68 EXTIIACTS FROM DIPLOMATIC AND CONSULAR [June 1895. 



REPORTS. 



It is regarded as a natural consequence of the protection 

 enacted in favour of cereals that millers should ask for some 

 compensating privileges. M. Cochery in his budget report for 

 1895, said " Millers always require, whatever the harvest may 

 have been, an addition to the home supply. They grind a 

 certain quantity of hard dry grain which is not to be found in 

 France. This grain is mixed with native French wheat which 

 millers consider to be too moist and too soft to produce bakeable 

 flour." 



For the mixtures which millers consider necessary to meet 

 the deficiency in French crops, speculative importers hold large 

 quantities of grain in bond, which is either entered for consump- 

 tion direct or admitted free of duty under certain conditions. 

 The quantity admitted free enjoj^s that privilege on condition 

 that it shall be exported as flour. Corn growers complain 

 that the flour exported is not the honest outcome of the milling. 

 They also complain that bonding is unfavourable to them so 

 far as it allows speculators to hoard wheat free of duty till the 

 moment when it can be thrown on the market with advantage 

 to speculators and detriment to the home grower. 



Another grievance of French agriculturists is said to be that of 

 railway rates which, it is alleged, favour import through-trafiic, 

 and impose diflerential burdens on home-grown corn. Steps have 

 been taken by the Government to remedy some of these defects. 

 Corn bonding will, it is stated, be limited to six or even two 

 months. Private bonding will be reduced to a minimum. Millers 

 will not be allowed to export flour that has not been certified as 

 the produce of foreign grain ; and all tariffs of penetration are, or 

 will be, abolished. As regards the effects of these measures, 

 Sir J. Crowe observes that it may be easily shown that if bonding 

 is suppressed or curtailed, it will diminish the earnings of 

 shipowners and railways, while milling, in which after all 

 Frenchmen are largely employed, will lose some custom. If, 

 again, the proposal should be adopted to re-establish the 



surtaxe d'entrepot " for cereals, ships will no longer be able 

 to call at intermediate ports for orders, and a new barrier will 

 be raised against persons engaged in navigation. 



Whilst the cultivation of wheat and other cereals tends to 

 increase rather than decrease throughout the whole of France, 

 such is the decline in prices that growers are practically at their 

 wits' end. As regards the great food product, wheat, depression 

 and shrinking of price have been co-existent with an increase in 

 the area of the sowing. No attempt has been made to meet the 

 difficulties of the situation by changes in methods of growing. 

 The Government have done their best to urofe and to advocate 

 measures tending to improve cultivation by providing the use 

 of pure chemical manures, showing how prime cost may be 

 reduced and yields be multiplied. Concurrently, the legislature 

 has enacted a series of new duties for the purpose of protecting 

 French producers from competitors abroad. 



