Зображення сторінки
PDF
ePub

Die Landflucht. Ihr Wesen und ihre Bekämpfung. By MICHAEL
HAINISCH. (Jena: G. Fischer, 1924. Pp. 370, large octavo.)

THE President of the Austrian Republic, a learned economist, thoroughly trained in theory as well as in practical economics, has for many years made agricultural problems, and among these especially the rural exodus, the particular subject of his studies.

As a consequence of industrial development there emerged everywhere a tendency in the agricultural classes to leave their calling, and during the last century the rural exodus became an outstanding mass-problem both in Europe and the United States of America. Its importance was temporarily lessened by the Great War, owing to the enhanced importance of farming in the belligerent States of Europe. But as a consequence of the war agricultural production has fallen off to an extraordinary extent in Central and Eastern Europe; along with this the impoverishment of these countries is a great obstacle in the way of importing foodstuffs and raw materials from overseas; consequently it is of the utmost importance not only for these countries, but also for the general restoration of pre-war trade and transport, that they should return to their normal agricultural productivity. Austria, in particular, reduced to a barren and mountainous pygmy State, depends for its existence on getting her poor and sparsely populated soil to yield as much as possible, on her industrial achievements and on the development of her international trade and banking which, for the present, are greatly hampered by the protectionist and even prohibitive policies of the New States in the east of Europe. In general Central Europe needs agriculturists.

Now, the rural exodus is brought about by the fact that the wages of labourers are much lower than those of industrial workers and miners. If, therefore, we want to stem the rural exodus, we must, says President Hainisch, raise the wages of labourers to the standard of the industrial workers. High wages, it is true, raise also the prices of agricultural produce, but this, in return, is calculated to prevent the rural exodus of farmers. The problem, then, is to fix a relation between the wages of agricultural labourers, the prices of agricultural produce, and the prices of holdings.

Up till now, throughout Europe, farms were bought at a higher price than was warranted by their net proceeds. This caused their owners to become heavily encumbered with debts. In order to obviate this, President Hainisch would like to

see all farms and estates of more than twelve acres rendered indivisible, save by special permission of the authorities; this prohibition would not extend to pure forest estates and to those that grow mostly wine, fruit or vegetables. The estates would then be officially assessed and their price fixed, and buyers who were willing to pay more than this normal price would have to pay the surplus out of their own resources. Likewise, in cases of succession, the competent authorities would have to be satisfied with the normal price. Mortgages, resulting from excessive prices having been paid, would thus be prevented.

As to raising the wages of agricultural labourers, President Hainisch points to the measures taken in England in 1917. Average workers got standardised wages, qualified hands got more, unskilled got less. This scheme was dropped in 1921, but local committees of arbitration presided by independent chairmen came into operation. As it is chiefly the younger vigorous men and women who are prone to turn their backs on the land, Hainisch recommends that they should get better wages than the older and less efficient. People who are employed in summer only should get additional wages as insurance premium. All these provisions should be arrived at not by collective bargaining, but by special Wages Boards, who would also consider the consumer's interests.

Now, if only wages were raised and not also the prices of agricultural produce, the consequence would be a less intensive production on the part of the farmers. To prevent this Hainisch suggests Monopolising the Corn and Cattle Trade. In countries which produce less corn than is consumed a monopoly could be introduced with the effect, that through the importation of cheap foreign bread-stuffs the dearer home-produce could be cheapened for the consumer. As a buyer on a large scale the Administration of the Monopoly would certainly get corn cheaper than private dealers do. The Monopoly would also command the mill business and thus be in a position to sell the flour cheaper, at the same time giving occupation to the mills and supplying cattle-growers with bran. The farmers could get the same prices for their corn as if agricultural produce was protected by duties, and the consumers would be less burdened by a monopoly than by duties, because they would purchase the quota of corn to be imported for consumption at the lower prices prevailing on the world's market. Further, there would disappear one of the main disadvantages of protection, which consists in the actual landowners alone enjoying its advantages. For the artificial

raising of proceeds by means of duties brings about an advance in the price of land, so that any new buyer of an estate would be no better off than the owner was previous to the introduction of protective duties. In reality protection would be a present for those who, at the time of duties being established, happened to be the owners of estates; in order to improve the position of their successors, higher and higher duties would have to be the order of the day.

President Hainisch recommends also a monopoly for the Cattle Trade and Butcher's Business. Such a scheme was in operation in Styria during the war, and it did business with very little expense. When, after the war, it was dropped, the private cattle trade revived; now a host of middlemen make a living out of it and the farmers waste much time in disposing of their cattle. While the monopoly lasted, the butchering and distribution amounted to 6 per cent.; to-day the butchers alone make a profit of 18 per cent., and the dealers also have their share, so that almost one-third of the price of cattle is added, which, of course, must be paid by the consumers. That is why President Hainisch recommends going back to monopoly and would like to see it extended to the whole Commonwealth. Then the recurrent fluctuations of prices, which, at present, are considerable, would be avoided. Farmers could give all their attention to the urgent task of raising production, and adequate prices would certainly stimulate production.

EUGENE SCHWIEDLAND

English Industries of the Middle Ages. By L. F. SALZMANN. (Oxford: The Clarendon Press. 1923. Pp. xx + 360.)

THIS is a new edition, through a new publisher, of a book first issued ten years earlier. The first edition was good and this is much better. Without any parade, and in as brief a space as possible, Mr. Salzmann sets out to explain how the chief mediæval industries worked and what their technique was. Sometimes as in the case of tin-he has a first-rate monograph to follow; generally he has had to do his own spade-work, and that has been largely among documents. For instance, he extracts "our first-dated reference to an actual coal working" from an Assize Roll of 1243-how Ralf, son of Roger Olger, was drowned in fossato carbonum maris, a sea-coal pit. Or, from the Customs Accounts, he gives us the Newcastle coalexports of 1377-8, and where the coal went to-Dunkirk, Sluys,

Flushing, Bremerhaven, and in ships of "Lumbardye." From the Chancery Proceedings comes a note of a London goldsmith capitalist, early in the Tudor Age, making "engines and instruments" to drain a Cornish mine. From the Patent appointing John Pecok ulnager in 1316 can be illustrated the wide range and local specialisation of the cloth manufacture in the thirteenth century. And from the Liberate Rolls we learn how Henry III ordered" 100 slices of best whale" for Court consumption.

The industries dealt with are Mining, in all its sorts, Quarrying, Building, Metal-working, Pottery, Tiles, Bricks and Glass, Clothmaking, Leather-working, Fishing and Brewing. A final chapter deals concisely, but excellently, with the control of industry by gild, municipality, or the State. There are points here and elsewhere which a reviewer might argue with Mr. Salzmann; but he is not disposed to do so out of gratitude for the mass of interesting facts about the actual doing of things. Economic history is subject to the standing risk of becoming a discussion of the rise and control of social machinery for the production and control not of beer or boots, but of x. (Parallel risks have been alleged to exist beside the path of economic theory.) From such risks books like Mr. Salzmann's help to deliver us.

J. H. CLAPHAM

Allgemeine Wirthschaftsgeschichte des Mittelalters (General Economic History of the Middle Ages). By RUDOLF KÖTZSCHKE. (Jena Fischer. 1924. Pp. xiv + 626.)

PROFESSOR KÖTZSCHкE's book is one of a series and must be so judged. When complete the series is to compose a Handbuch der Wirthschaftsgeschichte. The only other volume which has yet appeared is the first volume of Professor Brodnitz's Englische Wirthschaftsgeschichte (1918). There is to be another general volume on Ancient Economic History, and special volumes on Dutch, Swedish, Norse, Italian, Swiss, Danish, Austrian, Russian, Belgian, French and American Economic History. Such at least is the present plan, a plan which explains the predominantly German flavour of the volume before us. Not that it is by any means exclusively German: there is a section on Byzantine economics more satisfactory than anything to be found in the recent huge Byzantine volume of the Cambridge Medieval History: the English sections, though brief, are in the main excellent and no student of English agrarian origins could fail to learn from No. 135.-VOL. XXXIV.

I I

Kötzschke's comparative treatment of German and English village history or of the German Hufe and the English hide; but the centre of gravity of the volume is quite naturally, in the circumstances in Germany. Probably the ideal General Economic History of the Middle Ages should have its centre of gravity somewhere in the Mediterranean lands. Professor Kötzschke's concession to this point of view consists in an excellent summary of the economic bequests of antiquity to the Middle Ages (in preparing for which he has missed Mr. Heitland's Agricola-but perhaps the post-war publications of the Cambridge Press are not easily accessible in Germany); the admirable Byzantine section before mentioned; a short section on Islam; the references which the plan of the book requires to Italy; and references which seem really inadequate to Spain. A student of mediæval commerce would be surprised to find that Catalonia does not occur in the index; though the discovery of five references to Barcelona might console him. This is the more to be regretted as the plan of the Handbuch does not at present include an economic history of Spain. No doubt Spanish economic history is exceedingly hard to write; but it will be a pity if a Handbook of Economic History is completed without reference, for example, to Professor Klein's brilliant study of the organisation of Spanish pastoral life and the merino sheep (The Mesta, Harvard Economic Studies, 1920). With its parallels in Southern Italy this migratory Spanish pastoralism is an element of the first importance in the general economic story of Europe, much more important than many facts of North European field-systems on which Professor Kötzschke dwells.

It must be repeated, however, that Professor Kötzschke's treatment of the North is most thorough and helpful. The divergent developments, rural and urban, of Germany proper, the half-German lands east of her, of France, the Low Countries and England are made clear with a learning that is always abundant and generally exhaustive. No doubt specialists in each country could fasten on minor defects. The sentence (p. 445), "Erst spät trat in England die heimische Kaufgilde (gilda mercatoria) auf (in Ipswich 1200)," is rather misleading because of the illustration selected. Why not say "in Canterbury before 1100"? Had medieval Plymouth a population of between 6000 and 20,000? (p. 575). If landlords really did turn to pasture-farming immediately after the Black Death-for which there is, in fact, curiously little evidence-why should that drive men to the towns, if the population had fallen by 25 per cent.

« НазадПродовжити »