ECONOMIC FACTORS 235 



is accordingly low, and has little chance of rising unless considerable 

 technical progress is made in agricultural methods, or the rate of 

 increase in the population is checked. 1 



What is of importance to observe here is that the progress of 

 industrialism in recent times and at the present day, in any parti- 

 cular area causes increased general prosperity, and thus leads to a 

 greater purchasing-power for foodstuffs. The direct result of this 

 is that animal foodstuffs are more freely consumed by the average 

 unit of the population. The increased prosperity of the towns, 

 appearing partly in the form of higher wages in industrial occupa- 

 tions reacts upon the rate of wages paid to agricultural workers in 

 the same economic region, causing these wages to rise in sympathy. 

 Thus the progress of industrialism, so marked in a number of 

 countries at the present time, tends in general to cause an increase 

 in the purchasing power of workers all round, and, as a consequence, 

 to increase their per capita consumption of animal foodstuffs. 2 

 Among European countries Germany and Great Britain are instances 

 in point ; in both of them the consumption of meat (and of other 

 animal foodstuffs apparently as well) rose continuously during the 

 second half of the 19th century and the first decade of the 20th 

 century. 3 



It is also to be observed that the urban industrial worker, whose 

 work tends to be both monotonous and sedentary, requires a more 

 varied and richer diet to maintain health and efficiency than the 

 agricultural worker does. The latter lives in the main an open-air 

 life with plenty of movement, and is able to subsist on coarser 

 food ; having a stronger digestion, he can manage with a smaller 

 proportion of the foodstuffs of high protein or fat ratio in his diet. 

 The average agricultural worker also, in Europe at any rate, has 



1 The introduction of modern methods and machinery into agriculture in 

 countries of dense rural population living at a low standard, presents peculiar 

 difficulties owing, in the first place, ' to a low standard of intelligence and 

 widespread ignorance; in the second place, to the very limited resources of 

 the peasants ; and in the third, to the fact that the land is often divided into 

 uneconomically small holdings suited only to hand labour. The best remedy 

 in such conditions seems to be the introduction of agricultural co-operation. 



2 The working of this process causes an interesting set of problems to arise. 

 The increased demand for animal foodstuffs on the part of town populations 

 has caused pressure upon supplies, the production of which is handicapped 

 by the scarcity of labour due to the attraction of the more able-bodied to the 

 towns and to the sympathetic rise in agricultural wages. Price-cutting com- 

 petition in animal foodstuffs has already under these conditions worked 

 itself out in the world-market, and prices have commenced to rise. If the 

 urban consumer is not to suffer, the remedies that suggest themselves are 

 first and foremost, the application of technical science to agriculture ; and 

 second, a simplifying and cheapening of the systems of marketing and dis- 

 tribution. 



3 The rise was due, no doubt, in the main to increased supplies, but their 

 greater purchasing power enabled the populations of these countries to divert 

 a larger share of the world's surplus directly (or indirectly in the form of 

 feedstuffs) to their own consumption. Other countries, e.g., those of Southern 

 Europe, did not benefit in this way to the same extent. 



