238 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 
in a weekly wage of 10s. to 12s. and a 55s. price of wheat, and Joseph 
Arch started his Union in 1872. Even more important, transport was 
developing and the new countries were opening up. 
The fall began in 1874. Wheat had been 55s. 9d. per quarter on the 
average for the year. In 1875 it was down to 45s. 2d., a price at which 
many farmers could hardly grow it, in spite of the low wages. The United 
States was sending wheat here in quantity and greatly underselling our 
farmers. Prices in 76 and ’78 were hardly any better (though ’77 had 
been), and then in ’79 came a terribly wet year, the worst in the century, 
when wheat all over the country was badly lodged and badly harvested. 
Farmers’ resources had been depleted by the low prices, and now came 
low yields and a very expensive harvest. In the old days the price would 
have risen and righted matters, but now importations increased so much 
that prices fell below 44s. Many farmers were ruined; some hung on 
hoping for better times, which, however, never came. Another Royal 
Commission was appointed, and pronounced the distress to be of 
“unprecedented severity.’ But worse was to come. More and more 
wheat came from the United States at still lower prices, till in 1894 and ’95, 
through a financial crisis in the Western States, wheat fell to 23s. per 
quarter as the average for the year, while many farmers had to sell for 
much less. These very low prices did not benefit the townspeople, and 
they ruined the countryman, causing terrible distress among labourers ' 
and farmers, and shattering completely the wonderful system of agriculture 
that had taken 100 years to build up. Lawes had to confess that science 
gould do nothing to help; it had increased yields per acre and could 
do so again, but the trouble was too deep-seated to be cured by higher 
farming. 
How had all this come about ? For 200 years American farmers and 
English farmers had never seriously competed, and now all of a sudden 
the competition became terribly severe. But there had been this difference 
between American and British farming. Over there man-power had 
never been abundant, and from the outset American and Canadian 
engineers had invented machines to do the work with less labour; they 
did not, like the British engineers, aim at doing it better or at increasing 
output per acre; their aim was to increase output per man, and in the 
struggle between the two the higher output per man had won. These 
developments had been proceeding for many years, and had been much 
helped by the admirable system of agricultural education that had grown 
up in the States. So great was American faith in education that even in 
1862, during the anxious days of the Civil War, Justin Morrill had been 
able to get the Morrill Act passed and signed by Abraham Lincoln, 
establishing in each State a College of Agriculture. The scope of these 
colleges was widened in 1887 when another great Act, the Hatch Act, 
provided federal funds for setting up agricultural experiment stations at 
each of them; further funds were provided by a supplementary Act in 
1890. The American farmer of 1894 was therefore well provided with 
information. He suddenly became an effective force in the world because 
the chain of transport arrangements from the prairies to the British 
ports was then completed. British farmers tried in several ways to meet — 
the situation. Some, like Mecchi of Essex, struggled manfully with the 
