IMPORTATION OF FOREIGN FLOUR. (Hansard, 12 May 1851)

THE EARL OF GLENGALL

rose, pursuant to notice, to present a petition from the Grand Jury of the County of Tipperary, praying for the imposition of a duty on the importation of foreign flour. (Minutes of Proceedings, 44.) It was a remarkable fact, that among the gentlemen who had signed that petition, there were six who had for many years been decided advocates of the free-trade policy, but who had of late years so severely suffered from the importation of foreign flour that they had completely changed their opinions upon that subject. These gentlemen were not exclusively connected with agriculture, but were merchants engaged in commercial pursuits to a large extent. The petitioners expressed their alarm at the large and continually increasing importation of flour into the United Kingdom, under the present state of the law, which admitted foreign flour into our markets on the same unrestricted terms as wheat. They stated that the importation in the shape of flour was greater than that of wheat, on account of the flour yielding a further profit of 1s. 7d. or 1s. 1d. per sack to the French or Odessa miller; and, in consequence, large mills had been erected abroad for the sole purpose of grinding flour to be sent to England. That importation was attended with the most disastrous results to the corn-millers of Ireland, and was destroying one of the most important branches of the national industry in that country. That was a most serious question, not only as regarded Ireland, but also as regarded England. He should, however, treat it chiefly in its connexion with Ireland, where the depressing consequences of the existing system were felt with peculiar severity. The Irish flour mills were in general very considerable establishments, and some of them were even as large as any of the cotton factories, or any other factories in this country. They had grown up in Ireland, in many instances within the last fifty or sixty years, and had contributed very much to improve the condition of that unfortunate country. The state of the whole agricultural system in Ireland, depended, in fact, very much on the stability and prosperity of those great 843 establishments. Enormous sums of money had been invested in them; their owners had, for many years, carried on an extensive and prosperous business, and they had been productive of great benefit to the farmers and labourers residing in the districts in which they were situated. The great flour millers were always ready to purchase up a large portion of the corn grown in Ireland for internal consumption; the farmers had nothing to do but to bring their corn to the millers, and they found instant purchasers at cash prices; and nothing could be more satisfactory than the mode in which that branch of trade had been conducted, until it had at length pleased the Legislature to allow foreign corn and flour to be imported into these kingdoms at a merely nominal duty. The mills had formerly been fully worked nine months in the year, and during a great portion of time had been kept going night and day, giving, of course, employment to a very great number of labourers. Then, again, the services of millwrights were frequently required in those establishments for the construction and repair of machinery, and in that way additional employment was given to the industrious classes. The carriers of the country, also, shared in the benefits diffused around them by those corn mills. In his own small town (Cahir), where there were two or three of those mills, he had frequently seen 300 or 400 carts taking corn to them, or carrying away flour from them, while each carrier received 4s. 6d. a ton for a day's work. The corn in those establishments had frequently to be turned over, and of course had kept a number of hands in constant employment. But what was the case at the present day? Why, in consequence of the vast importations of foreign corn which had of late years taken place, the corn mills of Ireland were almost at a standstill, and were not in any case employed in doing more than manufacturing flour for their own immediate neighbourhoods. Where were the labourers who used to be employed in those mills? They were in the workhouses. The whole system of tillage in Ireland had been most seriously affected by that change. In the county of Tipperary, which had formerly been a great wheat-growing district, it appeared from the latest returns that there were at present 15,000 English acres less under wheat cultivation than there bad formerly been. The farmers were at present turning their lands into pasturage wherever they had the means of doing so. 844 Now the Free-traders might say that that was a very wise and proper proceeding, and that when the corn trade was gone, the farmers ought to turn graziers. That was all very well for Gentlemen; but it was totally impossible for the Irish farmer to carry out the change successfully; for that could not be done without the outlay of a considerable sum in the purchase of stock. The consequence of that state of things was, that all those Irish farmers and labourers who could collect together the most triflng sum of money were hurrying off to North America, to the extent of 260,000 persons in the year; and those who could not leave their native country were languishing in the workhouses on the worst description of Indian corn, which was reducing them to a state of helpless disease and debility most painful to contemplate. He would appeal to those noble Lords who were personally acquainted with the state of the Irish workhouses, whether the wretched inmates of those establishments who lived on one meal a day of that filthy food, did not present a debilitated and ghastly appearance, which was totally unlike that of ordinary humanity? It was no wonder that every Irish peasant, who had sufficient means to pay for the expenses of his voyage, was flying from a land so frightfully visited, to a country where he could readily obtain 5s. or 6s. a day for wages. In the union of Clogbeen, where there were extensive mills and excellent railway communication, there were at present not less than 1,800 persons in the workhouse; in the union of Thurles, a great agricultural district, there were 3,300 persons in the workhouse; and in the union of Nenagh, there were 4,300 persons in the workhouse. There was one very painful fact connected with those workhouses which he would mention. The original workhouses were not sufficiently large to contain the whole of the paupers, and auxiliary workhouses were frequently rented for their accommodation. Now it so happened that many of the mills which had lost their former flourishing trade, were leased out for that purpose; so that the unfortunate people were at present dragging on an existence in a state of helpless misery in the very establishments where they had formerly found profitable employment. That was a melancholy statement; but he could pledge himself to its perfect accuracy. He repeated that that was an English as well as an Irish question. He believed that for every five 845 or six quarters of foreign flour brought into this country, an Irish pauper was also imported. The Irish peasants had no work at home, and that was the reason why they deluged the English labour markets. Not less than 10,000 of them had come over within the last week or two. The fact was, that the guardians of the poor-law unions gave them half-a-crown each, and with that sum they contrived to reach England. Now he said that the result of that system would be to reduce the labourers of this country to the level of the Irish labourers, and to bring down wages to the amount of 6d. or 8d. a day. The advocates of free trade might then continue to place a large loaf and a small loaf on a pole by way of contrast; but that would afford no satisfaction to the English labourer, when he found his wages reduced to the Irish standard. He should next submit to their Lordships some of the facts of the case. In the year 1845 there had been imported into these kingdoms 3,349,899 cwts. of flour; in the year 1850 there had been imported 3,819,440 cwts.; and in the first quarter of the present year there had been imported 1,330,011 cwts. He did not suppose that the importation would continue at the same amount for the whole of the year; but if it should continue at only half its present amount, what was to become of the corn millers of Great Britain and Ireland? Those men declared that their trade was being ruined by the importation of foreign flour; and he would tell their Lordships how that had occurred. When Sir Robert Peel and Company brought forward their free-trade measures, there was one great European State which was stated to be emphatically a country from which a grain of corn could never be exported, a country which was essentially not exporting—he meant France. Well, it was true that France had not latterly exported much corn; but it was also true that she had largely exported flour. In the year 1849 France had exported to Great Britain and Ireland 1,006,258 cwts. of flour; in the year 1850 she had exported 1,925,175 cwts.; that was to say, nearly double the quantity exported in the preceding year; and in the first quarter of the year 1851 she had exported to the United Kingdom 792,923 cwts. of flour; and she had besides exported 600,000 quarters of corn. He believed that France had been paid for that flour and corn in cash. Those bankers and other persons engaged in commercial 846 pursuits, who wrote what were called circulars, stated that they had been much surprised at finding that there had of late been going on a considerable decrease of bullion in the Bank of England, and a considerable increase of bullion in the Bank of France, and they had since ascertained that that was owing to the payments we had to make for French flour and corn. He believed that nothing had more astonished the wiseacres of free trade than that question of French flour. Some Irish millowners had gone over to France for the purpose of inquiring personally into the matter. From their inquiries it would appear that France produced a great deal more corn than had formerly been supposed, and that the French farmer found it his interest to grow more corn than ever, now that he had unrestricted access to the English market; and with this view a much greater quantity of land had been brought into cultivation. Some other curious reasons were also assigned for the exportations. The Irish millers who went to the north of France were told that one of the reasons for the great exportation of flour to England and Ireland was, that, formerly, the farmers in the north of France supplied the south of France with a great part of the corn consumed there, but that notwithstanding the high protective duty which foreign corn still paid in France, great quantities of corn from Egypt, Odessa, and the Black Sea, were imported into that country to such an extent that the corn of the north of France was beaten out of the market in the south. Good Syrian wheat could be bought at Alexandria at 16s. per quarter, and the freight to Marseilles was 2s. 6d. The freight from Alexandria to London was 6s. per quarter, and he had in his pocket a sample of Egyptian wheat, of the kind which an Irish miller had purchased the other day, in the Thames, at 23s. per quarter. He would show it to noble Lords opposite, and they would find that it was very good wheat. (The noble Earl here produced a sample of the corn.) Some persons contended that the French flour was superior to ours, because it was manufactured in a better manner, and they recommended that we should try and improve so as to beat the French miller. There was no truth, however, in this allegation, and no necessity for the advice, for upon examination it would be found that the mills were precisely similar in construction. They were all worked by 847 water power, and the streams were just alike, and that he did not derive his superiority from that source. With regard to the question of coals it was admitted that the price of the article was higher in France than it was here. The superiority of French flour was in some degree, though not altogether, to be attributed to an art which the French millers possessed of passing the flour through silk screens. In order to meet the French manufacturer in that respect, some of the Irish millers had procured some of the very same description of corn, and endeavoured to screen it through silk sieves, but they could not get it to run through as in France, on account of the dampness of the climate in Ireland. In fact, the French manufacturer was much more assisted by the superiority of the fine climate of his country, than he was by anything else. The climate of France was a superior kind, and that it was which chiefly assisted the French miller in making a superior class of flour; and nature itself had opposed an insurmountable obstacle to that competition which modern legislators were vainly endeavouring to establish. The French millers were at present pursuing a course which put them effectively beyond the reach of British competition, and would always do so. There were an immense number of persons connected with the milling trade in France, and a great number of small millers sent their flour at once to this country. He could see their vessels in every port in England, from Dovor round the Bristol Channel through Wales, and up as far as the ports of Scotland. There they were to be seen selling their sacks of French flour, wholesale or retail, however they could, and getting their money for it. They lived all the time in their vessels, at no cost. [Laughter.] This, however ridiculous it might appear, was almost literally the fact. They managed to live upon a red herring, or some such miserable diet as that which cost something next to nothing, and they went about from port to port until they had entirely disposed of their cargo, and when this was effected they returned to their own country, and, without a moment's delay, refitted for another voyage. How was it possible that the British and Irish millers should enter into competition with a nation which could carry on its commerce upon such a system as that? It was altogether out of the question. The importations of French flour into this country were every day becoming larger, and the miller found 848 himself engaged in a hopeless struggle. On one day (the 22nd of April) there arrived in the port of Liverpool alone 13,493 sacks of flour from France, and 1,282 barrels of the same commodity from America. A few days before that date the newspapers were full of complaints of the heaviness of the corn trade in the port of London, owing to the continued large arrivals of foreign flour; and it was officially announced that during one week no less a quantity French flour than 29,400 sacks had been imported. In fact, the average importation of flour from France alone might now he computed as ranging from 30,000 to 40,000 sacks per week. The result of this system was most calamitous to Ireland. A few years ago, if any one had talked of sending flour to Ireland, he would have been thought to have made a proposition almost as rational as that of sending coals to Newcastle; but it was now an every-day occurrence, and no longer a subject for ridicule: 1,300 sacks of flour, on an average, were shipped from Liverpool every week for Ireland. It was idle to pretend that these importations were desirable in the case of a country which suffered so deeply from distress as Ireland. They were not of the least service to the population, but, on the contrary, of the greatest injury; for everybody knew that it was not on fine flour, but on Indian meal, that Irish paupers were maintained. Importations of flour, therefore, could have no other effect, so far as the labouring population were concerned, except the most disastrous one of decreasing their chances of remunerative employment. Another very material point to be considered in this question was this, that as things now stood, the foreigner had a positive bonus as against the British miller in sending over to this country ready manufactured flour, and in not sending over-grain. He was in a position to prove this by evidence the most incontestable. The noble Earl here read an extract from a paper which he held in his hand, as follows:— The foreigner having a bonus on the export of flour instead of wheat, ships only the finest qualities, retaining the coarsest sorts and offal for home consumption, thus depriving our labouring classes thereof, which they would have were the wheat manufactured in the United Kingdom; besides, the quality of wheat in Great Britain and Ireland, generally speaking, is not as good or productive as the foreign—the climate here being so damp and uncertain as, frequently in England, and always in Ireland, to require the wheat to be kiln-dried before grinding; not so in other coun- 849 tries where the seasons are periodically wet and dry, and the harvest well secured. Again, the foreign miller selects in his home market the primest wheat from the growers on comparatively low terms, leaving the inferior qualities to be exported thence, which, after passing through several hands, each having a commission thereon, it ultimately comes to the British and Irish millers, who have to pay the full freight, and a duty on the entire bulk of the raw material; whereas the foreigner has the advantage of selecting the primest samples at home on low terms, and subject only to the charges on the finest flour, which is packed in sacks or barrels, and which, being so easily stowed in the vessel, is preferred at a lower freight to wheat. The foreign millers, feeling the advantage which they possess, are increasing their powerful establishments in all the great growing countries in Europe and America for the purpose of supplying Great Britain and Ireland with flour, and unless a protecting duty be placed on foreign manufactured flour, the already prodigious import thereof will continue to increase. It would be seen, too, by the following detailed statement, what was the exact amount of the bonus obtained in the various ports of France upon shipping flour instead of wheat, in consequence of the difference in the freight between the articles. The noble Earl then read the following table:—