes in the labour costs in them tend to be reflected more 

 strongly in the prices of animal foodstuffs in the world-market. 

 Now the relative decline of the ranching system, which required 

 little labour in proportion to the output, has since about the year 

 1900 considerably increased the labour required per unit produced, 

 with a consequent distinct rise in market prices. 



On the whole, it appears that the item of labour in the cost of 

 production of animal foodstuffs has risen considerably, except 

 where machinery has been of material assistance, and will quite 

 probably rise still further. 



Under the third factor, namely, the charges for capital, it is 



