Page 134 - clra62_0019-(GIPE)

RECENT RATE OF MATERIAL PROGRESS IN ENGLAND 127
decline in our foreign trade to account for such a check
to our general growth as is supposed to have occurred.
I( the loss of our natural advantages of coal and iron in
addition to agriculture is having the effects supposed,
we ought to witness them in our foreign trade. and in
fact we do not witness them to the extent required for
the production of the phenomenon in question.
What I wish now specially to urge is that, in conse-
quenc,e of the progress of invention and the practical
application of inventions in modern times, the theory
itself has begun to be less true generally than it has
been. It is no longer so necessary, as it once was, as
in fact it always has been until very lately, that people
should live where their food and raw materia1s are
grown. The industry of the world having become more
and more manufacturing and, if one may say so, artistic,
and less agricultural and extractive, the natural advan-
tages of a fertile soil and rich min'es are less important
to a manufacturing community than they were at any
former period of the world's history, because of the
new cheapness of conveyance. Under the new condi-
tions, I believe it is impossible to doubt, climate, ac-
cumulated wealth, acquired manufacturing skill, concen-
tration of population become more important factors
than mere juxtaposition to the natural advantages of
fertile soil and rich mines. The facts seem at any rate
worth investigating, judging by what has happened in
England and other old countries in the last half-cen-
tury and by what is still happening there.
Take first the question of food. Wheat is now con-
veyed from the American Far ,"Vest to Liverpool and
London and any other ports in the Old ,"Vorld for
something like five shillings per quarter--equal to about
half a farthing on the pound of bread, or a halfpenny
on the quartern loaf. The difference between the towns
of a country with fertile soil, therefore, and the towns
of a country with inadequate soil is represented by this
small difference in the price of bread: At. about five-
pence the quartem loaf the staff of life may be about