144 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 
cent.). The actual yield per head is, of course, much higher in the 
settlements; the yield per acre is lower for wheat, though higher, for 
the other crops. “ aa 
In general, as we find European agriculture more progressive than 
might have been expected, so we find the superiority of the new lands 
in that field less clear. It is in the industrial field, with doubled or 
trebled output of coal, iron ore, and steel per head between 1890 and 
1910, that the progress of Europe’s settlements is most marked. 
In the third section of the table, taking Europe and its settlements 
together, we see progress, both in yield per acre and in yield per head 
of the four crops, more marked from 1900 to 1910 than from 1890 to 
1900, and nothing to suggest a limit to the expansion of the white 
races in the countries which they hold. 
The inclusion of Russia in any statistical table induces an element 
of uncertainty ; it is difficult to be sure that figures for successive years 
relate to the same area. As a check upon this a second table has been 
prepared, giving figures for Western and Central Europe; that is, Europe 
without Russia and Poland. ‘The broad results of this table from 1880 
to 1910 are the same as those for Europe as a whole. The yield per 
acre for each crop and for all crops together is at each epoch higher 
than when Russia is included and has increased more rapidly. ‘The 
yield of all crops per head of population has also increased, though 
less rapidly than for Europe as a whole; this is natural, for the exclusion 
of Russia means the exclusion of a country which has suffered least 
from urbanisation.? 
The main interest of the second table lies in the fact that it can be 
continued to a fifth epoch—1920—after the War. It shows that at that 
epoch the total production of wheat in Western and Central Europe 
was back again near the point where it stood in 1880; for the four 
crops together, production was about half-way between 1880 and 1890. 
In acreage under cultivation Europe had gone back still further, pro- 
bably fifty years at least; the yield per acre was at the point where it 
stood twenty or thirty years before. The population of course was 
much greater. Taking the years 1920-1921 together, two and three 
years after the last shot of the Great War had been fired, Western and 
Central Europe in total agricultural production had gone back a genera- 
tion; in production per head of population it had gone back fifty years 
and more. If Russia and Poland could be included the comparison 
2 ‘I'he maintained increase in the yield per acre and per head of total popu- 
lation in. Western and Central Europe is remarkable, in view of the common 
assumption that in ‘old countries’ the point of maximum return to agriculture 
has long been reached. Unfortunately actual census figures of occupations are 
available only for seven countries (Austria, Belgium, Denmark. France. Hungary. 
Italy. and the United Kingdom), omitting all-important Germany: these show 
for the seven countries a stationary yield of corn per head of the total popula- 
tion and a markedly higher yield per head of the agricultural population in 
1910 than in 1900 or 1890. The figures themselves are open to criticism, but it 
seems safe to assume that in Western and Central Europe as a whole, with 
the great industrial states of Germany and Britain, the agriculturists form. 
from 1880 onwards, a diminishing proportion of the total population; per head 
of those actually emploved on the land the yield must have risen yet more 
markedly than appears in the tables. 
