Tlie Indian Wlieat Trade. 
77 
In a foot-note to this table it is explained that the cost 
of transport from the producing districts to Jubbulpcre and 
Chicago is not included in the amounts put down. There is 
no reason to suppose that the cost of local carriage has decreased 
in India, as it is chiefly by road ; but it has decreased in America 
on the railways Avest of Chicago, and allowance for this would 
bring the reduction on transport from America closer to that on 
transport from India than it is in the table. 
A great deal has been said about the fall in the exchange 
value of the Russian paper rouble, as calculated to reduce the 
cost of Russian wheat. Mr. W. J. Harris, writing on Feb- 
ruary 24, points out that the value of the rouble had gone down 
to 19J(Z. (there has been a farther reduction since), whereas only 
four years ago it was nearly 2od., and forty years ago it was 
old. That the peasantry of Russia have not felt the fuU effect 
of the depreciation may be regarded as certain ; but the evidence 
as to the purchasing power of the paper rouble, compared with 
what it was four years ago, is not sufficient to warrant any 
certain conclusion. If the rouble will buy as much as ever of 
most things that the Russian peasant requires, it goes only half 
as far as it once went in the payment of taxes, and the Russian 
peasant is much more heavily taxed than the ryot. At any rate, 
as the exchange price of the rouble has been falling for years 
past, that fact was known to the Russian Agricultural Depart- 
ment when (in 1887) the conclusion that wheat-gi'owing in 
Russia did not pay was declared. 
Some remarks upon the advantages and disadvantages of 
Russia as a wheat-producing country which appeared in the 
Miller " last November are well worth quoting : — 
" There is no doubt that the capacities of Russia for cereal production 
are very great, and our farmers would doubtless have long ago keenly felt 
the pressure of her competition had it not been for one saving clause. The 
one thing which has hindered Russia from making the full weight of her 
great cereal wealth felt in the world has been her own backward economic 
condition. Russia has an abundance of fertile land, but she lacks railways, 
elevators, adequate means of maritime transport — in fact, all those ' resources 
of civilisation ' which are so freely commanded by the United States : and 
these appliances are not created by the ukase of a Czar, they can solelv be 
called into being by civilised brains, and it is in brain-power — in other 
words, in civilisation — that Russia is hopelessly deficient. No doubt she has 
all the potentialities for becoming a most formidable competitor in our agri- 
cultural markets, but we doubt whether she will be able to make the weight 
of her arm fully felt luitil her moujiks have risen a little nearer to the level 
of the American farmer." 
After alluding to the disadvantages incurred by Russia through 
her exclusive fiscal policy, the writer adds : — 
"Another point is this, that the stronger varieties of Russian wheat are 
of great value to English millers when they can be obtained at a fair price. 
