CORN PRICES 55 



decrease in the value of the crop of 1894 as compared 

 with that of 1874 of no less than 6&46 per cent The 

 average value of the two crops per acre in 1874 was 

 ;^io 4s 4|d, and in 1894 only ^3 8s 6|d.^ 



Taking some of the separate farm accounts put in, we 

 find, in one case, the value of wheat per acre given as 

 ;(Ci2 los 9d in 1873, and as £2 i8s iid in 1893, ^ differ- 

 ence of 76*4 per cent, and comparing the average of the 

 years 1873-77 with the average of 1888-92, there is a 

 drop in the value of the wheat crop of £4 17s 6d, or 47.3 

 per cent., and comparing the same figures with the 

 average of 1893-94, there is a drop of £y is lojd, or 68"4 

 per cent In another instance the corresponding de- 

 creases of value are 43 and 67*5 per cent Again, 

 barley sank from i^9 13s id per acre in 1873 to £s 6s 46. 

 in 1892, to £4 4s, in 1893, ^^^ ^^ the unfavourable 

 season of 1894 to £2 14s, a fall between 1873 and 1894 

 of ;^6 19s id, or 72 per cent^ 



Oats averaged 157 per cent less in value in the years 

 1884-94 than in the years 1874-84, while in 1874 the 

 average price was 29s 2d, and in 1894 14s 6d, a decrease 

 between those two years of 50*3 per cent. 



On one of the best farms in Cambridgeshire, 565 

 acres, the receipts for corn in 1874 were ;^4222, in 1894 

 were ;^I585, a difference of ;^2636, the land being 

 farmed on the same lines.^ 



There runs through all these calculations a very 

 natural disposition to take the bottom figures which 

 have been reached, perhaps at exceptional moments 

 (such as the autumn markets of 1894), and compare 

 them with the top figures which have also been in some 

 sense exceptional. It is plain, however, that, with 

 ample discount for this natural tendency, there has been 

 an enormous depreciation in the values of cereal crops, 

 and that to enable agriculturists to continue growing 

 them some corresponding diminution of the cost of 

 production is absolutely necessary, if prices remain at 

 anything like their recent level. 



' Wilson Fox, Lincolnshire, Appendix A. 3 («), pp. 42, 43. 

 * Ibid., p. 42. ' Ibid., Cambridge, p. 41. 



