On the Increase of Production.
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be imported at a comparatively cheap rate from other countries. All that we have here stated is strikingly exemplified by the events which have occurred within the last few years. Exemplification of these principles in late years.The trade of the country, although it has been sometimes checked by periods of depression, has advanced with striking rapidity, and the number of labourers now engaged in the manufacturing industry of this country greatly exceeds the number employed twenty years since. The capital invested in our manufactures has even advanced more rapidly than the increase of population. Not only are there more labourers, but the wages of these labourers have risen very decidedly within the last few years. Two causes, therefore, have combined to increase the demand for food, namely, a larger population and a better paid labouring class. But it may be said, political economy would predict that, in consequence of such a demand, all food will become more expensive; and yet bread is cheaper. But as previously remarked, we have now the whole world from which to obtain our supplies of wheat, and the cost of carrying wheat from one country to another is comparatively small. There has, however, been a most decided rise in the value of those articles of food which we cannot with such facility obtain from other countries. For instance, it is so much more difficult and expensive to import meat than corn that, although wheat is at the present time cheap and meat dear, more than one half of the wheat we consume is imported, whereas only about 20 per cent, of the fresh meat we consume is imported.[1] The rise in the price of meat which has taken place during the last few years must continue with the increase of population, unless by the conversion of corn land into pasture more meat is produced in England, or unless some means are discovered of improving the present methods of importing fresh meat.[2]
- ↑ In 1876, the late Mr. James Howard, M.P., in a paper read at the Farmers' Club, estimated our aggregate meat supply from abroad at 17 per cent.; [he estimated it (March, 1888) at 23 per cent., or 26 lbs. per head each year for the whole population].
- ↑ [The importation of fresh meat from abroad is a branch of trade that is rapidly increasing. The importation of the tinned preserved meats is falling off, but the importation of fresh beef, mutton, pork and other meats, exclusive of bacon and ham, increased from 1,184,289 cwts.
