Convention— war and Food. 
229 
trade-center of the west, during the year 1876, was loAver than in 
1875, and below the average price of any year since the civil war, 
while the British wheat market averaged, in 1876, two shillings 
and eleven pence sterling per quarter, or about nine cents per bush¬ 
el higher than in 1875. This may be explained partly, by the fact 
that our western wheat in 1875 was inferior, and so le dishonest 
shipments did not come up to the sale samples in Europe, so we 
suffered in the British markets of 1876 for our rascality in 1875; 
and, too, much of the American wheat that reached Europe in 1876 
was from the inferior crop of the previous year. 
A war, to which one of the great European powers is a party, will 
compel several, if not all of the other great powers of Europe to be 
ready for an emergency, as nations in conflict are apt to tread on 
the toes of bystanders, until all are brought into a defensive if not 
an aggressive attitude*. At such a time cheap food is one of the 
most important sinews of war or sources of strength, and conse¬ 
quently exportations of breadstuffs cease in those countries that 
have withdrawn large bodies of men from industry into warfare or 
military establishments. To illustrate this point, as well as to es¬ 
tablish the fact that a manufacturing country like England requires 
more food than it produces, we may consider that the total wheat 
productions of Great Britain in 1875 amounted to about ninety- 
eight millions of bushels, or about fourteen millions of bushels less 
than were imported, and that during the Crimean war, from Octo- 
bea, 1853, to May, 1856, when Russia was fighting Turkey, France 
and England, instead of sending wheat to the British and French 
markets, the price of breadstuffs rose eighty-one per cent above the 
prices in times of peace, before and since the war, and stood for 
nearly two years at about $2.50 per bushel, or 80s per quarter, the 
maximum having been 80s and lOd per quarter in England. The 
English operative found his loaf of bread cost 14c instead of 8c. 
This increase in the price of breadstuffs in war extends to other 
ai-ticles of food, and the result is that when the poor and hungry 
operatives of England are sadly perplexed to make their scanty 
wages purchase food at an advance of eighty per cent, on peace 
prices, their employers find it impossible to raise their wages in 
proportion to the increased cost of living, and the employes be¬ 
come weary, disheartened, weak and unprofitable. The greatest pro¬ 
tection our manufacturers have is in the comparative cheapness of 
food as an offset to the cheap labor of Europe. 
