APPENDIX.
The important question as to the amount of British capital invested in the colonies and in other countries has only quite lately received due attention. For the last ten years or so one could find in the “Reports of the Commissioner of Inland Revenue” a mention of the revenue derived from British capital invested in foreign loans to States and Municipalities and in railway companies; but these returns were still incomplete. Consequently, Mr. George Paish made in 1909 and 1911 an attempt at determining these figures with more accuracy in two papers which he read before the Statistical Society.[199]
Mr. Paish based his researches on the Income Tax, completing these data by special researches about private investments, which do not appear in the Income Tax returns. He has not yet got to the end of his investigation; but, all taken, he estimates that the yearly income received by this country from abroad from different sources reaches £300,000,000 every year.
About one-tenth part of the cereals consumed in France is still imported; but, as will be seen in a subsequent chapter, the progress in agriculture has lately been so rapid that even without Algeria France will soon have a surplus of cereals. Wine is imported, but nearly as much is exported. So that coffee and oil-seeds remain the only food articles of durable importance for import. For coal and coke France is still tributary to Belgium, to this country, and to Germany; but it is chiefly the inferiority of organisation of coal extraction which stands in the way of the home supply. The other important items of imports are: raw cotton (from £12,440,000 to £18,040,000 in 1903-1910), raw wool (from £15,160,000 to £23,200,000), and raw silk (from £10,680,000 to £17,640,000), as well as hides and furs, oil-seeds, and machinery (about £10,000,000). The exports of manufactured goods were £80,000,000 in 1890, and in subsequent years from £119,000,000 to £137,000,000. Exports of textiles, exclusive of yarn and linen, £29,800,000 in 1890, and £34,440,000 in 1908-1910; while the imports of all textiles are insignificant (from £5,000,000 to £7,000,000).
The growth of industry in Russia will be best seen from the following:—
The recent growth of the coal and iron industries in South Russia (with the aid of Belgian capital) was very well illustrated at the Turin Exhibition of 1911. From less than 100,000 tons in 1860, the extraction of coal and anthracite rose to 16,840,460 metric tons in 1910. The extraction of iron ore rose from 377,000 tons in 1890 to 3,760,000 tons in 1909. The production of cast iron, which was only 29,270 tons in 1882, reached 2,067,000 tons in 1910, and the amount of refined iron and steel and their produce rose from 27,830 tons in 1882 to 1,641,960 tons in 1910. In short, South Russia is becoming an exporting centre for the iron industry. (P. Palcinsky, in RussianMining Journal, 1911, Nos. 8 and 12.)
The following tables will give some idea of the growth of mining and metallurgy in Germany.
The extraction of minerals in the German Empire, in metric tons, which are very little smaller than the English ton (0·984), was:—
Since 1894 the iron industry has taken a formidable development, the production of pig-iron reaching 12,644,900 metric tons in 1909 (14,793,600 in 1910), and that of half-finished and finished iron and steel, 14,186,900 tons; while the exports of raw iron, which were valued at £1,195,000 in 1903, doubled in seven years, reaching £2,250,000 in 1910.
The rapid progress in the fabrication of machinery in Germany is best seen from the growth of the German exports as shown by the following table:—
Three years later the first of these items had already reached £25,000,000, and the export of bicycles, motor-cars, and motor-buses, and parts thereof, was valued at £2,904,000.
Everyone knows that German sewing-machines, motor-bus frames, and a considerable amount of tools find their way even into this country, and that German tools are plainly recommended in English books.
Dr. G. Schulze-Gaewernitz, in his excellent work,The Cotton Trade in England and on the Continent(English translation by Oscar S. Hall, London, 1895), called attention to the fact that Germany had certainly not yet attained, in her cotton industry, the high technical level of development attained by England; but he showed also the progress realised. The cost of each yard of plain cotton, notwithstanding low wages and long hours, was still greater in Germany than in England, as seen from the following tables. Taking a certain quality of plain cotton in both countries, he gave (p. 151, German edition) the following comparative figures:—
But he remarked also that in all sorts of printed cottons, in which fancy, colours and invention play a predominant part,the advantages were entirely on the side of the smaller German factories.
In the spinning mills the advantages, on the contrary, continued to remain entirely on the side of England, the number of operatives per 1,000 spindles being in various countries as follows (p. 91, English edition):—
Considerable improvements had taken place already in the ten years 1884-1894. “India shows us, since 1884, extraordinary developments,” Schulze-Gaewernitz remarked, and “there is no doubt that Germany also has reduced the number of operatives per 1,000 spindles since the last Inquest.” “From a great quantity of materials lying before me, I cull,” he wrote, “the following, which, however, refers solely to leading and technically distinguished spinning mills:—
The average counts of yarn for all these were between twenties and thirties.”
It is evident that considerable progress has been realised since Schulze-Gaewernitz wrote these lines. As an exporter of cotton yarn and cottons, Germany has made rapid strides. Thus, in 1903, she exported £1,625,000 worth of cotton yarn, and £15,080,000 worth of cottons. For 1910 the figures given by theStatistisches Jahrbuch for 1911were already £2,740,000 and £18,255,000 respectively.
To give an idea of the development of industries in Austria-Hungary, it is sufficient to mention the growth of her mining industries and the present state of her textile industries.
The value of the yearly extraction of coal and iron ore in Austria appears as follows:—
At the present time the exports of coal entirely balance the imports.
As to the textile industries, the imports of raw cotton into Austria-Hungary reached in 1907 the respectable value of £12,053,400. For raw wool and wool yarn they were £6,055,600 worth, and for silk, £1,572,000; while £3,156,200 worth of woollens were exported.
According to the census of 1902 (Statistisches Jahrbuch for 1911), there were already, in Austria-Hungary, 1,408,855 industrial establishments, occupying 4,049,320 workpeople, and having a machinery representing 1,787,900 horse-power. The textile trades alone had in their service 257,500 horse-power (as against 113,280 in 1890).
The small industry evidently prevailed, nearly one-half of all the workpeople (2,066,120) being employed in 901,202 establishments, which had only from one to twenty persons each; while 443,235 workpeople were employed in 10,661 establishments (from twenty-one to 100 workpeople each). Still, the great industryhas already made its appearance in some branches—there being 3,021 establishments which employed more than 100 workers each, and representing an aggregate of 1,053,790 workpeople. Out of them 105 establishments employed even more than 1,000 persons each (115 establishments, 179,876 workpeople in 1910).
In Hungary industry is also rapidly developing; it occupied 1,127,130 persons in 1902 (34,160 in the textiles, and 74,000 in mining). In 1910 the exports of all textiles (stuffs and yarns) from Hungary reached the sum of £7,040,500.
The views taken in the text about the industrial development of India are confirmed by a mass of evidence. One of them, coming from authorised quarters, deserves special attention. In an article on the progress of the Indian cotton manufacture, theTextile Recorder(15th October, 1888) wrote:—
“No person connected with the cotton industry can be ignorant of the rapid progress of the cotton manufacture in India. Statistics of all kinds have recently been brought before the public, showing the increase of production in the country; still it does not seem to be clearly understood that this increasing output of cotton goods must seriously lower the demand upon Lancashire mills, and that it is not by any means improbable that India may at no very distant period be no better customer than the United States is now.”
One hardly need add at what price the Indian manufacturers obtain cheap cottons. The report ofthe Bombay Factory Commission which was laid before Parliament in August, 1888, contained facts of such horrible cruelty and cupidity as would hardly be imagined by those who have forgotten the disclosures of the inquiry made in this country in 1840-1842. The factory engines are at work, as a rule, from 5A.M.till 7, 8, or 9P.M., and the workers remain at work for twelve, thirteen, fourteen hours, only releasing one another for meals. In busy times it happens that the same set of workers remain at the gins and presses night and day with half an hour’s rest in the evening. In some factories the workers have their meals at the gins, and are so worn out after eight and ten days’ uninterrupted work that they supply the gins mechanically “three parts asleep.”
“It is a sad tale of great want on one side, and cruel cupidity on the other,” the official report concludes. However, it would be absolutely erroneous to conclude that Indian manufactures can compete with the British ones as long as they continue the terrible exploitation of human labour which we see now. Forty years ago the British manufactures offered absolutely the same terrible picture of cruel cupidity. But times will come when Indian workers will restrain the cupidity of the capitalists, and the manufacturers of Bombay will be none the worse for that in their competition with the British manufactures.
The figures relative to the latest growth of the textile industries in India, given in the text, fully confirm the previsions expressed twenty-five years ago. As to the conditions of the workpeople in the Indian cotton-mills, they continue to remain abominable.
A few years ago the cotton industry in the United States attracted the attention of the Manchester cotton manufacturers, and we have now two very interesting works written by persons who went specially to the States in order to study the rapid progress made there in spinning and weaving.[200]
These two inquiries fully confirm what has been said in the text of this book about the rapid progress made in the American industry altogether, and especially in the development of a very fine cotton-weaving machinery. In his preface to Mr. Young’s book, Mr. Helm says: “The results of this inquiry may not incorrectly be called a revelation for Lancashire. It was, indeed, already known to a few on this side of the ocean that there were wide differences between the methods and organisation of American and English cotton-mills. But it is only between the last three or four years that suspicion has arisen amongst us that our competitors in the United States have been marching faster than we have in the path of economy of production.”
The most important difference between the British and American methods was, in Mr. Helm’s opinion, in “the extensive use of the automatic loom.” Mr. Young’s investigation on the subject left no doubtsthat the employment of this loom “substantially reduces the cost of production, and at the same time increases the earnings of the weaver, because it permits him to conduct more looms” (p. 15). Altogether, we learn from Mr. Helm’s remarks that there are now 85,000 automatic looms running in the United States, and that “the demand for weavers is greater than ever” (p. 16). In a Rhode Island mill, 743 ordinary looms required 100 weavers, while 2,000 Northrop (or Draper) looms could be conducted by 134 weavers only, which means an average of fifteen looms for each weaver. At Burlington, Vermont, from sixteen to twenty Northrop looms were conducted by each weaver, and altogether these looms are spreading very rapidly. But it is not only in the looms that such improvements have been introduced. “The spinning frames,” we are told by Mr. Young, “containing 112 spindles a side, were tended by girls who ran four, six, eight, or ten sides each, according to the girl’s dexterity. The average for good spinners was about eight sides (896 spindles)” (p. 10).
In a New Bedford fine-spinning mill the ring-spinners were minding 1,200 spindles each (p. 16).
It is also important to note the speed at which the cotton industry has been developing lately in the States. The census of 1900 gave a total of 19,008,350 spindles. But in 1909 we find already 28,178,860 spindles for cotton alone (34,500,000, including silk, wool, and worsted). And, what is still more important, most of this increase fell upon the Southern States, where machinery is also more perfect, both for spinning and weaving, and where most of the work is being done by the whites. In a South Carolina print-cloth mill, containing 1,000 Draper looms, the average fornarrow looms was 15½ looms to each weaver. (T. W. Uttley,l.c., pp. 4, 50, etc.)
As for the American competition in the Chinese markets, Mr. Helm gives imposing figures.
A few remarks concerning these figures may be of some avail.
When a sudden fall in the British and Irish exports took place in the years 1882-1886, and the alarmists took advantage of the bad times to raise the never-forgotten war-cry of protection, especially insisting on the damages made to British trade by “German competition,” Mr. Giffen analysed the figures of international trade in his “Finance Essays,” and in a report read in 1888 before the Board of Trade Commission. Subsequently, Mr. A. W. Flux analysed again the same figures, extending them to a later period. He confirmed Mr. Giffen’s conclusions and endeavoured to prove that the famous “German competition” is a fallacy.
Mr. Giffen’s conclusions, quoted by Mr. A. W. Flux (“The Commercial Supremacy of Great Britain,” inEconomical Journal, 1894, iv., p. 457), were as follows:—
“On the whole, the figures are not such as to indicate any great and overwhelming advance in German exports, in comparison with those of the United Kingdom. There is greater progress in certain directions, but, taken altogether, no great disproportionate advance, and in many important markets for the United Kingdom Germany hardly appears at all.”
In this subdued form,with regard to German competition alone—and due allowance being made for figures in which no consideration is given to what sort of goods make a given value of exports, and in what quantities—Mr. Giffen’s statement could be accepted. But that was all.
If we take, however, Mr. Giffen’s figures as they are reproduced in extended tables (on pp. 461-467 of the just quoted paper), tabulated with great pains in order to show that Germany’s part in the imports to several European countries, such as Russia, Italy, Servia, etc., had declined, as well as the part of the United Kingdom, all we could conclude from these figures was, that there were other countries besides Germany—namely, the United States and Belgium—which competed very effectively with England, France, and Germany for supplying what manufactured goods were taken by Russia, Italy, Servia, etc., from abroad.
At the same time such figures gave no idea of the fact that where manufactured metal goods were formerly supplied, coal and raw metals were imported for the home manufacture of those same goods; or, where dyed and printed cottons were imported, only yarn was required. The whole subject is infinitely more complicated than it appeared in Mr. Giffen’s calculations; and, valuable as his figures may have been for appeasing exaggerated fears, they contained no answer whatever to the many economic questions involved in the matters treated by Mr. Giffen.
The conclusions which I came to in these lines in the first edition of this book found further confirmation in the subsequent economical development of all nations in that same direction. The result is, that—apart from the extraordinary exports of the years 1910 and 1911 (which I venture to explain by the general prevision of a great European war going to break out)—the exports from this country, apart from their usual periodical fluctuations, continued to remain what they were, in proportion to the increasing population, and many of them became less profitable; while the exports from all other countries increased in a much greater proportion.
In 1885 the superficies given to market gardening in Belgium was 99,600 acres. In 1894 a Belgian professor of agriculture, who has kindly supplied me with notes on this subject, wrote:—
“The area has considerably increased, and I believe it can be taken at 112,000 acres (45,000 hectares), if not more.” And further on: “Rents in the neighbourhood of the big towns, Antwerp, Liège, Ghent, and Brussels, attain as much as £5, 16s. and £8 per acre; the cost of instalment is from £13 to £25 per acre; the yearly cost of manure, which is the chief expense, attains from £8 to £16 per acre the first year, and then from £5 to £8 every year.” The gardens are of the average size of two and a half acres, and in each garden from 200 to 400 frames are used. About the Belgian market-gardeners the same remark must be made as has been made concerning the Frenchmaraîchers. They work awfully hard, having to pay extravagant rents, and to lay money aside, with the hope of some day being able to buy a piece of land, and to get rid of the blood-sucker who absorbs so much of their money returns; having moreover every year to buy more and more frames in order to obtain their produce earlier and earlier, so as to fetchhigher prices for it, they work like slaves. But it must be remembered that in order to obtain the same amount of produce under glass, in greenhouses, the work ofthree men only, working fifty-five hours a week, is required in Jersey for cultivating one acre of land under glass.
But I must refer my readers to the excellent work of my friend, B. Seebohm Rowntree’sLand and Labour: Lessons from Belgium, London (Macmillan), 1910, a strong volume of more than 600 pages, which is the result of several years of laborious studies. It is full of figures and personal observations, and will be consulted with advantage for all the questions dealing with the economical life of Belgium.
The excellent state of agriculture in Jersey and Guernsey has often been mentioned in the agricultural and general literature of this country, so I need only refer to the works of Mr. W. E. Bear (Journal of the Agricultural Society, 1888;Quarterly Review, 1888;British Farmer, etc.) and to the exhaustive work of D. H. Ansted and R. G. Latham,The Channel Islands, third edition, revised by E. Toulmin Nicolle, London (Allen), 1893.
Many English writers—certainly not those just named—are inclined to explain the successes obtained in Jersey by the wonderful climate of the islands and the fertility of the soil. As to climate, it is certainly true that the yearly record of sunshine in Jersey is greater than in any English station. It reaches from 1,842 hours a year (1890) to 2,300 (1893), and thusexceeds the highest aggregate sunshine recorded in any English station by from 168 to 336 hours (exclusively high maximum in 1894) a year; May and August seeming to be the best favoured months.[201]But, to quote from the just mentioned work of Ansted and Latham:—
“There is, doubtless, in all the islands, and especially in Guernsey,an absence of sun heatand of the direct action of the sun’s raysin summer, which must have its effect, anda remarkable prevalence of cold, dry, east wind in late spring, retarding vegetation” (p. 407). Everyone who has spent, be it only two or three weeks in late spring in Jersey, must know by experience how true this remark is. Moreover, there are the well-known Guernsey fogs, and “owing also to rain and damp the trees suffer from mildew and blight, as well as from various aphides.” The same authors remark that the nectarine does not succeed in Jersey in the open air “owing to the absence of autumn heat”; that “the wet autumns and cold summers do not agree with the apricot;” and so on.
If Jersey potatoes are, on the average, three weeks in advance of those grown in Cornwall, the fact is fully explained by the continual improvements made in Jersey in view of obtaining, be it ever so small, quantities of potatoes a few days in advance, either by special care taken to plant them out as soon as possible, protecting them from the cold winds, or by choosing tiny pieces of land naturally protected or better exposed. The difference in price between the earliest and the later potatoes being immense, the greatest efforts are made to obtain an early crop.
The decline of prices per ton is best seen from the following prices in 1910:—
The quantities of early potatoes exported varied during the years 1901 to 1910 from 47,530 tons to 77,800 tons, and their value from £233,289 to £475,889.
As to the fertility of the soil, it is still worse advocacy, because there is no area in the United Kingdom of equal size which would be manured to such an extent as the area of Jersey and Guernsey is by means of artificial manure. In the seventeenth century, as may be seen from the first edition of Falle’sJersey, published in 1694, the island “did not produce that quantity as is necessary for the use of the inhabitants, who must be supplied from England in time of peace, or from Dantzic in Poland.” InThe Groans of the Inhabitants of Jersey, published in London in 1709, we find the same complaint. And Quayle, who wrote in 1812 and quoted the two works just mentioned, in his turn complained in these terms: “The quantity at this day raised is quite inadequate to their sustenance, apart from the garrison.” (General View of the Agriculture and the Present State of the Islandson the Coast of Normandy, London, 1815, p. 77.) And he added: “After making all allowance, the truth must be told; the grain crops are here foul, in some instances execrably so.” And when we consult the modern writers, Ansted, Latham, and Nicolle, we learn that the soil is by no means rich. It is decomposed granite, and easily cultivable, but “it contains no organic matter besides what man has put into it.”
This is certainly the opinion anyone will come to if he only visits thoroughly the island and looks attentively to its soil—to say nothing of the Quenvais where, in Quayle’s time, there was “an Arabian desert” of sands and hillocks covering about seventy acres (p. 24), with a little better but still very poor soil in the north and west of it. The fertility of the soil has entirely been made, first, by thevraic(sea-weeds), upon which the inhabitants have maintained communal rights; later on, by considerable shipments of manure, in addition to the manure of the very considerable living stock which is kept in the island; and finally, by an admirably good cultivation of the soil.
Much more than sunshine and good soil, it was the conditions of land-tenure and the low taxation which contributed to the remarkable development of agriculture in Jersey. First of all, the people of the Isles know but little of the tax-collector. While the English pay, in taxes, an average of 50s. per head of population; while the French peasant is over-burdened with taxes of all imaginable descriptions; and the Milanese peasant has to give to the Treasury full 30 per cent. of his income—all taxes paid in the Channel Islands amount to but 10s. per head in the town parishes and to much less than that in the country parishes. Besides, of indirect taxes, none are known but the 2s. 6d. paid for each gallon of imported spirits and 9d. per gallon of imported wine.
As to the conditions of land-tenure, the inhabitants have happily escaped the action of Roman Law, and they continue to live under thecoutumier de Normandie(the old Norman common law). Accordingly, more than one-half of the territory is owned by those who themselves till the soil; there is no landlord to watch the crops and to raise the rent before the farmer has ripened the fruit of his improvements; there is nobody to charge so much for each cart-load of sea-weeds or sand taken to the fields; everyone takes the amount he likes, provided he cuts the weeds at a certain season of the year, and digs out the sand at a distance of sixty yards from the high-water mark. Those who buy land for cultivation can do so without becoming enslaved to the money-lender. One-fourth part only of the permanent rent which the purchaser undertakes to pay is capitalised and has to be paid down on purchase (often less than that), the remainder being a perpetual rent in wheat which is valued in Jersey at fifty to fifty-foursous de Franceper cabot. To seize property for debt is accompanied with such difficulties that it is seldom resorted to (Quayle’sGeneral View, pp. 41-46). Conveyances of land are simply acknowledged by both parties on oath, and cost nearly nothing. And the laws of inheritance are such as to preserve the homestead, notwithstanding the debts that the father may have run into (ibid., pp. 35-41).
After having shown how small are the farms in the islands (from twenty to five acres, and very many less than that)—there being “less than 100 farms in either island that exceed twenty-five acres; and of these only about half a dozen in Jersey exceed fifty acres”—Messrs. Ansted, Latham, and Nicolle remark:—
“In no place do we find so happy and so contented a country as in the Channel Islands....” “Thesystem of land-tenure has also contributed in no small degree to their prosperity....” “The purchaser becomes the absolute owner of the property, and his position cannot be touched so long as the interest of these [wheat] rents be paid. He cannot be compelled, as in the case of mortgage, to refund the principal.The advantages of such a system are too patent to need any further allusion.” (The Channel Islands, third edition, revised by E. Toulmin Nicolle, p. 401; see also p. 443.)
The following will better show how the cultivable area is utilised in Jersey (The Evening Post Royal Almanack):—
Potatoes exported:—
The export valueper acrevaried in different years from £27, 6s. in 1893 to £66, 1s. in 1894, and even £95, 18s. in 1904.
As regards greenhouse culture, a friend of mine, who has worked as a gardener in Jersey, has collected for me various information relative to the productivity of culture under glass. Out of it the following may be taken as a perfectly reliable illustration, in addition to those given in the text:—
Mr. B.’s greenhouse has a length of 300 feet and a width of 18 feet, which makes 5,400 square feet, out of which 900 square feet are under the passage in themiddle. The cultivable area is thus 4,500 square feet. There are no brick walls, but brick pillars and boards are used for front walls. Hot-water heating is provided, but is only used occasionally, to keep off the frosts in winter—the crops being early potatoes (which require no heating), followed by tomatoes. The latter are Mr. B.’s speciality. Catch crops of radishes, etc., are taken. The cost of the greenhouse, without the heating apparatus, is 10s. per running foot of greenhouse, which makes £150 for one-eighth of an acre under glass, or a little less than 7d. per glass-roofed square foot.
The crops are: potatoes, four cabots per perch—that is, three-quarters of a ton of early potatoes from the greenhouse; and tomatoes, in the culture of which Mr. B. attains extraordinary results. He puts in only 1,000 plants, thus giving to his plants more room than is usually given; and he cultivates a corrugated variety which gives very heavy crops but does not fetch the same prices as the smooth varieties. In 1896 his crop was four tons of tomatoes, and so it would have been in 1897—each plant giving an average of twenty pounds of fruit, while the usual crop is from eight to twelve pounds per plant.
The total crop was thus four and three-quarter tons of vegetables, to which the catch crops must be added—thus corresponding to 85,000 lb. per acre (over 90,000 lb. with the catch crops). I again omit the money returns, and only mention that the expenditure for fuel and manure was about £10 a year, and that the Jersey average is three men, each working fifty-five hours a week (ten hours a day), for every acre under glass.
The Scilly Islands.—These islands also give a beautiful illustration of what may be obtained from the soil by an intensive cultivation. When shipping andsupplying pilots became a decaying source of income, the Scillonians took to the growing of potatoes. For many years, we are told by Mr. J. G. Uren (Scilly and the Scillonians, Plymouth, 1907), this was a very profitable industry. The crop was ready at least a month in advance of any other source of supply on the mainland. Every year about 1,000 tons of potatoes were exported. “In its palmy days the potato harvest in Scilly was the great event of the year. Gangs of diggers were brought across from the mainland,” and the prices went occasionally up to £28 a ton for the earliest potatoes. Gradually, however, the export of potatoes was reduced to less than one-half of what it was formerly. Then the inhabitants of the islands went for fishing, and later on they began to grow flowers. Frost and snow being practically unknown in the islands, this new industry succeeded very well. The arable area of the islands is about 4,000 acres, which are divided into small farms, less than from fifteen to twenty acres, and these farms are transmitted, according to the local custom, from father to son.
It is not long ago that they began to grow wild narcissuses, to which they soon added daffodils (a hundred varieties), and lilies, especially arum-lilies, for Church decoration. All these are grown in narrow strips, sheltered from the winds by dwarf hedges. Movable glass-houses are resorted to shelter the flowers for a certain time, and in this way the gardeners have a succession of crops, beginning soon after Christmas, and lasting until April or May.
The flowers are shipped to Penzance, and thence carried by rail in special carriages. At the top of the season thirty to forty tons are shipped in a single day. The total exports, which were only 100 tons in 1887, have now reached 1,000 in 1907.
In theJournal de l’Agriculture(2nd Feb., 1889) the following was said about themarcitesof Milan:—
“On part of these meadows water runs constantly, on others it is left running for ten hours every week. The former give six crops every year; since February, eighty to 100 tons of grass, equivalent to twenty and twenty-five tons of dry hay, being obtained from the hectare (eight to ten tons per acre). Lower down, thirteen tons of dry hay per acre is the regular crop. Taking eighty acres placed in average conditions, they will yield fifty-six tons of green grass per hectare—that is, fourteen tons of dry hay, or the food of three milch cows to the hectare (two and a half acres). The rent of such meadows is from £8 to £9, 12s. per acre.”
For Indian corn, the advantages of irrigation are equally apparent. On irrigated lands, crops of from seventy-eight to eighty-nine bushels per acre are obtained, as against from fifty-six to sixty-seven bushels on unirrigated lands, also in Italy, and twenty-eight to thirty-three bushels in France (Garola,Les Céréales).
The Rothamsted Challenge.
Sir A. Cotton delivered, in 1893, before the Balloon Society, a lecture on agriculture, in which lecture he warmly advocated deep cultivation and planting the seeds of wheat wide apart. He published it later on as a pamphlet (Lecture on Agriculture, 2nd edition, with Appendix. Dorking, 1893). He obtained, for thebest of his sort of wheat, an average of “fifty-five ears per plant, with three oz. of grain of fair quality—perhaps sixty-three lbs. per bushel” (p. 10). This corresponded to ninety bushels per acre—that is, his result was very similar to those obtained at the Tomblaine and Capelle agricultural stations by Grandeau and F. Dessprèz, whose work seems not to have been known to Sir A. Cotton. True, Sir A. Cotton’s experiments were not conducted, or rather were not reported, in a thoroughly scientific way. But the more desirable it would have been, either to contradict or to confirm his statements by experiments carefully conducted at some experimental agricultural station. Unfortunately, so far as I know, no such experiments have yet been made, and the possibility of profitably increasing the wheat crop by the means indicated by Sir A. Cotton has still to be tested in a scientific spirit.
A few words on this method which now claims the attention of the experimental stations may perhaps not be useless.
In Japan, rice is always treated in this way. It is treated as our gardeners treat lettuce and cabbage—that is, it is let first to germinate; then it is sown in special warm corners, well inundated with water and protected from the birds by strings drawn over the ground. Thirty-five to fifty-five days later, the young plants, now fully developed and possessed of a thick network of rootlets, arereplantedin the open ground. In this way the Japanese obtain from twenty to thirty-two bushels ofdressedrice to the acre in the poor provinces, forty bushels in the better ones, and fromsixty to sixty-seven bushels on the best lands. The average, in six rice growing states of North America, is at the same time only nine and a half bushels.[202]
In China, replanting is also in general use, and consequently the idea has been circulated in France by M. Eugène Simon and the late M. Toubeau, that replanted wheat could be made a powerful means of increasing the crops in Western Europe.[203]So far as I know, the idea has not yet been submitted to a practical test; but when one thinks of the remarkable results obtained by Hallet’s method of planting; of what the market-gardeners obtain by replanting once and even twice; and of how rapidly the work of planting is done by market-gardeners in Jersey, one must agree that in replanted wheat we have a new opening worthy of the most careful consideration. Experiments have not yet been made in this direction; but Prof. Grandeau, whose opinion I have asked on this subject, wrote to me that he believes the method must have a great future. Practical market-gardeners (Parismaraîcher) whose opinion I have asked, see, of course, nothing extravagant in that idea.
With plants yielding 1,000 grains each—and in the Capelle experiment they yielded an average of 600 grains—the yearly wheat-food of one individual man (5·65 bushels, or 265 lbs.), which is represented by from 5,000,000 to 5,500,000 grains, could be grown on aspace of 250 square yards; while for an experienced hand replanting would represent no more than ten to twelve hours’ work. With a proper machine-tool, the work could probably be very much reduced. In Japan, two men and two women plant with rice three-quarters of an acre in one day (Ronna,Les Irrigations, vol. iii., 1890, p. 67 seq.). That means (Fesca,Japanesische Landwirthschaft, p. 33) from 33,000 to 66,000 plants, or, let us say, a minimum of 8,250 plants a day for one person. The Jersey gardeners plant from 600 (inexperienced) to 1,000 plants per hour (experienced).
That the land in this country is not sufficiently utilised for market-gardening, and that the largest portion of the vegetables which are imported from abroad could be grown in this country, has been said over and over again within the last twenty-five years.
It is certain that considerable improvements have taken place lately—the area under market-gardens, and especially the area under glass for the growth of fruit and vegetables, having largely been increased of late. Thus, instead of 38,957 acres, which were given to market-gardening in Great Britain in 1875, there were, in 1894, 88,210 acres, exclusive of vegetable crops on farms, given to that purpose (The Gardener’s Chronicle, 20th April, 1895, p. 483). But that increase remains a trifle in comparison with similar increases in France, Belgium, and the United States. In France, the area given to market-gardening was estimated in 1892 by M. Baltet (L’horticulture dans lescinq parties du monde, Paris, Hachette, 1895) at 1,075,000 acres—four times more, in proportion to the cultivable area, than in this country; and the most remarkable of it is that considerable tracts of land formerly treated as uncultivable have been reclaimed for the purposes of market-gardening as also of fruit growing.
As things stand now in this country, we see that very large quantities of the commonest vegetables, each of which could be grown in this country, are imported.
Lettuces are imported—not only from the Azores or from the south of France, but they continue until June to be imported from France, where they are mostly grown—not in the open air, but in frames. Early cucumbers, also grown in frames, are largely imported from Holland, and are sold so cheaply that many English gardeners have ceased to grow them.[204]Even beetroot and pickling cabbage are imported from Holland and Brittany (the neighbourhoods of Saint Malo, where I saw them grown in a sandy soil, which would grow nothing without a heavy manuring with guano, as a second crop, after a first one of potatoes); and while onions were formerly largely grown in this country, we see that, in 1894, 5,288,512 bushels of onions, £765,049 worth, were imported from Belgium (chief exporter), Germany, Holland, France, and so on.
Again, that early potatoes should be imported from the Azores and the south of France is quite natural. It is not so natural, however, that more than 50,000 tons of potatoes (58,060 tons, £521,141 worth, on the average during the years 1891-1894) should be imported from the Channel Islands, because there arehundreds if not thousands of acres in South Devon, and most probably in other parts of the south coast too, where early potatoes could be grown equally well. But besides the 90,000 tons of early potatoes (over £700,000 worth) which are imported to this country, enormous quantities of late potatoes are imported from Holland, Germany, and Belgium; so that the total imports of potatoes reach from 200,000 to 450,000 tons every year. Moreover, this country imports every year all sorts of green vegetables, for the sum of at least £4,000,000, and for £5,000,000 all sorts of fruit (apart from exotic fruit); while thousands of acres lie idle, and the country population is driven to the cities in search of work, without finding it.
It appears from theAnnuaire statistique de la belgiquethat, out of a cultivated area of 6,443,500 acres, the following areas were given in Belgium, at the time of the last census, to fruit-growing, market-gardening, and culture under glass: Orchards, 117,600 acres; market-gardens, 103,460 acres; vineries, 173 acres (increased since); growing of trees for afforestation, gardens, and orchards, 7,475 acres; potatoes, 456,000 acres. Consequently, Belgium is able to export every year about £250,000 worth more vegetables, and nearly £500,000 worth more fruit, than she imports. As to the vineries, the land of the communes of Hoeylart and Overyssche near Brussels is almost entirely covered with glass, and the exports of home-grown grapes attained, in 1910, 6,800 tons, in addition to 34,000 tons of other home-grown fruit. Besides, nearly 3,000 acres in the environs of Ghent are covered with horticultural establishments which export palms, azaleas, rhododendrons, and laurels all over the world, including Italy and the Argentine.
Holland in its turn has introduced gardening in hothouses on a great scale. Here is a letter which I received in the summer of 1909 from a friend:—
“Here is a picture-postcard which J. (a professor of botany in Belgium) has brought from Holland, and which he asks me to send you. [The postcard represents an immense space covered with frames and glass lights.] Similar establishments cover many square kilomètres between Rotterdam and the sea, in the north of Heuve. At the time when J. was there (June 10) they had cucumbers, quite ripe, and melons as big as a head in considerable numbers, exported abroad. The cultures are made to a great extent without heating. The gardeners sow also radishes, carrots, lettuce, under the same glass. The different produce comes one after the other. They also cultivate large quantities of strawberries in frames.
“The glass-frames are transported at will, so as to keep under glass for several days or weeks the plants sown in any part of the garden. J. is full of admiration for the knowledge of the gardeners. Instead of the usual routine, they apply the last progress of science. He was told that glass is broken very seldom; they have acquired the art of handling glass-frames with facility and great skill.
“Besides the frames represented on the photograph, the region between Rotterdam and the sea, which is named Westland, has also countless glass-houses,where they cultivate, with or without heating, grapes, peaches, northern cherries, haricot beans, tomatoes, and other fruit and vegetables. These cultures have reached a very high degree of perfection. The gardeners take the greatest care to fight various plant diseases. They also cultivate ordinary fruit—apples, pears, gooseberries, strawberries, and so on—and vegetables in the open air. Westland being very much exposed to strong winds, they have built numerous walls, which break the wind, and serve at the same time for the culture of fruit upon the walls.
“All the region feels the favourable influence of the agricultural school of Naaldwijk, which is situated almost in the centre of the Westland.”
The Fruit and Market-Gardenergives every week the prices realised by horticultural and intensive gardening produce, as well as by flowers, at the great market of Covent Garden. The prices obtained for dessert grapes—Colmar and Hamburg—are very instructive. I took two years—1907-1908—which differ from ordinary years by the winters having been foggy, which made the garden produce to be somewhat late.
In the first days of January the Colmar grapes arriving from the Belgian hothouses were still sold at relatively low prices—from 6d. to 10d. the pound. But the prices slowly rose in January and February; the Hamburg grapes were late that year, and therefore in the middle of March and later on in April the Colmars fetched from 1s. 6d. to 2s. 6d.
The English grapes, coming from Worthing and soon, are certainly preferred to those that come from Belgium or the Channel Islands. By the end of April, 1907, and at the beginning of May, they were even sold at 2s. and 4s. the pound. The best and largest grapes for the dinners are evidently fetching fancy prices.
But at last the Hamburg grapes, which were late in 1907 and 1908, began to arrive from Belgium, the Channel Islands, and England, and the prices suddenly fell. By the end of May the Belgian Hamburgs fetched only from 10d. to 1s. 4d. the pound, and the prices were still falling. In June and July the gardeners could only get from 5d. to 7d., and during the months of September, October, and November, 1908, the best Guernsey grapes were quoted at 6d. the pound. Very beautiful ones fetched only 4d. the pound.
It was only in the first days of November that the prices went up to 10d. and 1s. 1d. But already, in the second half of December, the new crop of Colmars began to pour in from Belgium, and the prices fell to 9d., and even to 6d. per pound about Christmas.
We thus see that, notwithstanding a great demand for the best hothouse grapes, with big grains and quite fresh cut, these grapes are sold in the autumn almost at the same prices as grapes grown under the beautiful sun of the south.
As to the quantities of grapes imported to this country, the figures are also most instructive. The average for the three years 1905-1907 was 81,700,000 lbs., representing a value of £2,224,500.
In the first editions of this book I did not venture to speak about the improvements that could be obtained in agriculture with the aid of electricity, or by watering the soil with cultures of certain useful microbes. I preferred to mention only well-established facts of intensive culture; but now it would be impossible not to mention what has been done in these two directions.
More than thirty years ago I mentioned inNaturethe increase of the crops obtained by a Russian landlord who used to place at a certain height above his experimental field telegraph wires, through which an electric current was passed. A few years ago, in 1908, Sir Oliver Lodge gave in theDaily Chronicleof July 15 the results of similar experiments made in a farm near Evesham by Messrs. Newman and Bomford, with the aid of Sir Oliver Lodge’s son, Mr. Lionel Lodge.
A series of thin wires was placed above an experimental field at distances of ten yards from each other. These wires were attached to telegraph poles, high enough not to stand in the way of the carts loaded with corn. Another field was cultivated by the side of the former, in order to ascertain what would be the crops obtained without the aid of electricity.
The poles, five yards high, were placed far away from each other, so that the wires were quite loose. Owing to the high tension of the currents that had to be passed through the wires, the insulators on the poles were very powerful. The currents were positive and of a high potential—about 100,000 volts. The escape of electricity under these conditions was so great that it could be seen in the dark. One could also feel it on the hair and the face while passing under the wires.
Nevertheless, the expenditure of electric force was small, Sir Oliver Lodge writes; because, if the potential was high, the quantity of consumed energy was, notwithstanding that, very small. It is known, indeed,that this is also the case with the discharges of atmospheric electricity, which are terrible in consequence of their high tension, but do not represent a great loss of energy. An oil motor of two horse-power was therefore quite sufficient.
The results were very satisfactory. The wheat crop in the electrified field was, in the years 1906-1907, by 29 to 40 per cent. greater, and also of better quality, than in the non-electrified field. The straw was also from four to eight inches longer.
For strawberries the increase of the crop was 35 per cent., and 25 per cent. for beetroot.
As to the inoculation of useful microbes by means of watering the soil with cultures of nitrifying bacteria, experiments on a great scale have been made in Prussia upon some peat-bogs. The German agricultural papers speak of these experiments as having given most satisfactory results.
Most interesting results have also been obtained in Germany by heating the soil with a mixture of air and hot steam passed along the ordinary draining tubes. A society has been formed to propagate this system, and the photographs of the results published by the Society in a pamphlet,Gartenkultur, Bodenheizung, Klimaverbesserung(Berlin, 1906), seem to prove that with a soil thus heated the growth of certain vegetables is accelerated to some extent.
The neighbourhoods of St. Etienne are a great centre for all sorts of industries, and among them the petty trades occupy still an important place. Ironworks and coal-mines with their smoking chimneys,noisy factories, roads blackened with coal, and a poor vegetation give the country the well-known aspects of a “Black Country.” In certain towns, such as St. Chamond, one finds numbers of big factories in which thousands of women are employed in the fabrication ofpassementerie. But side by side with the great industry the petty trades also maintain a high development. Thus we have first the fabrication of silk ribbons, in which no less than 50,000 men and women were employed in the year 1885. Only 3,000 or 4,000 looms were located then in the factories; while the remainder—that is, from 1,200 to 1,400 looms—belonged to the workers themselves, both at St. Etienne and in the surrounding country.[205]As a rule the women and the girls spin the silk or make the winding off, while the father with his sons weave the ribbons. I saw these small workshops in the suburbs of St. Etienne, where complicated ribbons (with interwoven addresses of the manufacture), as well as ribbons of high artistic finish, were woven in three to four looms, while in the next room the wife prepared the dinner and attended to household work.
There was a time when the wages were high in the ribbon trade (reaching over ten francs a day), and M. Euvert wrote me that half of the suburban housesof St. Etienne had been built by thepassementiersthemselves. But the affairs took a very gloomy aspect when a crisis broke out in 1884. No orders were forthcoming, and the ribbon weavers had to live on casual earnings. All their economies were soon spent. “How many,” M. Euvert wrote, “have been compelled to sell for a few hundred francs the loom for which they had paid as many thousand francs.” What an effect this crisis has had on the trade I could not say, as I have no recent information about this region. Very probably a great number of the ribbon weavers have emigrated to St. Etienne, where artistic weaving is continued, while the cheapest sorts of ribbon must be made in factories.
The manufacture of arms occupies from 5,000 to 6,000 workers, half of whom are in St. Etienne, and the remainder in the neighbouring county. All work is done in small workshops, save in the great arm factory of the State, which sometimes will employ from 10,000 to 15,000 persons, and sometimes only a couple of thousand men.
Another important trade in the same region is the manufacture of hardware, which is all made in small workshops, in the neighbourhoods of St. Etienne, Le Chambon, Firminy, Rive de Giers, and St. Bonnet le Château. The work is pretty regular, but the earnings are low as a rule. And yet the peasants continue to keep to those trades, as they cannot go on without some industrial occupation during part of the year.
The yearly production of silk stuffs in France attained no less than 7,558,000 kilogrammes in 1881;[206]and most of the 5,000,000 to 6,000,000 kilogrammes of rawsilk which were manufactured in the Lyons region were manufactured by hand.[207]Twenty years before—that is, about 1865—there were only from 6,000 to 8,000 power-looms, and when we take into account both the prosperous period of the Lyons silk industry about 1876, and the crisis which it underwent in 1880-1886, we cannot but wonder about the slowness of the transformation of the industry. Such is also the opinion of the President of the Lyons Chamber of Commerce, who wrote me that the domain of the power-loom is increased every year, “by including new kinds of stuffs, which formerly were reputed as unfeasible in the power-looms; but,” he added, “the transformation of small workshops into factories still goes on so slowly that the total number of power-looms reaches only from 20,000 to 25,000 out of an aggregate of from 100,000 to 110,000.” (Since that time it certainly must have considerably increased.)
The leading features of the Lyons silk industry are the following:—
The preparatory work—winding off, warping and so on—is mostly made in small workshops, chiefly at Lyons, with only a few workshops of the kind in the villages. Dyeing and finishing are also made—of course, in great factories—and it is especially in dyeing, which occupies 4,000 to 5,000 hands, that the Lyons manufacturers have attained their highest repute. Not only silks are dyed there, but also cottons and wools, and not only for France, but also to some extent for London, Manchester, Vienna, and evenMoscow. It is also in this branch that the best machines have to be mentioned.[208]