Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 53.djvu/16

 the home price of wheat had fallen below the minimum rate returning a profit to the farmer twenty francs the hectolitre, he did not look for a continuance of that rate.

After fifteen years it is simple to test such predictions, but it is only necessary to say that in only one year since 1884 has the price of wheat in France touched twenty francs the hectolitre—in 1891—and for the other fourteen years has ruled much under that rate. Nor did the Government accept the conclusions of its commission, for it imposed a higher duty on imported wheat, raising the rate from sixty centimes the quintal, at which rate it was prior to 1884, to three francs a quintal, and in 1887 to five francs a quintal. These moves were based upon the growing restlessness of the peasant proprietor, on whom fell the brunt of competition in wheat growing from Russia and the United States. He had seen the price falling, and had been subject to bad seasons as well as a loss of market from importations. He had run into debt through the failure of his crop, and he had incurred losses by entering speculative “companies” of one kind or another, that promised high returns and then failed disastrously. He found it difficult to accommodate himself to wheat selling from nineteen to seventeen francs a hectolitre, but was successful in the attempt, as was proved by his refusal to obtain a further increase of duty on wheat in 1892, when a revision of the tariff occurred. Secure in his own holding, and protected from any concession by way of reciprocity to his neighbors and rivals, he was yet slowly fomenting an agitation that was to plead now for higher duties on all agricultural products and now for a rehabilitation of silver. The year of famine (1891) led to a temporary reduction in the duty from five francs to three, but the exceptional conditions leading to this concession to the consumer of wheat soon passed.

A glance at the table of production and imports given above does not betray any influence of these successive changes in the rates of duty on imported wheat. The price of wheat was controlled not by conditions in France, but by conditions acting throughout the commercial world. It was even asserted that the cost of producing a hectolitre of wheat in France had risen in recent years, and now stood at the high figure of twenty-six francs. The market price obtainable was only 17.87 francs in 1892, 16.55 francs in 1893, and 15.21 francs in 1894, and abundant crops at home and abroad threatened even lower prices. With such pressure of competition the agrarian party acquired strength and influence, and in February, 1894, obtained an increase in the duty on foreign wheat to seven francs the quintal. In less than fifteen years the duty had thus been raised from a nominal rate of sixty centimes to seven francs the quintal.