PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 



763 



Li coinparisou willi )v;iis for luitioiial cxisteiici', such as tliiit against 

 Napoleon and in a still sterner sense that in which we are now engaged, other 

 conflicts appear insignificant. The Crimean War, however, did affect our food 

 supplies and had a reflex action on British agriculture. The cessation of 

 imports from Russia caused a rise in the price of corn. The average price 

 of wheat rose to 72s. 5r/. per qr. in 1854, 74«. 8(/. in 1S55, and 69.«. 2d. in 1856. 

 Only once befoi'e (in 1S30) during the ))revious thirty-five years had it risen 

 above 70.«. There were then no agricultural returns, but the estimates of 

 Lawes, which were generally accepted, put the area under wheat at a little more 

 than 4,000,000 acres, a higher figure than has been suggested for any other 

 period. It is, indeed, highly probable that the Crimean War marked the 

 maximum of wheat cultivation in this country. It was a time of great agri- 

 cultural activity and of rapid progress. To their astonishment, farmers had 

 found, .after an interval of panic, that the Repeal of the Corn Laws had not 

 obliterated British agriculture and that even the price of wheat was not invari- 

 ably lower than it had often been before 1846. Caird had preached ' High 

 Farming ' in 1848 and found many disciples, capital was poured into the land, 

 and the high prices of the Crimean period stimulated enterprise and restored 

 confidence in agriculture. 



To generalise very roughly, it may be said that while the Napoleonic wars 

 were followed by the deepest depression in agriculture, the Crimean War was 

 followed by a heyday of agricultural prosperity which lasted for over twenty 

 years. What the agricultural sequel to the present war may be, I leave to 

 others to estimate, and I turn to consider briefly some of its effects on British 

 farming up to the present time. 



Harvest had just begun when war bioke out on August 4; indeed, in the 

 earlier districts a good deal of corn was already cut. The harvest of 1914 

 was, in fact, with the exception of that of 1911, the earliest of recent years, 

 as it was also one of the most quickl_y«'gathered. The agricultural situation may 

 perhaps be concisely shown by giving the returns of the crops then in hand, 

 I.e., in course of gathering or in the ground, with the numbers of live stock 

 as returned on farms in the previous June. The figures are for the United 

 Kingdom, and I add the average for the preceding ten years for comparison : 



Wheat 

 Barlev 

 Oats " . 

 Beans . 

 Peas . 



Potatoes 



Turnips ai:d swede 



Mangold 



Hay . . . 



Hops 



Cattle . 

 Sheep . 

 Pigs 

 Horses . 



Farmers had thus rather more than their usual supplies of nearly every 

 crop, the chief deficiencies being in peas, roots, and hay. The shortage of the 

 hay-crop was, however, in some measure made up by the large stocks left from 

 the unusually heavy crop of 1913. It was fortunate from the food-eupply point 



