68b 
Agricultural Depression at Home. and Abroad. 
pay wages High enough to induce their fellow countrymen to 
stay with them, they depend more and more upon the services 
of Russians, Poles, and Austrians, who migrate to the eastern 
portions of the empire especially. Mr. Drage in his report on 
Germany says that “ of late a large number of small German 
proprietors have found themselves forced by the continual de- 
pression of prices to give up their holdings and to emigrate.” 
In some parts of the empire the plots of land on which families 
used to subsist are now too small to support them. In these 
congested districts migration and emigration are necessary as a 
relief to a population too large to be supported upon the meagre 
returns obtained from the land. Great benefit has resulted from 
the multiplication of agricultural credit banks, which have saved 
thousands of the peasant-farmers from the ruinous clutches of 
usurers ; but still large and small cultivators alike are suffering 
severely from the fall in prices. 
Holland, Belgium, and Scandinavia. 
A Consular report written as long ago as 1888 stated that 
the profits derived from agriculture in the Netherlands during 
the preceding five years had been small, and that rents had been 
reduced by 30 per cent., if not more, while the value of land 
had fallen very considerably, and many farmers and small land- 
owners had been obliged to abandon the struggle to make farm- 
ing pay, and to emigrate. In a Foreign Office report written 
by Sir Horace Rumbold in October 1892, the recommendations 
of a Special Commission appointed to consider questions of land 
tenure and taxation were summarised. This Commission was 
the outcome of a General Agricultural Commission appointed in 
1886, owing to the prevalence of depression. The Special Com- 
mission reported in 1892 in favour of the reduction or abolition 
of dues payable on transfers of land ; the extension of the 
BeMemrecht , or renewable lease at a fixed rent, common in 
Groningen, to the country generally; increased facilities to 
farmers for obtaining credit, a State mortgage bank being sug- 
gested for one thing ; and a few slight changes in the land- 
tenancy system. 
In Belgium a Labour Commission was appointed in 1886 in 
consequence of the crisis in agricultural and other industries. 
According to Mr. Drage, the evidence showed that the crisis 
pressed more severely upon the farmers than upon their work- 
men. Still a large number of men could not obtain work in the 
rural districts, and were obliged to migrate to the towns. The 
principal causes of agricultural depression mentioned were the 
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