486 report— 1879. 



of the New England farmers of the true Anglo-Saxon descent. This class has 

 now all hut disappeared ; the factory workers are now Irishmen or Frenchmen, and 

 form a true manufacturing population. The true New Englander is rarely found there, 

 except in a position of trust as overlooker or manager. The change which has 

 taken place, and the depreciation in the value of land, has not affected the total 

 value of property in New England. The low price of food has been a great benefit 

 to the manufacturing industry, and the aggregate wealth of these States never 

 was greater than at the present time. 



If the competition of the great corn-fields of the Far West has thus told upon 

 States so near at hand, it is to be expected that some of its effects would be 

 felt in this country. Although the position of the farming interest for the twenty 

 years preceding 1873 was satisfactory and fairly prosperous, yet it was certainly 

 not progressive. The cultivation of wheat has gradually diminished, and the 

 breeding and feeding of cattle has been substituted for it ; the dependence of this 

 country upon foreign produce for its food has every year become greater ; the num- 

 ber of persons employed in agriculture has remained stationary, and their propor- 

 tion to the rest of the population has been continually diminished. The whole 

 increase of population during the last forty years has been absorbed in other- 

 pursuits than agriculture. In 1831, 28 per cent, of the population of England and 

 Wales was occupied in the business of agriculture ; the proportion is now less 

 than one-tenth ; and great as still is the importance of the agricultural interest as 

 compared with any other, its relative importance to the whole manufacturing and 

 commercial interests of this country is greatly changed. That, notwithstanding 

 this, the wealth of the country has increased by enormous leaps and bounds in the 

 interval is indisputable, and especially was this the case in the few years preceding 

 1873. That we have been able to provide for a population increasing by about three 

 millions in every ten years, without any increase of territory, and with a some- 

 what reduced agricultural industry, that we have been able to turn the tide of 

 pauperism, and to reduce it considerably as compared with the past, is a most 

 striking fact, and strong testimony to the soundness of our general system. It may 

 be that the enormous agricultural development in America will drive us further on 

 the same road ; but that it will permanently injure the economic condition of this 

 country as a whole is not to be believed. 



If, then, I am right in my explanation of the agricultural depression, it may be 

 connected not remotely with the depression which has weighed so heavily upon com- 

 merce and manufactures also during the last five years. Both are probably due in 

 the main to causes operating over a great area and over a long period, and are indica- 

 tions of the flow of the great tide of population and cultivation advancing 

 over the great plains of America. The collapse of credit in 1873, and the conse- 

 quent discredit and depression, has been much more felt on the other side of the 

 Atlantic than on this. The imports to the States fell off enormously ; the 

 investment there of foreign capital wholly ceased. In this country we have felt 

 severely the temporary loss of our largest customer for our exports ; • but our other 

 customers in every part of the world have made up for the bulk of our exports, 

 though not for their value. 



I am confident, however, it will be found, on making a comparison between this 

 country and others, that we have passed through the period of depression with 

 infinitely less suffering to the bulk of the people, and with less real loss of capital, 

 than in any other part of the world — excepting perhaps France, which has been saved 

 by the extraordinary thrift of her working population ; and that free imports and 

 consequent low prices have saved the labouring classes from what would otherwise 

 have been a period of far greater distress to them. Already there are symptoms of 

 revival in that quarter from whence the principal cause of the depression issued. 

 All accounts from America testify to the improved condition of trade, to the fact 

 that the immense extension of agriculture is producing its natural effect in reviving a 

 demand for manufacturing products, which her own workshops will soon be unable to 

 supply. With reviving trade and renewed confidence in America, the investment 



1 Our exports to the United States fell from an average of 36 millions for the 

 three years ending 1873, to 16 millions for the last three years. 



