from it quite as much, and in some cases, I believe, even
more than we ourselves. [Hear, hear! and applause.] Again
you must remember that until the great monetary changes
began to be felt — probably in 1875 or 1876, for they did not
begin to take effect till a year or two after they were made —
agriculture had enjoyed the greatest and the most unbroken
period of prosperity for five and twent5'^ years that she had
ever known. Many farmers have told me that 1874 was the
last real good year they ever had, and all that time, remem-
ber, for twenty-five years previous to 1874, it was under free
trade that we were living. And when I see and when I know-
that the agricultural depression is universal, I believe in
every gold-using country at the present time, whether they
be free trade or protectionist alike, that the farmers in
America, from where the chief part of our imports come, the
wheat growers in particular are being daily ruined and be-
coming bankrupt faster even than we are in the worst parts
of England, I am forced to the conclusion that free trade
alone is not sufficient to account for it, and that there is some
other, some deeper and some common cause which lies at
the bottom of it all. [Applause.]

"Well, then, others tell you that there is no mystery
about the fall at all; that the thing is very simple; that vast
areas of fertile and virgin soil are cultivated now in all parts
of the world which formerly grew nothing; that there are
more railroads, cheaper freights a-nd greater facilities of
transport everywhere, and that all that we are suffering from
maybe summed up in a w^ord, viz: 'overproduction.' Now^,
I ain never quite sure what is meant when people talk of
overproduction. They always seem to forget that pari passu
with the increase of commodities there has been an enor-
mous increase also in the population and in the needs and
requirements of the world. If they mean by overproduction
that the ratio of the increase of commodities has been out of
all proportion to the increased requirements of the world,
why, then, I do not believe them. And certainly no one has
ever given the smallest proof of that very coinmon but that
very loose and very vague assertion. 