These words by Mr. Rowntree are fully confirmed by the change in the general aspects of the Belgian agriculture, as they appear from the official statistical data. The same must be said of France. The above-mentioned fall in prices induced agriculturists to intensify their methods of culture. I have mentioned already the rapid spreading of agricultural machinery among the French peasants during the last twenty years; and I must mention also the equally remarkable increase in the amounts of chemical manure used by the peasants; the sudden development of agricultural syndicates since 1884; the extension taken by co-operation; the new organisation of transport with cool storage, or in heated cars, for the export of fruit and flowers; the development taken by special industrial cultures; and still more so the immense development of gardening in the South of France and market-gardening in the North. All these adaptations were introduced on such a scale that one is bound to recognise that the crisis has had the effect of giving quite a new aspect to French agriculture, taken as a whole. * * * * * Much more ought to be said with regard to the American competition, and therefore I must refer the reader to the remarkable series of articles dealing with the whole of the subject which Schaeffle published in 1886 in the _Zeitschrift für die gesammte Staatswissenschaft_, and to the most elaborate article on the costs of growing wheat all over the world which appeared in April, 1887, in the _Quarterly Review_. These articles were written at the time when American competition was something new and made much havoc in English agriculture, causing a fall of from 30 to 50 per cent. in the rents of land for agricultural purposes. But the conclusions of these two writers were fully corroborated by the yearly reports of the American Board of Agriculture, and Schaeffle’s previsions were fully confirmed by the subsequent reports of Mr. J. R. Dodge. It appeared from these works that the fertility of the American soil had been grossly exaggerated, as the masses of wheat which America sent to Europe from its north-western farms were grown on a soil the natural fertility of which is not higher, and often lower, than the average fertility of the unmanured European soil. The Casselton farm in Dakota, with its twenty bushels per acre, was an exception; while the average crop of the chief wheat-growing States in the West was only eleven to twelve bushels. In order to find a fertile soil in America, and crops of from thirty to forty bushels, one must go to the old Eastern States, where the soil is made by man’s hands.[67]