288 Timehri. 
Wheat is, of course, an exotic but a still sharper contrast is presented — 
by the price of bread in the colony and the price in the United Kingdom 
when we compare the market prices of wheat flour in the respective 
places. A sack of flour is usually estimated to yive about 90 loaves of 
4lb. each, or 3601b. of bread and the United Kingdom price is about 6$d. 
per loaf or 1;3d. per lb., say 3, cents, with flour about 40s. A sack of 
wheat flour (196lb.) in the colony should give on tbe same basis about 
255lb of bread. On the average of a number of loaves I have weighed, 
the local price works out at 6 to 8 cents per lb. of bread with flour at $7 
persack. There seems to be no reason for this large difference cost except 
that the local baker demands a much greater margin of profit than that 
which satisfies the United Kingdom operative, and perhaps that the 
labour employed is dearer. 
It will, of course, at once occur to anyone considering the cost of 
provisions that, as the editor of the “ Statist” points out, high prices 
benefit the producer but come against the wage-earner except in so far 
as wages rise with prices, which, though they tend to do so, do not 
always keep step with sharp fluctuations. Some time ago the question 
of cost of living in the colony was brought into prominence as a part of 
the complaint set forward by the labourers who were implicated in a riot 
on a Demerara estate It does not appear that this factor was the sole 
or even a principal one in the case in question; but that it is a possible 
factor in future troubles between capital and labour there is not much 
room for doubt. In passing it may be remarked that the agriculturist, 
if he can pruduce at anything like a similar cost to the agriculturist here, 
in the United States, Argentine or United Kingdom, is in a very happy 
position indeed, where produce is valued at approximately from two to 
three times its value to the grower in the places named. 
A friend at home cultivating some 2 to 3,000 acres in Midlothian 
has very kindly furnished me with some data as to costs of cultivation 
from 1910-1912 which I will give for comparison. 
The cost of raising 10 tons per acre of potatoes he puts at £19 15s 
sterling—say £2 per ton. As the selling price averaged 65s. per ton it 
appears that these crops must have been early on the market and secured the 
highest prices. Doubtless the high cost of production was expended with 
a view to this end. Of the total cost $16.80 was paid for labour, $25.80 
for draught animals. Implements, rent, manures and capital charges 
made up the remaining $55.20, 
Wheat crops in the same period averaged £12 2s. per acre, $14.40 
for wages, $9.60 for draught animals and $34.08 for other charges. 
‘The large average yield of 60 bushels secured shows that the culti- 
vation was of an up-to-date kind and the profit of $19 per acre may 
be taken as a high average even for good wheat lands. 
ei. 2 
