544 
Notes on Victor DrummoncC s Report on the 
of the vast class who till the soil, and the changing character 
of the industries of a large number of persons as indicated in 
the increased amount of land taken up for actual settlement." 
At the time when the American agricultural class, aided by 
most favourable seasons, had thus made a fresh start in success, 
the British farmer had a series of causes working against him 
which were trying his courage and his patience most severely. 
While in America wages were falling to a very considerable 
extent, in England the wages of agricultural labourers were 
making a rapid rise, and the prices of agricultural produce, 
which had undoubtedly arrived at an unexampled height, fell, 
although successive unfavourable seasons most seriously re- 
duced the produce of the United Kingdom. Mr. Drummond 
writes : — " The British workman must, like the American 
workman, accept the inevitable for a time, that is, accept 
a moderate wage until there is a revival of trade ; those who 
will not do so must use the workmen's safety-valve — emi- 
gration. Employers will have to be satisfied with small profits 
from cheaper and purer goods ; the labourers with smaller 
wages and longer hours in some cases, and shorter hours in 
others. Every one must economise." 
In the meantime we must remember that every successful 
cultivator in the Western and Southern States of America 
becomes a liberal purchaser of our manufactures, and having no 
protection for his own industry, is anxious to receive imported 
goods as cheaply as possible ; and when once the consuming 
population is fully employed, we may look with less anxiety to 
the future of our own agriculture. 
Mr. Drummond reports, " that the total area of wheat fields in 
the United States may be put at 30,000,000 acres, or a surface 
nearly equal to the whole of England. The States that count 
acreage by millions are Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Ohio, Michi- 
gan, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, 
Kansas, and California. These States last year represented 
three-quarters of the wheat area ; this year they will aggregate 
about four-fifths. The greatest proportionate advance is west 
of the Missouri, in Kansas and Nebraska, where the increase 
is more than 500,000 acres. The increase of Iowa represents a 
still larger area. Minnesota is credited with another 500,000, 
and Wisconsin and Illinois, together, with somewhat more than 
another 500,000. The increase is heavy in California, Indiana, 
and in a less degree in Ohio and Michigan. The advance is 
largest in the spring-wheat region. Farms of two or three 
acres are becoming more numerous in New England. In ex- 
ceptional cases in Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont, 40 to 
