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The Inaugural Address of James Caird, Esq., C.B., F.R.S., President of the Statistical Society, Delivered on Tuesday the 16th of November, 1880 Author(s): James Caird Source: Journal of the Statistical Society of London, Vol. 43, No. 4 (Dec., 1880), pp. 559-572 Published by: Wiley for the Royal Statistical Society Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2339025 Accessed: 27-06-2016 03:27 UTC Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://about.jstor.org/terms JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Wiley, Royal Statistical Society are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Journal of the Statistical Society of London This content downloaded from 198.91.37.2 on Mon, 27 Jun 2016 03:27:19 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Vol. XLIII I [Part IV. JOURNAL OF THE STATISTICAL SOCIETY, DECEMBER, 1880. The INAUGURAL ADDRESS of JAMES CAIRD, ESQ., C.B., F.R.S., PRESIDENT of the STATISTICAL SOCIETY, deliver ed onz TUESDAY, the 16th of November, 1880. IT is my duty, first of all, to express my warm appreciation of the distinction conferred on me by this Society, in electing me their President. When I look at the list of distinguished men who have occupied this chair, I feel deeply the responsibility that is laid upon me, to see that no effort of mine shall be wanting to c arry forward the useful work of the Statistical Society. With the aid of the Vice-Presidents, Council, and Secretaries, and the distin- guished Editor of the Journal, I trust that this object will not fail to be accomplished. Your late President in his kind reference to my appointment spoke of it in connection with the questions affecting land, with which the Government and parliament would be called upon to deal. And as these questions are of specially pressing importance at the present time, I will venture to make them the subject of my inaugural address. Mr. Brassey last year at this time, read a very interesting anld instructive paper on Agriculture in England and the United States, and Mr. Shaw Lefevre, our previous President, delivered a most able address two months earlier at Sheffield, on the State of British Agriculture, and the causes of its depression. Since that time there have been published the report of practical farmers deputed from this country to visit America, also the careful letters of the correspondent of the " Times," and, finally, the able and instructive official report to the Royal Commission on agriculture, of Mr. Clare S. Read, and Mr. Pell, M.P., on the Agricuilture of the United States and Canada. We have thus had presented for our consideration a carefully collected mass of facts and deduc- tions, affecting the future prosperity and welfare of the most important single industry in this country, the land. Much con- sidera.tion of these, coupled with a personal knowledge of botl countries, and sources of private information in the United States, have led me to a conclusion different from that of the assistant VOL. XLIII. PART IV. 2 P This content downloaded from 198.91.37.2 on Mon, 27 Jun 2016 03:27:19 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 660 The PRESIDENT'S Inaugutral Address. [Dec. commissioners. They give figures to show that wheat cannot be grown in America in an average of years, and delivered in this country, much below 48s. a quarter. Some support to this view may perhaps be claimed from the recent rise of price. But that is altogether due to the famine in certain parts of Russia, whence, and from Germany, the supply of wheat to this country has dwindled to one-twentieth of what it was at this time two years ago, whilst, for the same reason, a considerable portion of the American shipments, which would have come to us, have gone on to Northern Europe. The actual prices of the last ten years, and the imports of wheat from the United States and Canada in the same period, show that price has very little control over the quantity sent forward. In five of these years the average price was 45s. 8d., and in the other five, 56s. I id. The average annual importation at the lower price was 32 million cwt., and at the higher price 23 million cwt. The year of lowest price, 43s. iid., was that of largest imporfation. A fall of i is. a quarter, or one-fourth of the value, had no effect whatever in diminishing the volume. There is indeed an obvious error in making the average yield of wheat " over a long series " of years " in the UInited States the basis upon which to calculate the future value of the crop, or the cost of production. The great prairies of the west are only beginning to be tapped, a region immensely superior in natural fertility to the older cul- tivated lands of the east, where a yield of 12 bushels an acre has proved the average. The figures quoted by the Commissioners show an average of more than double that quantity in Manitoba. And in potatoes, while the yield of the Eastern States is stated at 8o bushels an acre, that of the prairie region is 300 to 400. It is not so much a question of price as of yield. The cost of production is found to be within 2S. a bushel. All that the western farmer, who owns his land, produces beyond what be consumes, and any wages he may pay, is gain to him. This gain will be increased by every additional bushel each acre produces, and by every in- creased facility, and consequent reduction in the cost of transport. The rapidity with which this takes place in America may be gauged by the number of tons carried from west to east over the leading railroads in 1868 and 1879, 3' million tons in 1868, and 72 million in 1879. This is an increase in twelve years of more than double in quantity, and it was accompanied by a reduction in the cost of transport of one-half. It is computed that the saving to the public in the whole of the United States by the reduction made in railroad freights, during the six years between 1873 and 1879, is equal to go millions sterling. "This," in the words of an American writer, " is the result of intelligence, skill, and "inaenuity, left free to work out the best possible results, un- This content downloaded from 198.91.37.2 on Mon, 27 Jun 2016 03:27:19 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 1880.] The PRESIDENT'S Inaugural Address. 561 " hampered by other legislation than that of their own officers." A halfpenny a ton per mile is now the average railroad charge, and this will be farther reduced by the competition of water carriage, for that country has every water advantage which nature can bestow, in its magnificent rivers and lakes. By the latter and canals wheat can be carried from Chicago to New York at half this rate, and by barges on the Mississippi from St. Louis to the seaboard, an equal distance, the same work is now being done for one-fifth of it. In the month of August last nearly 200,000 quarters of grain, about one-tenth of our total monthly supply, was so sent on these terms for shipment at New Orleans, where an immense and rapidly grow- ing increase of business has arisen, through the deepening of the channel of the mouth of the Mississippi. This is a line of export only beginning; it draws its supplies from an earlier region than the north-west, much of which is shipped in steamers, and delivered in Europe before the harvest of Iowa or Minnesota has begun. But these great navigable rivers, the Mississippi and Missouri, draining a basin nearly as large as Europe, excluding Russia, must ever exercise a restraining influence on the cost of railway transport in America. Ocean freight also, instead of being increased by larger traffic, will be more likely to be lowered when cargoes are found for both outward and inward voyages. And steel ships are now being built for this trade, of 5,ooo to 6,ooo tons, which, with little increase of working expense, will be able profitably to carry cargo at still lower rates of freight. There is thus no probability of prices being enhanced by an increased cost of transport. And when we turn to the area of production, and the quality of the soil with which European agriculture is now brought into competition, we can hardly fail to see the extraordinary advantage possessed by the New World. A line drawn from Hudson's Bay to the mouth of the Missis- sippi, would embrace an area, east of that river, as large as Europe, as varied in climate and production, and in mineral wealth. From the Mississippi westward to the Pacific, is a region nearly twice that extent, one-half of which is believed to be capable of being made arable, and the other half is to a large extent fit for grazing cattle. The climate admits of the most varied kinds of produce, cotton, sugar, and tobacco in the south; Indian corn, wheat, and potatoes in the north and west.

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