Thorstein Veblen
THE FOOD SUPPLY AND THE PRICE OF WHEAT.

The Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 1, No. 3. (Jun., 1893), pp. 365-379.
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In 1879, in an address before the London Statistical Society, Mr. G. Shaw-
Lefevre, said: "If I were to venture a prediction on so difficult and 
obscure a question, I would incline to the opinion that wheat has during 
the past year reached its lowest point."
This forecast was made a couple of years before the beginning of the great 
protracted decline in the prices of all agricultural produce that set in in 
the early years of the eighties. The forces which brought on the decline 
were already at work, and had been at work for some years before Mr. 
Shaw-Lefevre made his prediction; but the causes which seem very obvious after 
the fact may be quite obscure before it, and the causes that make for a 
permanent decline in agricultural produce are commonly more uncertain of 
prevision than those that make for a permanent rise. The former are apt to 
be of the nature of innovations, whose scope and efficacy can not well be 
foretold, while the latter are as apt to be simply the cumulative action of 
factors with whose scope and method we are already familiar.
Recognising, then, the chance of an unforeseen decline, and recognising, 
also, that there is more than one known factor already at work to bring 
about a decline in agricultural products in the near future, the purpose of 
this paper is to attempt an estimate of the possible maximum advance in the 
price of wheat (as a representative product of agriculture) supposing the 
factors that make for a decline to remain in abeyance for the next ten 
years.
The great permanent fall in prices that took place during the first half of 
the last decade has served as an object lesson to enforce the truth that 
there is a close dependence of price on supply. The fact of this dependence 
has been made much of both by those who hope for an advance in prices of 
farm produce, and by [366] those who deprecate the approach of a scarcity 
of bread. The assumption has been freely made that the date at which the 
land available for tillage shall have been definitively occupied is near at 
hand, and that when that day arrives a great and "sudden" advance in 
agricultural prices is to be looked for, with its consequences, of great 
gains for the farmer - for the American farmer perhaps, in an especial 
degree - and of distress for all peoples who get their supply of food 
largely from other countries. This sweeping generalisation merits some 
scrutiny.
It is unquestionably true that the price of wheat depends on the supply, 
but it is no less true that, other things being the same, the annual 
average supply of wheat depends, in the long run, on its price. The control 
exercised by the supply over the price is direct and transient. That 
exercised by the price over the annual average supply is of slower action, 
but it is also more permanent. We have therefore not said the last word in 
saying that when the demand shall have outgrown the present annual supply, 
the price of wheat will advance. The converse is also true when the price 
of wheat begins to advance appreciably beyond what will barely remunerate 
the growers of wheat to-day, the supply will presently increase. The date 
of the definitive occupation of the tillable area yet available will no 
doubt mark an advance in the price of wheat, other things remaining 
unchanged; but the date of a definitive advance in price will no less 
surely mark an increase in the output from the acreage already under 
cultivation in the older wheat-growing sections. When this event comes to 
pass the farmers in the older sections will find it to their advantage to 
give their land such additional attention as will increase the yield per 
acre from the land already in cultivation, and so to some extent cover the 
shortage to which the rise in price is due and break the force of the 
advance. At the same time recourse will he had in an increasing degree to 
lands which are scarcely profitable for tillage at the prices which have 
been ruling for some years past.
The increased demand that is expected to advance the price of wheat will 
come as a result of an increase of the population [367] of bread-eating 
countries. An increased demand for wheat accordingly implies an increase of 
approximately the same proportions in the demand for other food products; 
therefore any considerable increase of the acreage sown to wheat will be 
practicable only as a feature in the general increase of the acreage of 
arable land. The increased supply of wheat, as of other food products, will 
therefore have to be obtained, in part, by an increased yield per acre 
from the acreage already in cultivation.
While we have by no means reached - or nearly reached - the limit of the 
possible extension of the wheat area in America, it is probably true that 
we are fast approaching the point beyond which there is no considerable 
additional amount of wheat lands equally fertile and otherwise equally 
available with the last ten or twenty million acres already brought under 
cultivation. It can hardly be said that the spread of cultivation in 
America during the past ten or twelve years has been to less fertile or 
less available lands; but for the next ten or twelve years, barring 
unforeseen developments, any considerable further spread of the area of 
cultivation can not take place without recourse to less available lands. 
The practical working of the law of diminishing returns will therefore 
assume an importance for our farming which it has not had for some time 
past. This practical working of the law will appear in the relation between 
the price and the yield per acre.
The yield per acre and the prices of farm produce vary considerably as 
between the different sections of the country, and, so far as concerns the 
older sections, they vary together, with some regularity; but the 
difference in prices between different localities is too slight and the 
difference in other respects is too great to afford satisfactory figures 
from which to infer what is the effect, on the yield, of a given local 
advantage in price. The divergence in price is not pronounced nor easily 
ascertainable, as between states which are in other respects available for 
our comparison. Evidently no value can attach to a comparison of the newer, 
spring-wheat states with the older, winter-wheat states. But it may be 
remarked that Vermont, Massachusetts and Con-[368]necticut show a higher 
yield than any of the Ohio Valley states.
It will be more to the purpose, because the divergence both in price and in 
yield is great enough to afford tangible evidence of the efficacy of the 
forces at work, to compare the price and yield per acre in Great Britain 
with the price in Chicago and the yield per acre in the winter-wheat states 
lying about Chicago. The yield per acre of wheat in Great Britain is very 
considerably greater than in the states about Chicago. The immediate cause 
of its being so is the higher price obtained for wheat, and for other farm 
produce, by the British farmers; and the degree of effectiveness of the 
inducement offered them in the way of higher prices ought to help us to 
forecast the probable efficacy of an appeal of the same kind to the 
industry of their American competitors.
The winter-wheat states centering about Chicago and the great lakes - Ohio, 
Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin and Michigan - may, in some respects, not 
unfairly be compared with Great Britain. They are like that country in 
being a country of mixed farming, and, as regards wheat production, mainly 
a winter-wheat country. Their farm lands have also been under cultivation 
for such a length of time as in large measure to obviate the complications 
which the "virgin soil" would introduce into any comparison of the newer 
states of the west with the countries of Europe. In some respects these 
states do not afford a close parallel to the farming lands of Great 
Britain. The climate is not the same, and the faults of the climate are not 
of the same kind. In the states mentioned there is more danger from drought 
than from wet seasons; in the United Kingdom it is all the other way. A bad 
season in England is sure to be a year of deficient heat, or excessive 
moisture, or both. Further, the soil of these states does not closely 
resemble the British soil in point of adaptation to wheat culture. These 
states do, however, afford as nearly fair a comparison with British soil 
and climate as any part of America that is a sufficiently representative 
wheat-growing region, and at every point where the comparison seems to be 
vitiated by in-[369]herent differences the difference is in favor of the 
states, as a superior country for wheat-growing and for mixed farming. The 
American soil is more fertile and more easily tilled; the climate of the 
states is better adapted for wheat-growing; the American farmers are 
probably not at all inferior to the British in intelligence or enterprise. 
So far as the inherent difference in natural advantages may lead us astray 
in drawing any inferences from a comparison of this group of states with 
Great Britain, the error would be in the direction of too low an estimate 
of the wheat-growing capacity of the states under the stimulus of a higher 
price. And as the object of the inquiry is to estimate the probable minimum 
effect on supply of a given permanent advance in price, rather than the 
maximum capacity of the states under such a stimulus, this is not a danger 
that need be specially guarded against.
An objection of greater weight may be found in the difference between 
British and American prices of staples, other than agricultural produce. 
The higher general level of prices of what the American farmer has to buy 
places him at a disadvantage, as compared with the British farmer, in 
precisely the same way as the lower price he gets for what he has to sell. 
The hindering effect of the higher price of staples must accordingly be 
allowed for in calculating the effect which a given rise in the price of 
farm products will have in the way of increasing the intensity of culture.
This higher range of prices does not comprise all articles of consumption 
used by the farmer. Lumber, and forest products generally, are lower here 
than in England. Farm implements of most kinds are rather cheaper; leather 
goods are scarcely higher; many of the staple food products are cheaper. 
But after all has been said, it is not to be questioned that the American 
farmer has to pay a somewhat higher average range of prices for what he 
buys (outside of agricultural products) than his British competitor. The 
American tariff to the extent to which it is protective, increases the 
price of the articles on which it is laid, and among these articles are 
many important items of the farmer's necessary consumption.
[370] It is difficult to say, even approximately, how much of a handicap 
this added cost is to American farming. It assuredly does not amount to 
more than 20 per cent. of the value of our farm products at Chicago prices; 
probably the actual additional cost to the farmers is considerably less 
than 20 per cent. of the value of their products.
Against this higher cost of necessaries in America may be offset the lower 
margin of cultivation in Great Britain, - using the term in the sense of a 
resort to poorer soils. The natural fertility of the poorest soils in 
cultivation in Great Britain in the system of mixed farming of which wheat 
culture is an integral part, is greatly lower than that of the poorest 
class of soils cultivated in the states named. This implies a 
correspondingly greater average cost of production of the products of 
British farming,(1*) and it affects also the cost of many of the 
necessaries of life to the British farmer.
The advantage is as definitely on the side of the states with respect to 
the margin of cultivation, as it is on the side of Great Britain with 
respect to the range of general prices. Here, again, it is impossible to 
say how great the advantage of the one over the other may be, but it is not 
unlikely that the disadvantage of the British farmer in this respect may 
completely offset the disadvantage which the American farmer has in the 
matter of higher general prices.
It may be thought that the fact that the agricultural depression in Great 
Britain during the whole of the period chosen for comparison (1884-92) has 
been severer than in America, would vitiate any British data for comparison 
with our own in any case where the point at issue turns on the question of 
a remunerative price. This difficulty is not a very serious one in any 
case, and does not affect the question in hand at all. What is required for 
the validity of the argument is: (1) that the inducements to [371] wheat 
culture in Great Britain, relatively to other tillage, should not be 
greater than in the states; and (2) that the least fertile lands cultivated 
in the British system of farming should not be intrinsically superior to 
the lands similarly at the margin of cultivation in the states. It needs no 
argument to establish that both these conditions are fully met and will 
continue to hold for an indefinite time to come.(2*)
If the considerations adduced are admitted to be valid, to the extent that 
wheat growing in a system of mixed farming in the states named lies under 
no other or greater disadvantage as compared with wheat growing in Great 
Britain than that indicated by the difference in the price of a given grade 
of wheat between Chicago and Liverpool, then we have the premises from 
which to deduce approximately what will be the maximum possible advance in 
price required to induce a given increase in the average yield per acre of 
wheat in the states. And this will afford some indication of what will be 
the maximum possible advance in price resulting from a given increase in 
the consumption of wheat.
The prices selected for comparison are average prices of American No. 2 Red 
Winter Wheat in Liverpool and in Chicago, since 1884.
While this grade of wheat is not grown in England, the quotations for this 
grade are quite as significant for wheat prices in England as any 
quotations obtainable. The Gazette averages, which are usually quoted, are 
for British wheat, without respect to quality and the average quality of 
the grain from which the quotations are made up will accordingly vary from 
year to year, with the character of the harvest. Gazette averages are 
useless for any exact comparison.
[372] The reason for not making up the averages for a comparison of prices 
from a series of years reaching back of 1884 is obvious. Wheat culture had 
not, until that time, adjusted itself to the changed conditions of the 
market that supervened about 1880-82. The years immediately preceding 1884-
85 were years of great changes in the price and acreage of wheat. By 1884 
the decline was completed, and the price of wheat has moved on a lower 
level since that time than before. About the same time the decline in 
acreage in the states selected had also practically ceased;(3*) though a 
slight tendency to a further narrowing of the acreage has been perceptible 
since that time, at least until 1890.
The average yield per acre of wheat for the eight years since 1885 (4*) in 
the states selected has been about 13 3/4 bushels.(5*) This average 
includes the extraordinary harvest of 1891 (17 1/2 bushels per acre) But 
even counting 1891, this average is probably slightly short of the normal 
average yield for these states, the seasons during the latter half of the 
eighties having been, on the [373] whole, rather unfavorable for winter 
wheat. The average yield of the same states for the years 1877-83, when the 
seasons were, on the whole, very favorable, was 14 3/4 bushels. The lower 
average yield during later years seems to be due, in a slight degree, to a 
partial displacement of wheat by other crops on some of the more fertile 
and better tilled soils; or perhaps more exactly, to a relative neglect of 
wheat-growing by some of the more capable and better equipped farmers; but 
the great cause of this discrepancy lies, no doubt, in the character of the 
seasons. When due weight is allowed to all these factors, we shall be very 
near the truth in assuming 14 bushels per acre to be the present normal 
average yield of wheat in these states.
For Great Britain the officially assumed normal average yield of wheat is 
28.80 bushels per acre. The actual annual average for the eight years since 
1885 is 29.57 bushels.(6*) It is difficult to say whether the officially 
assumed normal average is nearer the true normal than the recorded actual 
average. The London Economist, as well as some other authorities, claims 
the true normal average to exceed 29 bushels. The seasons during the 
eighties have been, on the whole, rather more favorable for wheat than the 
average of a long series of years. If this were the sole modifying 
circumstance the official normal average would have to be accepted as very 
near the true normal. But this circumstance does not account for the whole 
of the discrepancy between the average yield of today and that of some 
years ago. It has been pointed out that the average has also probably been 
raised by the dropping of some of the inferior soils out of wheat 
cultivation. At the same time, improvements in agriculture seem also to 
have affected the average yield in the same direction. It will be safe to 
take 29 bushels per acre as the actual normal average yield of wheat in 
Great Britain.
The average yield in Great Britain exceeds the yield in the states by about 
107 per cent. (15 bushels). The annual average price of American No. 2 Red 
Winter Wheat in Liverpool, for the years 1884-91, exceeds the average price 
of the same grade in [374] Chicago by a trifle over 20 per cent. (18.095 
cents per Winchester bushel).(7*) It ought to be a safe inference that a 
gradual advance in the price of wheat in the Chicago market to the present 
level of the price in Liverpool (accompanied, as in the normal course of 
things it would be, by a corresponding advance in the prices of other farm 
produce) would result in such an advance in the intensity of culture in the 
states lying about Chicago as to increase the average yield of wheat, 
during the early stages of the advance, in the same proportion as the 
British yield is higher on account of the higher British price. That is to 
say, a sufficiently gradual and permanent moderate advance, of a given per 
cent., in price, in the Chicago market, should result in an increase in the 
yield per acre of wheat in these states, of at least five times as many per 
cent. Twenty per cent (18 cents per bushel) advantage in price in Liverpool 
carries with it 107 per cent. (15 bushels) advantage in the yield per acre 
in Great Britain. A gradual advance of 5 per cent. (4.36 cents per bushel) 
in the annual average price in Chicago ought to bring an increase of more 
than 20 per cent. (2.8 bushels) in the yield per acre of wheat in the states 
lying about Chicago, supposing the conditions of production otherwise to 
remain unchanged.
The aggregate annual production of the five states named, for the eight 
years 1885-92, has averaged slightly over 140 million bushels. If the price 
of wheat in Chicago were to advance permanently to 95.84 cents per bushel 
(10 per cent) we should have to expect the total annual production of these 
states to rise to not much less than 210 million bushels (50 per cent.).
[375] Assuming that the advance in price would have an equivalent effect on 
the output in the other wheat regions (and the chances would seem to be 
that the effect would be relatively at least as great in the remoter wheat 
fields, since the per cent. advance in price in the remoter local markets 
would be appreciably greater, and any inability to increase the yield on 
the newer wheat lands would be fully offset by an extension of the area), 
and considering also that such an advance in price would induce some 
increase in acreage in all the wheat producing country, an ordinary average 
price of 96 cents in the Chicago markets might be expected to bring out an 
aggregate annual product of not less than 800 million bushels.
Conversely, No. 2 Red Winter Wheat cannot advance permanently to 96 cents 
in Chicago until there is a customary demand for about 800 million bushels 
of American wheat at the increased price. A ten per cent. advance in price 
presumes something near a fifty per cent. increase in the demand.
The increase in the demand for wheat will coincide approximately with the 
increase of the bread-eating population. Judging of the future by the past, 
it will be a liberal estimate to say that the bread-eating population of 
the countries which draw on the supplies of the general market to which 
America contributes, may be expected to increase by ten per cent. in ten 
years. It has perhaps reached that rate of growth during the last decade, 
and it would be extravagant to expect that rate to be exceeded during the 
next decade.
The price which it would he necessary to offer for wheat in order to meet 
this increased demand by an increased production is more a matter of 
surmise than the probable rate of growth of population. If we could answer 
this question, we should know approximately what prices our farmers may 
look for in payment for their produce during the opening years of the 
twentieth century. There is reason to believe that, barring unforeseen 
innovations, at the point in the growth of the demand for food at which 
there will be an effective demand for one-and-one-half times as much 
American wheat as at present, the price will have to be [376] advanced by 
not more than nine cents above the present ordinary average price in 
Chicago. In the meantime, a less increase in the demand could be met at a 
less advance in price. An increase of ten per cent. (200,000,000 bushels) 
in the world's consumption of wheat would mean, if the demand were 
distributed as it is at present, an increase of about 50 million bushels in 
the portion ordinarily required of America. This additional demand could 
be met, without increase of acreage, by an addition of about 1 1/4 bushels 
to the present average yield per acre of wheat; and this additional 1 1/4 
bushels would be forthcoming without its being necessary to advance the 
price in the local markets by as much as two cents per bushel above the 
average of the last eight or nine years.
But the additional demand will not fall pro rata on the countries which now 
supply the world with wheat; and the like is true to almost the same extent 
of the supply of other agricultural products. America now, of late years, 
supplies rather less than one-fourth of the total wheat product. She will 
certainly be called on to contribute more than one-fourth of the additional 
200 bushels that will be required before the end of another ten years, 
unless some unforeseen contingency should come in to change the complexion 
of things.
An advance in price would have some effect on the intensity of culture in 
all agricultural countries, but the effect would probably be very slight in 
such regions as the wheat lands of Russia and India, especially the latter. 
In these countries, as well as in large portions of Western Europe, notably 
in France, agriculture is in the hands of a population that does not 
respond readily to promptings from without. Whatever addition may be made 
to the wheat supply furnished by those countries - apart from additions 
due to improved facilities for transportation - will be made slowly, and 
will at best be inconsiderable for some time to come. The new demand will 
fall first and most heavily on the American, Australian and South American 
wheat lands, and on such portions of Europe as Great Britain, Austria, 
parts of Germany, &c., together with some contributions due to an increase 
of acreage in Russia.
[377] This fact, that the intensity of culture of a considerable portion of 
the present wheat-producing area of the world will be but partially and 
feebly affected by a moderate advance in the price, will necessitate a 
higher production on the part of that portion which will more readily 
respond to the call. It results in a virtual narrowing of the area from 
which the additional supply can be obtained, so as to include little else 
than the newer wheat-growing countries, with portions of Western Europe. 
These regions will therefore be called on to furnish more than their pro 
rata contingent to the increase, and this greater rate of production in 
these countries will be obtained only at the cost of a greater advance in 
price.
Of these more manageable countries, not all would respond to the demand 
with equal alacrity. It is, for example, easier for America to add one-
tenth to her average yield of 12 1/4 bushels than it is for England to add 
one-tenth to her yield of 29 bushels.(8*)
This fact goes in the same direction and adds further to the necessity of a 
higher price in the American market than would have been required if 
America were called on to furnish her pro rata increase only.
America has of late contributed something less than one-quarter of the 
world's annual wheat supply. If the facts above recited are allowed the 
extreme weight implied in looking to this country for one-half instead of 
one-fourth of the additional 200 million bushels that will be required by 
the end of another ten years, then it will be necessary to increase the 
yield of wheat in America, not by one-tenth, as was assumed above, but by 
one-fifth; that is, from 12 1/3 bushels to 14.8 bushels per acre for the 
whole country, or from 14 bushels to 16.8 bushels per acre for the five 
states named. To maintain such an increase in the American yield of wheat 
would require an advance [378] of less than 4 1/2 per cent. (3.8 cents per 
bushel) in the price of wheat in Chicago.
But as some increase in acreage is sure to result from any advance in 
price, allowance must be made for the increased supply to be obtained by 
this means. How great the effect on the acreage will be, it is impossible 
to say. On the other hand, it is pretty certainly true that any advance in 
price will not have as great an effect in increasing the yield in the newer 
states, especially in the spring-wheat country, as in the group of states 
with which we set out. The chief increase in product in the newer states 
will, for some time to come, be got by increasing the acreage. It may be 
accepted without much risk that this increase in acreage will fully make up 
for the slighter increase in the yield per acre, so that the conclusion 
already arrived at need not he modified on that account.
If, therefore, these premises are accepted as sound and adequate, there is 
small chance that the normal increase in the demand for bread will 
permanently raise the average price of No. 2 wheat above 91 cents in the 
Chicago market within the next ten years.
This estimate proceeds on the supposition that no considerable advance is 
taking place or will take place the next few years in the methods of 
farming or in any of the industries that have to do directly or indirectly 
with the food supply. This of course is an extreme position. If, as is 
quite probable, improved industrial knowledge and processes should 
appreciably lessen the cost of production of grain in the newer wheat 
countries, this estimate would probably prove too high. And if, as is still 
more probable, the prices of staple articles of consumption in America 
should decline, relatively to those of farm produce, the chance of any 
advance in wheat or in farm products generally, would be still further 
narrowed. If, for example, American import duties on staples should be 
lowered within the next ten years sufficiently to diminish the cost of the 
farmer's necessary articles of consumption by 20 per cent. (and such a 
result is possible), the chance of any permanent advance in wheat for the 
present would disappear.
[379] Even apart from any lowering of the cost of articles of necessary 
consumption, it is fully within the possibilities of the situation that no 
permanent advance in farm products need take place at all for a generation 
or more. Better methods and a more intimate knowledge of the natural 
processes concerned in farming are probably capable, as competent 
authorities insist, of so adding to the efficiency of our farming as not to 
admit of prices going higher than they are.
Agriculture is fast assuming the character of an "industry," in the modern 
sense, and the development of the next few decades may not improbably show 
us, in farming as in other occupations, a continual improvement in methods 
and a steady decline in cost of production, even in the face of a 
considerably increased demand.
THORSTEIN B. VEBLEN.
UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO

NOTES:
1) This statement does not imply that rent is an element in the cost of 
production. What is claimed is that Great Britain, as a whole, because of 
its lower margin of cultivation, gets the products of its soil at a greater 
average expenditure than do the states, and that a given increment in the 
price will induce a less increment in yield at this lower margin than at 
the higher margin of cultivation existing in the states.
2) The depression in British farming, so far as it is not due to bad 
harvests, is due to the decline in prices; and this decline has affected 
grain production rather more strongly than other tillage. Its most 
pronounced economic result has been a readjustment of rents on lowered 
basis. Apart from adverse seasons, the British farmers' chief real 
grievance is too high rents. Prices have fallen some 30 percent, or more; 
money rents, except in isolated cases, have not been lowered to correspond. 
In addition to this, the farmers have suffered from a depreciation of the 
capital they have had invested in farming; which is also a considerable 
item.
3) The extraordinary decline in wheat acreage in the Ohio valley group of 
states in 1885 was due quite as much to an unfavorable season as to a 
voluntary narrowing of the area. The acreage regained in 1886 more than 
half of what had been lost in 1885. The definitive effect on acreage of the 
decline in price that ended in 1884, was not had until the following year. 
In studying the movement of acreage under the influence of the new level of 
prices then established, the new period is to be considered as having begun 
with 1885.
4) The average yield for the years 1885-92 has been taken, as, for the 
present purpose, answering to the price during the years 1884-91. The yield 
for the year 1884 was the same as the average for 1885-92.
5) The average annual yield has been:
|----------------------------------------------------|
|                       |In the States;|in Great Bri-|
|  Year                 |   Bushels    |tain; bushels|
|                       | (Winchester) | (Imperial)  |
|----------------------------------------------------|
|  1885                 |    11.19     |    31.31    |
|  1886                 |    14.41     |    26.89    |
|  1887                 |    13.38     |    32.07    |
|  1888                 |    12.02     |    28.05    |
|  1889                 |    14.91     |    29.89    |
|  1890                 |    11.74     |    30.74    |
|  1891                 |    17.49     |    31.26    |
|  1892                 |    14.40     |    26.38    |
|----------------------------------------------------|
|             Average.  |    13.78     |   29.57     |
|----------------------------------------------------|

6) See note 3, page 372 [here: note 5)]
7) Annual average price of No. 2 Red Winter Wheat, in cents per bushel.
|--------------------------------------------------|
|  Year                 |   Chicago  |  Liverpool  |
|--------------------------------------------------|
|  1885                 |    89.3    |   107.2     |
|  1886                 |    88.3    |   103.1     |
|  1887                 |    77.6    |    99.6     |
|  1888                 |    77.2    |    98.7     |
|  1889                 |    92.5    |   107.4     |
|  1890                 |    85.2    |   102.8     |
|  1891                 |    89.5    |   105.3     |
|  1892                 |    97.3    |   117.7     |
|--------------------------------------------------|
|             Average.  |    87.13   |   105.225   |
|--------------------------------------------------|

8) It must not be supposed that England, or any part of Europe, is near the 
limit of productivity. The London Economist of September 13, 1890, says: 
High authorities have estimated that we might double the produce of the 
soil in the United Kingdom even under our existing system of farming. As it 
is, there are farmers who grow nearly double the average of grain crops for 
the kingdom as a whole, and many who produce twice the average weight of 
roots and potatoes."
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