It has been estimated that when the Queen came to the throne, of the working population of the country one-third were agricultural labourers, and one-third were artizans. There has since been an addition of from 12,000,000 to 15,000,000 to the whole population, and at the end of this period of remarkable growth we find ourselves face to face with the overwhelming fact that of all the working classes of Great Britain only an eighth are agricultural labourers while three-fourths are artizans. What this means is in no way more tersely described than when we say that Britain has become the workshop of the {104} world. What it involves is the conclusion that never in the history of the human race has any great nation lived under such artificial conditions as do British people at the end of this period of extraordinary industrial development, a period which has its limit well within the century. All the circumstances of national existence have been revolutionized. After the application to the soil of intense culture, of scientific skill, of abundant capital, of cheap labour, only about 8,000,000 or 9,000,000 quarters of wheat are produced out of the 28,000,000 quarters which now represent the annual consumption. The rest comes from the far distant prairies of the United States and Canada, from India, South Australia, New Zealand, the Black Sea and the Baltic. With other cereals it is the same, the demand for those which cannot be produced at all in Great Britain, such as rice and maize, being immense. Cheap ocean freights, which make it possible to transfer a bushel of wheat by sea from Montreal or New York to London at a lower price than it can be carried by rail from some English counties to London, handicap the English producer still more. It seems as if the dependence upon the outside world for grain supplies were likely to increase, not merely with the rapid increase of population which is still going on, but with the necessity of applying the land to more profitable forms of production as ocean transit is still further cheapened, and as increasing prosperity leads to a greater consumption of animal food. {105} As with grain foods so with meat. Hundreds of thousands of live cattle, many hundred thousand tons of meat, chilled, frozen, salted, or tinned, pour into the country every year from across the sea. Canada alone last year sent 123,000 head of cattle; New Zealand nearly 1,500,000 frozen carcasses of sheep. It has been estimated that the quantity of meat food in the United Kingdom at any time is only sufficient to supply the market for three months; beyond that all must come from without.