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iS8o.j Organic Synthesis and its Social Bearings . 
trade, that prices are systematically kept up by the inten- 
tional waste of a portion of the available supplies. This is 
notoriously the case, as far as England is concerned, with 
fish. Those who rule the trade prefer to sell 50 tons at 
6d. per lb. in place of 100 tons at 3d., and with an article 
so perishable they find little difficulty in carrying out their 
schemes. A great misfortune is that whilst in the manu- 
facture of hardware, or of textile and fictile goods, the 
progress of invention has increased the profits of the pro- 
ducer, nothing similar holds good in the growth of food. 
Strange as it may sound, the rudest agriculture is relatively 
the most lucrative. If a man roughly breaks up a fruitful 
piece of ground, scatters seed over it, and, without troubling 
himself much with its after-nurture, gathers in the crop, his 
gross produce is almost exclusively net profit. But if he is 
obliged to expend a large amount of labour, and to employ 
costly appliances, mechanical and chemical, though his 
gross returns are very much larger than those of his rude 
forerunner, his percentage of profit is necessarily much 
lower, and he may be driven— as are many English farmers 
of the present day — to reflect whether his capital might not 
be more usefully invested. To this comes the further faCt 
that the agriculturist is exceptionally exposed to unforeseen 
disasters from the seasons. Hence we find, in brief, that 
the interests of the food-producer and of the food-consumer 
are in antagonism. The question arises which of these 
two bodies is to be sacrificed to the other ? This question 
has now been debated in England for many years, to the 
great glorification of the speech-makers, statesmen, agitators, 
and economists of high or low degree. Extensions of fran- 
chise, protection, free trade, trades-unionism have been 
prescribed and tried, but none of them has healed the 
disease. Is it, then, too much to hope that John Bull may 
begin to look for help in a quite different quarter, like the 
piper’s cow ? 
“ The coo considered wi’ hersel’ 
That wind wad never fill her.” 
May we not look for relief to inventors and discoverers 
rather than to orators ? 
We use for our support plants and animals. We eat such 
beings either entirely or in portions, or we extract from them 
by mechanical and chemical processes certain substances 
needful for our maintenance. Why do we make use of their 
intervention ? Simply because we cannot derive nourish- 
ment in a direCt manner from the soil, from the air, and the 
