United Kingdom 53,472,000 = 41 per cent. United States 27,846,000 = 21 ” Germany 9,881,000 = 8 ” Russia 7,829,000 = 6 ” France 6,750,000 = 5 ” British India 5,756,000 = 4 ” Other nations 19,262,000 = 15 ” ----------- --- 130,796,000 = 100 ” [33] J. Stephen Jeans, _The Iron Trade of Great Britain_ (London, Methuen), 1905, p. 46. The reader will find in this interesting little work valuable data concerning the growth and improvement of the iron industry in different countries. CHAPTER III. THE POSSIBILITIES OF AGRICULTURE. The development of agriculture--Over-population prejudice--Can the soil of Great Britain feed its inhabitants?--British agriculture--Compared with agriculture in France; in Belgium; in Denmark--Market-gardening; its achievements--Is it profitable to grow wheat in Great Britain?--American agriculture: intensive culture in the States. The industrial and commercial history of the world during the last fifty years has been a history of decentralisation of industry. It was not a mere shifting of the centre of gravity of commerce, such as Europe witnessed in the past, when the commercial hegemony migrated from Italy to Spain, to Holland, and finally to Britain: it had a much deeper meaning, as it excluded the very possibility of commercial or industrial hegemony. It has shown the growth of quite new conditions, and new conditions require new adaptations. To endeavour to revive the past would be useless: a new departure must be taken by civilised nations.