17. "Periodical. The Single Tax Review." 150 Nassau St., New York City, $2.50 a year. 18. WRIGHT C. W.: “Wool Growing and the Tariff." Harvard Economic Studies, Vol. 5, 1910. 19. RHODES, JAMES FORD: "History of the United States." Vol. 3, 27-60. 20. DOMERATZKY -: "European Tariff Policies after the World War.” The Americas, Aug., Sept., Oct., Nov., 1919. 21. "Single Tax in Canada-for Unimproved Lands." Grain Growers' Guide, January 7, 1920, 6. 22. BROWN, HARRY G.: "International Trade and Exchange," (especially chapters 4, 5, 6 of Part II), New York, 1914. APPENDIX Speech of Daniel Webster.- (House of Representatives, April 6, 1814.) "I am not anxious to accelerate the approach of the period when the great mass of American labor shall not find its employment in the field; when the young men of the country shall be obliged to shut their eyes upon external nature, upon the heavens and the earth, and immerse themselves in close and unwholesome workshops, when they shall be obliged to shut their ears to the bleatings of their own flocks, upon their own hills, and to the voices of the lark that cheers them at the plough, that they may open them in dust, and smoke, and steam, to the perpetual whirl of spools and spindles, and the grating of rasps and saws "It is the true policy of the Government to suffer the different pursuits of society to take their own course, and not to give excessive bounties of encouragements to one over another. This, also, is the true spirit of the Constitution. It has not, in my opinion conferred on the Government the power of changing the occupations of the people of different states and sections, and changing of enforcing them into other employments." Question by Representative Livingston.- (Testimony of Le Grand Powers, Chief of the Division of Agriculture, United States Census, Washington, May 4, 1899, before the Industrial Commission.) If the farmers' products meet the competition of the world in foreign markets, and the manufacturers' products meet the same competition in foreign markets of the world, if the Government undertakes to help one in any way ought it not to help the other, both being situated in certain cases alike? Answer. Certainly. Question. Has it done it? Answer. I do not know why it has not, because the tariff cuts absolutely no figure. We have to-day, to catch certain of the voters, a nominal tariff on certain agricultural products brought here from other countries. That tariff may affect prices a little on the border, just a trifle, but in the markets of the United States, on all the farms of the United States, the prices are not affected a hair's breadth. Question (Bounty on Exports). - You do not think that would remedy it? Answer. No; you would have out of such a bounty no benefit at all to the farmer. It would be the same as in Germany in the matter of the sugar bounty. The English farmer, as the result of the German bounty, is able to feed his hogs raw German sugar as one of the cheapest articles he can give them; and he does that at the expense of the German taxpayer. The system of bounties in Germany has simply raised the price of sugar to the consumers in Germany, and thus lessens the amount that is consumed in Germany. If Germany would take away all bounties on sugar the common people could and would consume more sugar, and they would thus make a market for as much sugar of their own in twenty years as they have built up by their export duties. Industrial Commission Report. Vol. X, pp. 176, 177. CHAPTER XXV FOREIGN COMPETITION THE question of foreign competition in agriculture is one which looms on the immediate horizon of the future. Then somewhat more remote than this question, but none the less real, is that fundamental question of soil exhaustion and the future food supply. The first of these questions, foreign competition, will be briefly considered in this chapter. A Leaf from England's Notebook. - We can view with great equanimity economic revolutions in other countries. Our detachment and perspective enable us to see and interpret, in a disinterested fashion, important transitions in agriculture which are forced on our neighbors. But may not the same revolutions and transitions happen to us? Since the logical outcome of foreign competition is change in our own agriculture, in certain particulars, it is extremely interesting and suggestive to observe the experience of England when foreign competition forced her to pass through a period of agricultural revolution during the twenty-five years following our own Civil War. The opening up of the new lands of the United States, Canada, Argentina, Australia, and elsewhere proved a disaster, for the moment, to the English growers of wheat and live stock. Changes were made which may correctly be termed an economic revolution in English agriculture. Wheat was produced as the "pioneer crop" on the virgin soils of the new countries in such volume and at so low a cost of production that the English farmer simply could not compete. Ocean steamships furnished cheap and rapid transportation. The invention of cheap refrigeration opened up the British markets to the almost limitless supplies of beef and mutton from distant lands. At the same time occurred a steady fall in the price of wool, owing to the cheap supplies from the British colonies. And on top of all these disturbances came a succession of unfavorable seasons. These and other causes, all working together, shook the very foundations of British agriculture. The old order was changing; a new order was coming in. The farmers who clung to the old order were ruined by the change. The farmers who saw the signs of the time and took advantage of them were made prosperous by the transition. The immediate effect of cheap bread and meat from abroad was to benefit the cities and the laboring classes in the industries in the cities. The prosperity of the working classes brought a demand from them for foods in addition to bread and meats, particularly articles of food which before had been looked on as luxuries. These food articles included milk, cream, butter, vegetables, fruit, jams, preserves, poultry, eggs, etc. Thus the prosperity of the cities was in part passed on to the farmers. Certain high-grade meats produced in England and Scotland were in greater demand. There followed as a natural consequence of agricultural revolution a great expansion in the growing of pure-bred live stock, particularly dairy cattle. There came also a growth in raising pure-bred beef cattle, partly to supply the home demand for prime beef, and partly for export purposes to countries like Argentina, where fancy prices were paid for pure-bred sires. British farmers of the more progressive type recognized the changes in the world about them, and hastened to take advantage of them. Among the successful activities of the progressive farmers may be named the following: sale of fresh milk, fruit industry (including dried fruit, jam, preserved fruits, cider), flowers, bulbs, market gardening (including broccoli, cabbage, celery, peas, rhubarb), eggs and poultry. Marketing and transportation problems also received considerable attention, in order that a proper and wide distribution of these crops could be secured. The non-progressive farmers, feeling the pinch of the transition, filled the newspapers with letters about the "depression in agriculture," and wanted the government to "do something" for the farmer. Many of them asked for a protective tariff against this "foreign competition." In short, the issue was the old familiar one of Self-help versus State-aid. But self-help prevailed as the policy to be pursued. And now the British farmer himself is glad to buy his wheat from abroad, paying for it with crops that yield him a higher net return. In other words, he can get a bushel of wheat from the prairies of western Canada with less labor than he can produce a bushel of wheat on his British soil. Consequently wheat-growing in England has been reduced to those areas having distinct advantages in producing this cereal. OUR FOREIGN TRADE; ITS CHANGES 411 Conditions Facing the United States. In the production of the staple "bread-and-meat" crops-wheat, corn, hogs, beef cattle -we face the competition of the newer and fast-developing countries of all the world. While there are many areas of this kind of much significance, yet the following three are of the most immediate and outstanding importance, namely, Canada, Argentina, Russia. These bread-and-meat products compete in the markets of the world. Rapid transportation has largely neutralized the effects of distance. Prices respond according to these world-wide conditions, in which the United States is clearly not an isolated unit, but an integral part. The following diagram illustrates this truth for the wheat crop. As we affect prices in these other regions, so must they affect prices in our country. Hence it is easily conceivable that in the course of agricultural evolution or revolution we may at no distant date see the American consumers eating bread and meat from foreign lands. Would this be a good thing or a bad thing for the country? In the case of the English transition, the farmer, on the whole, seems to be better off after the change than before the change. The economic principle of the so-called "comparative costs" should govern in any situation of this kind. This principle may be illustrated in this way. If the Canadian farmer can raise better and cheaper wheat than the American farmer, while the American farmer, in his turn, can raise better and cheaper corn than his Canadian cousin, then the American farmer had better buy his wheat from Canada-paying for it with corn, rather than keep on raising wheat for himself. Each produces what he can produce best and cheapest. And under a free interchange of products, each gets the maximum return at the least cost. This illustrates how a cheap agricultural product, imported from a foreign country, may not injure the American, farmer. The consumers who are not farmers and they constitute two-thirds of our population are of course interested in any source of cheaper food supply which promises to be permanent. Our Foreign Trade; Its Changes; Its Significance. A glance at a table of our exports and imports during a period of three decades prior to the World War shows strikingly the change in our foreign trade in agricultural products. We are ceasing to export foodstuffs. We are beginning to import foodstuffs. The tremendous increase in the volume of our exports is due to the growth of |