Page:The agricultural labourer (Denton).djvu/61

 the United Kingdom has diminished. But the figures in the statistical returns show how quietly the price of wheat affects the home supply. The two fine crops of 1863 and 1864 reduced the average price to little more than 40s.. But in 1867 the price had risen to 64s., and in one year there was an addition of 300,000 acres to our breadth of wheat.

I have already in a previous paper shown that the rule of increased productiveness of the land under wheat is very slow. From that source, therefore, there is little hope of any material increase in our home produce, in the face of larger foreign supplies at low prices. When the price of wheat falls below 50s., the farmer begins to turn his attention to other crops. The value of barley has been rising in nearly the same proportion as that of wheat has declined in recent years, and oats have also fully maintained their price. While the farmer in these, and in the increasing value of his livestock and its produce, will be able to compensate himself against the steady decline in the value of wheat, the people, that vast and increasing body of consumers, have the prospect of abundant supplies of bread at a moderate price, from the yearly extension of the means of foreign transport.

General Results.

Having thus endeavoured to discuss the main question answered by the agricultural returns, viz., in how far the home crop is available for the national supply of bread, I proceed to extract from the returns certain other points affecting our food and clothing. Beyond a slight increase in the breadth of potatoes, and a similar decrease in barley, and the large increase of wheat already referred to, there has been no material change in the general crops of the country during the last two years. The table showing the percentage proportions of corn and green crop in each division of the United Kingdom is very interesting. In round numbers it appears that England supplies nine-tenths of all the home-grown wheat, Scotland and Ireland together only one-tenth. And the increased breadth, sown under the stimulus of the high prices of the past year in England, is equal to the whole acreage under wheat in Ireland. England produces more than three-fourths of all the barley grown in the British Islands, nearly all the beans and peas, and one-third of the oats. Ireland grows one-half more oats than Scotland, and two-thirds of the entire potato crop of the United Kingdom. The three kingdoms, as compared with France and Prussia, grow the following proportions of acres of corn to their respective populations:—