The harmony of interests, agricultural, manufacturing and commercial.

120 THE HARMONY OF INTERESTS.
Number of persons fed with
sugar in erQuantity retained for Price per Total value change for a
Population. consumption.-cwts. cwt. consumed. Price per head. Priceof iron. ton ofiron.
1801 16,338,000 3,639,000* 45/t ~8,188,000 10/2 ~7 5t 14-2
1811 18,500,000 3,818,000* 41/6t ~7,888,000 8/6 ~8:t 18-8
1821 21,200,000 3,529,000* 34/t ~6,000,000 518 ~6 10t 23
1831 24,029,000 4,233,000 23/8t ~5,000,000 4/2 ~5H 24
I do not extend this table, for Mr. Tooke's list of prices does not come
down to the end of the next decennial period, and I have no other that appears to correspond with it. Enough, however, is given to show that the
people of the United Kingdom were steadily giving less iron for more sugar.
In 1801 the planter could have 1,100,000 tons as the equivalent of 180,000
tons; but in 1831 he could have but a million of tons as the equivalent of
210,000. From that time to the present there has been an unceasing effort to cheapen sugar, and yet there were taken for consumption (including
the large quantity exported after being refined) in the years 1845 to 1847,
only 15,900,000 cwts., or an average of 5,300,000, being only 45 per cent.
more than in 1801, while the population had increased 90 per cent. It is
obvious that the power of consumption diminishes, and yet the prices of the
world are fixed in England. The consequence of this is seen in the fact
that 5,800,000 tons, in 1847, would command but ~7,200,000, while 3,600,000
in 1801 would command about ~8,200,000.
The return to labour employed in the cultivation of cotton has fallen so
Sow that the Carolinian tries wheat, and the Mississippian sugar. Sugar
falls so low that the West Indian turns his attention to coffee. By the time
his trees have become productive, the price has so far fallen that he cuts
them down, and then the price rises, while that of sugar falls.~ Thus is it
ever and everywhere. The producers are over-ridden by the exchangers,
and so must they continue to be while they shall continue to have the price
of their whole crops determined by that which can be obtained for a small
surplus in the constantly diminishing market of England.
The production of sugar does not vary greatly from a million of tons, and
the yield to the planter may be about $70, the whole amount being about
$70,000,000. Taking the cotton crop at $80,000,000, we have the sum of
$150,000,000 as the value of the labour of that large portion of the population of the world employed in producing these two articles, so essential to
the comfort of the rest of the world. The equivalent of this sum in 1845
and 1846 might have been (delivered on the plantation) about 2,500,000
tons of iron, the article that, of all others, is most essential to the maintenance, or the increase, of the productive power.
A ton of bar iron is not the equivalent of twenty-five days' labour, properly employed among the coal and iron fields of the Union, but even at
that rate, one man would give more than twelve tons per annum. To produce the whole quantity required to pay for the cotton and sugar crops of
the world would require, then, the labour of 200,000 men. Is it not obvious
that the agriculturists of the world are taxed to a vast amount for the support
*Porter's Progress of the Nation, Vol. III. page 32.
t Tooke's History of Prices, Vol. II. page 413. Mr. Tooke gives the various prices of
the year. I have taken what appears to me to be the average.
* Ibid. p. 406.
~ From this cause it is that coffee is now scarce and high, and sugar abundant and
cheap, the price of the latter in London being but about 24s. How much is left for the
poor producer that has paid freight from Benares, far up the Ganges, and all the charges
of all the persons through whose hands it has passed, may readily be imagined. Twenty
pounds of sugar must be required to pay for one of cotton, in the form of coarse cloth.