748 REPORT — 1901. 



due to cuiTPiiny iufluence:-, bur. £il?o to had seasous aud to foreign competition. 

 Althoiiorh tbe active currency influence has passed, by it agriculture has been left 

 in an inferior position as compared with other industries, which were more readily 

 able to adjust themselves to altered currency conditions. Agricultural capital 

 was immensely reduced during the period ; but along with the material shrinkage 

 there were many important developments made. Miss Ormerod, between 1877 

 and 1901, laid the foundation of the subject of economic agricultural entomology. 

 John Garton, of Newton -le- Willows, began in 1880 the system of multiple cross- 

 breedino- of plants which has resulted in the production of an infinite number of 

 improved breeds of crop plants ; agricultural shows have become more numerous 

 and successful ; the cream separator (the Alfa Laval, &c. ) has revolutionised the 

 butter ti'ade ; the advantages of the system of ensilage have been demonstrated ; 

 Thomas's phosphate powdm- has been employed to encourage clover and improve 

 permanent pastures ; the spraying of potatoes with Bordeaux mixture to prevent 

 disease, and of grain crops with .3 per cent, solutions of sulphate of copper to 

 de.stroy charlock, have both been successful ; Hellriegel and Wilforth demonstrated 

 the power of leguminous crops, acting in symbiotic relations with minute oi'ganisms 

 living in the wart-like processes of their roots, to fix the free nitrogen of the air ; 

 the systems of rotation of crops have also been revolutionised. 



Some of the difficulties with which farmers have to contend are the increase of 

 'anbury' in turnips, the development of a bacterial disease on the swede crop, and 

 the ever-increasing difficulty of the rural exodus, and the scarcity, inefficiency, and 

 dearness of labour, aggravated by an imperfect system of education for children 

 in rural districts. 



5, Food and Land Tenure. By E. Atkinson. 



SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER. 14. 

 The Section did not meet. 



MONDAY, SEPTEMBER IG. 

 The following Papers were read : — 



1 . A Business Man on Supply and Demand. By T. S. Cree. 



Mr. Goschen, some time ago, expressed regret that there was so little sympathy 

 between business men and economists. This want of sympathy is traceable to a 

 departure by some of our economists from certain views formerly held both by 

 economists and business men, and still generally held by the latter. 



A chief principle of all sound economics is the law of supply and demand ; the 

 law that supply and demand are always tending to an equalitv at a certain exact 

 point in price. That law has come to be questioned : John Stuart Mill accepted 

 a correction of it, namely, that the equality was established, not at an exact point 

 in price, but that several different prices might satisfy the law, which, indeed, only 

 brought the price to a kind of tableland where it ceased to be operative, leaving & 

 considerable range of price to be determined by other forces than the operation of 

 the law of supply and demand. JMill held with Thornton tliat in the labour 

 market, in fighting for a share of that indetermined range of price, the employers 

 possessed so great an advantage by having the initiative in naming the price that 

 nothing but a strong combination of workmen could give the workers even a chance 

 of successfully holding their own against the employers. 



