wrote, "is an evident fraud upon the consumers of Bread and an advantage to none but the jobbers in corn; who from practice are as well acquainted with the size of every farmer's bushel as with his face. As the measure varies almost every ten miles, the difference is a great encouragement to corn-dealers." 1 Hence, table or no table, the averages were falsified. For suppose in a place where the nine-gallon measure was customary a tengallon measure was offered by a farmer. The dealers, observing this, would bid it up, but the clerk would return it as a sale at the customary measure of nine gallons; thus making the market price of wheat by the customary measure too high.

Young and his correspondent were but acting in accordance with the universal maxim, Where prices rise blame the middleman, and so they blamed the bakers and dealers, just as a later age would have blamed the railway companies. The errors of which both complained favoured the baker by bringing the official averages too high. But there were other errors in the Assize, errors in the opposite direction, such as reference to the prices of coarse wheat, when the baker was only buying fine flour. Peradventure Providence cancelled error by error! As for the people who were supposed to be the sufferers, they abetted the dealers in their supposed double-dealing. The Winchester bushel was a small one, and the people hated it because it was small. They loved their own because it was their own and because it was big. The bigger it was the better they loved it, for they thought thereby to get cheaper measure, brimful and running over. On popular unreason reform, as so often happens, stumbled.

By the 5th of George the Fourth (c. 74, 1820) the Winchester bushel was, for official purposes, statistics and the calculation of the corn averages, replaced by the Imperial bushel, a slightly bigger bushel. But the new measure was not made compulsory, and in this position it remained for almost a century-until the Corn Sales Act of 1921, which came into force January 1, 1923, made the hundredweight of 112 pounds the only recognised unit of measurement for the sale not only of cereals but also of meal, beans, potatoes and agricultural seeds. "How it was that steps to this end had not been taken years before will always be a mystery," says Mr. J. A. Venn in his admirable Foundations of Agricultural Economics, p. 253. Some part of the mystery may perhaps be dispelled by an examination of the evidence contained in various Parliamentary Papers between 1790 and 1900.

The reformers of 1800, dissatisfied with what they had, 1 Committee (H. of C.) on High Price of Provisions, Third Report, App No. 3. Letter from Charles Dundas of Barton Court near Newbury.

thought they knew exactly what they wanted, namely, sale by weight. They appealed to the example of Ireland, where all forms of grain were sold in barrels by weight. The practice was of long standing and had been made compulsory by legislation in 1705 and 1733. In Ireland, of all places, there was uniformity of measure! From those days to this there was no further legislation for Ireland, which thus retained a monopoly of uniformity.

In 1770 an anonymous pamphleteer wrote: "It is hard to say why this method has not been introduced; for if it was general, every person might be then his own factor. Possibly this very reason is the obstacle, as it is in the interest of some people that the Corn trade should continue to be a mystery." 1 The Committee of 1795-6 on the High Price of Corn recommended that corn should henceforth be bought and sold by weight, the standard Winchester bushel to be converted into sixty pounds avoirdupois, and other grains proportionately; and that weights and balances should be kept in cities and market towns at the charge of the county.2 In 1800 a well-known writer of the time,3 when drafting a new Corn Bill for the consideration of the House of Commons, suggested that in the rates of bounties and import duties a small preference should be given to corn sold by weight. This he thought would introduce the practice without any friction and oust rival methods. In one part of England, indeed, sale by weight was already practised, namely in Liverpool and district. Liverpool got it from Ireland, as it got so many things-harvesters, potatoes, dockers and slums. By 1801 it had spread from Liverpool through Cheshire, Staffordshire and Shropshire. But doubts of its legality were entertained. "I believe," said John Gladstone, Esq., father of the statesman, to a Committee of 1820, "the opinions of His Majesty's Attorney and Solicitor-General were taken, and I understood that they

1 Considerations on the Exportation of Corn (Anon.), p. 69.

* Committee (H. of C.) appointed to take into consideration the present High Price of Corn, 1795-6, 5th Report. They were acting on the advice of their correspondent, Charles Dundas, from whom quotation has already been made. He wrote: Salt was originally sold by measure, it is now sold by weight (fifty-six pounds to the bushel); the Act which regulated this in one instant equalised all the salt measures in the Kingdom; the same effect would follow a similar proceeding in the sale of corn by which the assize on flour might be justly set and the relation between the articles of corn, flour and bread clearly ascertained and fairly regulated."

3 Dr. Skene Keith,

A General View of the Corn Trade and Corn Laws of Great Britain," Farmer's Magazine, August 1802, Vol. III., p. 277.

Committee (H. of C.) on the High Price of Provisions, 1801, 7th Report. Evidence of W. Reynolds, corn-dealer.

were disposed to think that the law as it now stands permits the sale of corn by weight, but the trade in Liverpool are by no means satisfied with those opinions and feel great dread of persecution and anxiety that all apprehensions may be removed by a legislative enactment; could the system of selling corn throughout the kingdom be simplified, so as one rule, whether weight or measure, was adopted, a great benefit would be obtained." 1

There the matter rested until 1834, when, with agriculture again in sore straits, a large and representative Committee, including among others the celebrated statistician and corn factor Thomas Tooke, was appointed "to enquire into the present Practices of Selling Corn throughout the United Kingdom, with a view to the better regulation thereof." A map appended to the Report of this Committee shows that sale by weight now extended from Whitby in the north-east to Gloucester in the south-west throughout the area comprising the growing industrial centres of Lancs, Yorks, Notts, Derby, Staffs, Worcester and Warwick. Now this Committee met in a reforming spirit, and we expect them to declare for the reformer's nostrum, sale by weight, but they do not, and their reasons discover the very real difficulties involved in this apparently simple change.

For what determines at any time the value of corn? The state of supply in relation to the state of demand. But states are silent and impersonal; and value is a subjective thing, the product of the clash of individual opinions. In order that buyers and sellers may form a correct opinion of their respective strengths, they must bargain in uniform terms and be able to consult the results of similar bargains concluded by others. It is here that the importance of a good standard comes in. The standard of sale bears to the value of corn the relation which methods of remuneration bear to the value of labour-with this limitation, that the ear of wheat will not, if inaccurately remunerated, shrink in sorrow or burst with indignation. A good standard must be uniform and tell as much as possible.

Now in the sale of corn, argued the Committee of 1834, three things are wanted to be known-quantity, quality and condition. Quality signifies the inherent properties of the corn ; condition, its accidental state. The standard can tell nothing about condition. Corn loses condition if badly stored or carried; but if the sample exposed represents fairly the condition of the

1 Committee (H. of C.) on Petitions complaining of Agricultural Distress, 1820. Evidence of John Gladstone, Esq., a Member of the House, p. 55.

bulk, be it good or bad, then no inaccuracy is created and no injustice is done. If not, then it is both desirable and just that the bargain should be repudiated or altered. But in the matter of quality the position is different. For a good standard can tell both quantity and quality. Sale by weight gives quantity only. Sale by measure again gives quantity only; but sale by measure combined with a description of the actual weight of corn per measure gives both quantity and quality. For the heavier the corn (i. e. the greater the number of pounds which a given measure of it weighs) the better in general will be its quality.

With this in mind and having regard to the fact that sale by measure was in general use in the wheat-growing districts of England and universal throughout the Continent, the Committee of 1834 proposed a Bill to secure the following points: (i) that all corn should be sold by the Imperial measure; (ii) that the weight per measure of corn sold should be returned to the Inspectors who kept the official records; (iii) that a memorandum of the quantity sold with the weight per measure should be given by the seller to the buyer; (iv) that, for the special case of Ireland, all shipments from Irish ports should be made in measure with the weight per measure, or in weight as already, with the weight per measure. Committees propose and farmers dispose! The Bill was never carried.

Pass now over a period of fifty years to a date when British agriculture was again in distress and British growers were wellnigh drowned under the deluge of American wheat. In 1891-3 another Committee on Corn Sales took evidence and made another set of recommendations, which once again were not carried out.

This Committee found that the home trade had evolved for itself a standard which combined quantity and quality, but combined them in a characteristically British fashion-that is to say, with numerous local diversities. The Committee of 1834 had observed the beginnings of this practice and strongly discountenanced it for that reason. In 1891 the great majority of home-grown wheat was sold by "weighed measure," and was so sold until recently. Sales were made by a reference to a measure of capacity such as the bushel or quarter, but the seller guaranteed that the measure would weigh up to a given number of pounds. If the measure of wheat offered for sale weighed up to this or more than this number of pounds, well and good-the buyer made no objection. If it weighed less, the buyer could demand a reduction in the price or even return the corn on the farmer's hands. This practice, which seems to the farmer's

disadvantage, had a reason behind it. Wheat, which is lighter than the standard by 3 per cent., may for that reason lose as much as 5 per cent. in value.

This measure of a given number of pounds, this ideal or standard measure, varied in different localities according to the weight of the wheat which is typical of the locality, and as even neighbouring districts vary considerably with regard to fertility, diversities arose at very short distances from each other. The result was a grotesque complexity. To begin with, not all districts which had the "weighed measure" reckoned by the same measure. Whereas most parts of the country reckoned by the statutory bushel, Cumberland used the Carlisle bushel, which was three times the size of the ordinary one. The eastern counties reckoned by the coomb of four bushels, the Midlands by the bag, parts of Lancashire by the windle, Lincolnshire by the sack, Newcastle by the boll, Flint by the hobbet. Then each of these measures was weighed up to the standard measure of the locality, to the bushel of 60 or 62 or 63 or 64 pounds, to the coomb of 18 stone, the windle of 220 pounds, the boll of 27 stone, the hobbet of 168 pounds, and so on. Finally, though the most usual standard among traders was the bushel of 63 pounds, the standard employed in the official statistics in accordance with the Corn Returns Act of 1882 was the bushel of 60 pounds. Could confusion be worse confounded? And what did it all avail ? It availed the farmer nothing save to gratify his fondness for tradition; and it gave the buyer a check on quality at the cost of persistent complexity and occasional friction. The problem, therefore, before the Committee of 1891 was how get rid of the hybrid?-by reference to the Imperial bushel in the way that the Committee of 1834 proposed, or by reference to weight, leaving the check on quality to be independently provided? Inasmuch as the "weighed measure was ultimately a standard of weight rather than of measure, they declared for weight and recommended:

(1) "that the sale of all cereals and the products thereof should in future be conducted in Great Britain, as in Ireland, by a reference to the hundredweight of 112 Imperial pounds, and that no other weight or measure of capacity be referred to in any sale;

(2) "that in every case where conversion of weighed measure takes place, the weights laid down in . . . the Corn Returns Act... should always be published in the Returns of Corn Sold in the London Gazette, and a statement made to