818 EEPORT — 1887. 



aro-ument already dealt with. But the question whether coal and iron at home are 

 really so indispensable to our material growth as is sometimes assumed appears 

 itself so important that I may he excused for specially discussing this question, 

 notwithstanding that it has virtually been disposed of, as far as any explanation of 

 past facts is concerned, by what has been already said. 



The argument proceeds on the suppositii )n — which is no doubt well founded in the 

 abstract and as far as the past experience of mankind is concerned — that in addi- 

 tion to natural capacities of its own a community requires for its prosperity certain 

 natural advantages : fertility of soil, rich and easily w^orlved mines, a genial climate 

 in which labour may conveniently be carried on, and so forth. A community possess- 

 intr all these things, or the like things, will flourish, but as it begins to lose any of 

 them its prosperity must become precarious, and population must flow to the places 

 where they can be secured. Of course climate is not a tiling which changes, as far 

 as any practical experience is concerned ; but relatively the advantage of a fertile soil 

 may be lost, as England has lately lost it in comparison with the United States and 

 other new countries, its soil having become inadequate for the whole population ; and 

 still more the advantage of mines, especially mines of coal and iron, on which the 

 miscellaneous industries of a manufacturing country depend, may be lost. Hence, it 

 is said, the check to our rate of growth in recent years. We have long since lost our 

 ao-ricultural advantages by comparison. Now we are also beginning to lose the 

 special advantages which coal and iron have given. Our mines are becoming less 

 rich than those of foreign countries, and the balance is turning against us. Why 

 should not population relatively flow from England to the United States and 

 other countries as it has passed within the limits of the United Kingdom itself from 

 Cornwall and Sussex to Staffordshire, Lancashire, Yorkshire, and the north .^^ In 

 this view the coal famine of 1S73 was the sign of a check such as Mr. Jevons anti- 

 cipated. AVhat has happened since is only a sequence of the like causes. 



I need not repeat in opposition to this view what has already been said as to 

 the inadequacy of any actual decline in our foreign trade to account for such a 

 check to our general growth as is supposed to have occurred. If the loss of our 

 natural advantages of coal and iron in addition to agriculture are having the 

 effects suppo.sed, we ought to witness them in our foreign trade, and in fact we do 

 not witness them to the extent required for the production of the phenomenon in 

 question. 



What I wish now specially to urge is that in consequence of the progress of 

 invention and the practical application of inventions in modern times the theory 

 itself has begun to be less true generally than it has been. It is no longer so neces- 

 sary, as it once was, as in fact it always has been until \ery lately, that people 

 .should live where their food and raw materials are grown. The industry of the 

 world having become more and more manufacturing and, if one may say so, artistic, 

 and less agricultural and extractive, the natural advantages of a fertile soil and 

 rich mines are less important to a manufacturing community than they were at 

 any former period of the world's history, because of the new cheapness of convey- 

 ance. Under the new conditions, I believe it is impossible to doubt, climate, accu- 

 mulated wealth, acquired manufixcturing skill, concentration of population become 

 more important factors than mere juxtaposition to the natural advantages of fertile 

 soil and rich mines. The facts seem at any rate worth investigating, judging by 

 what has happened in England and other old countries in the last half-centmy and 

 by what is still happening there. 



Take first the question of food. Wheat is now convej-ed from the American 

 Far West to Liverpool and London and any other ports in the Old World for 

 something like five shillings per quarter — equal to about half a farthing on the 

 pound of bread, or a halfpenny on the quartern loaf. The difference between the 

 towns of a country with fertile soil, therefore, and the towns of a country with 

 inadequate soil is represented by this small difference in the price of bread. At 

 about fivepence the quartern loaf the staff' of life may be about 10 per cent, cheaper 

 in the fertile country than it is in a country which does not grow its own food at 

 all, and which may be thousands of miles away. As the staff" of life only enters 

 into the expenditure of the artisan to the extent of 20 per cent, at the outside, and 



