675 
Agricultural Depression at Home and Abroad. 
the wheat crops of the world, derived mainly from official figures, 
are taken from 
Beerbolim’s List : — 
Wheat Crops of the World. 
Year 
Bushels 
Year 
Bushels 
1887 
2,804,000,000 
1891 
2,367,280,000 
1888 
2,208,000,000 
1892 
2,391,120,000 
1889 
2,129,970,000 
1893 
2,420,480,000 
1890 
2,238,600,000 
1 1894 
2,427,200,000 
Four years’ total 
. 8,880,576,000 
Four years’ total 
. 9,606,080,000 
Four years’ average 2,220,144,000 
1 “ Beerbobm ” has recently added 25,000,000 bushels to the estimate of 
this year’s American crop, making the total greater by that quantity ; but this 
addition seems to me hardly warranted at present. 
According to these estimates we have had a mean increase 
of 181,376,000 bushels per annum in the world during the last 
four years over the mean annual production of the previous four 
years. What the extra requirements of the increased population 
were it is impossible to state with any pretence to accuracy. 
The consumption is a greatly varying quantity, dependent as it 
is upon the production of rye and other food grains inferior to 
wheat, and, to a less extent, upon the production of potatoes. 
But no one would put the extra annual requirements of the last 
four years at more than about half the extra production shown 
above, as compared with that of the previous four years. At any 
rate, as stocks of wheat in the world have accumulated, it is 
certain that the production since 1890 has been in excess of the 
requirements, although the excess has been kept from becoming 
enormous by deficient crops of rye in some years. The acreage 
of rye in the world has certainly diminished in recent years ; and 
this fact, in connexion with the almost stationary acreage of 
wheat, helps to show that the fall in the price of wheat since 
1891 has been occasioned by extraordinary circumstances. The 
weekly average has been as low as 17s. 6d. a quarter; a price 
absolutely ruinous to growers who depend mainly upon wheat 
for a living, unless they possess some such enormous currency 
advantage as the farmers of the Argentine Republic, and they 
alone, now enjoy. I am as firmly convinced as ever that the 
supply of wheat will not be kept up to the requirements at less 
than double that price in this country ; for, although Argentine 
growers may keep on extending their wheat area if they get 
only 20s. a quarter here, so long as their gold premium enables 
them to take at least three times as much in their paper money, 
which possesses nearly as much purchasing power per dollar for 
all that they require as ever it had, the acreage in other countries 
would be much more rapidly reduced at such a price. 
The over-prcduction of wheat during the last four years has 
