Chapter 537: The Great Merger Era
Chapter 525 The Great Merger Era
The impact of the agricultural crisis was not only limited to the European continent, the Americas did not manage to escape.
European food prices plummeted, naturally there are capitalists to ship out food for sale, the Americas food prices were also hit.
The development of shipping technology, reducing the cost of shipping, 10,000 tons of ocean-going vessels became more. Under this wind, the grain dumped out of Austria also crossed the ocean to enter the Japanese market.
Of course, this is only incidental, specializing in the transportation of food to Japan to sell, the profit is still too low, we do not have the leisure.
Influenced by the Meiji Restoration, in recent years, the number of machinery and equipment imported by Japan from Europe has increased greatly, and the trade exchange has become more prosperous.
The earliest birth of the Austrian 10,000 tons of transport ships, in reducing freight costs at the same time, there is an embarrassing problem – goods often not enough to fill.
This problem is not difficult to defeat the capitalists, with a little bit of local specialties can be filled with warehouses, mosquitoes no longer small is also meat, can not be wasted.
The Vienna government’s call to order more or less a little effect, the major food exporting countries have announced a reduction in production, how much effect is not known.
Anyway, in Franz’s view, the measures taken by the countries everywhere are loopholes, whether the production capacity can be pressed down, all depends on the farmers’ conscientiousness.
Just after the fall harvest, a large wave of new grains came on the market, and international food prices continued to start falling. The capitalists know the power, if it continues to fall like this everyone will be doomed.
In order to maintain the stability of grain prices, the capitalists, together with the big farmers, began to put pressure on the government. By the end of 1872, the vast majority of European countries had raised import tariffs on agricultural products.
These measures were not enough, and in order to stabilize market prices, the capitalists had to endure the pain of destroying some of their agricultural products.
Food-importing countries were fortunate, tariffs went up, and then destroyed part of the surplus agricultural products, the market quickly restored stability.
Just to maintain “stability”, want to return to the normal level of food prices, still can not be achieved overnight.
Food-exporting countries are miserable, in addition to stagnant sales or stagnant sales. The trade disputes that erupted on the European continent this year were more than the total of the past five years combined.
Among them, the heaviest losses were naturally suffered by the four countries of Russia, Austria, Prussia and Poland. In order to alleviate the crisis, in October 1872, the Vienna government announced the acquisition of 2.7 million tons of wheat, 4.8 million tons of rye, 3.8 million tons of corn, 1.9 million tons of soybeans for strategic reserves.
Of course there were conditions attached to this purchase, this purchase of agricultural products is limited to the local production of new grain, in accordance with the government’s minimum food price protection price.
There is nothing wrong with first de-stocking and now restocking. Stimulated by this good news, grain prices in the Austrian home market have finally stabilized.
The international grain market still has not taken off, and now has grain is not a question of price, but the market is saturated, and many grain-importing countries have suspended grain imports.
See the Vienna government acquisition of grain as a strategic reserve, Junker nobles also can not sit still, have jumped out of the advice, asked the Prussian government to increase the strategic reserve of grain.
In the royal palace in Berlin, the meeting on this issue had already begun. Wilhelm I had no opinion about increasing the strategic grain reserve, the only problem was that the Prussian government had no money.
The money for the Austrian grain purchases had been exchanged for the dumping of grain stocks. Initial calculations, so one in and one out, the government of Vienna for this loss of millions of tons of grain.
How much was lost, it is difficult to calculate, but also must take into account the difference in price between the new grain and the old grain, as well as before this, the Vienna government to buy the cost of grain reserves.
“Prime Minister, what do you think?”
Mauch was under increased pressure, with the government’s parched purse on one side, and the interests of the Junker nobility on the other, it made it very difficult for him. After a slight hesitation, reality still helped him make a decision.
“Your Majesty, the Russo-Prussian war is not known to break out at some point, and no one can guarantee how long this war will last, increasing the strategic grain reserves is very necessary.
It’s just that there is no money in the government’s coffers right now, and if we want to increase the strategic reserve, this will require at least hundreds of millions of marks, which is already far beyond our capacity.
If the farmers can accept credit, we can eat in some of the grain, but there is no way for the government to guarantee when it will be able to make this payment.”
This answer left no room for rebuttal; it wasn’t that the government wasn’t willing to increase the strategic reserve, the problem was that it didn’t have the money to buy it.
It was fine to ask the government to collect the grain, that is to make a blank check and pay it back someday when the government had the money, and if it never had the money then it would just keep on owing it.
In terms of class interests, Mauch’s words still upset many people. They just couldn’t find a reason to refute it, but the government still didn’t have the money.
“Prime Minister, I’m afraid this won’t work. Growing food also has a cost, and the government must at least pay for it, or I’m afraid many farmers will go bankrupt.”
Minister of Agriculture Melanie Griffith hurriedly persuaded, if he really hit a white note, he had no way to explain to the Junker nobles.
Mauch shrugged his shoulders and made a loving expression, spreading his hands.
“Where will the money come from? Our finances have always been tight, even if the price of grain is very cheap now, each ton of rye can be bought for less than 100 marks, one million tons that’s still 100 million marks.
As long as your Ministry of Agriculture can solve the money problem, it’s not a problem to collect as much as you can, and I guarantee that no one in the government will object.”
The Kingdom of Prussia had long been in debt, the domestic financial community was not in a position to provide loans to the government, and if they wanted to continue borrowing money from the outside world, they would have to sell out the interests of the country.
Anyone who dared to make such a suggestion would have to first consider whether they would go out and be blackballed by patriotic youth.
These days the Kingdom of Prussia is also filled with middle-aged teenagers, these people are the guarantee of the fighting strength of the Prussian army, and the same is also the untimely bomb of the Kingdom of Prussia.
Melanie Griffith has not lived enough to want to become a target of patriotic youth, this kind of death-defying thing, he is not likely to do.
“I’m sorry, Your Excellency the Prime Minister. That’s not my job description, you’ll have to ask the Ministry of Finance. If the government can’t stabilize food prices, then it’s always okay to have a more aggressive agricultural policy, right?”
Mauch: “Of course! As long as it has nothing to do with money, we can do our best to solve any other problems.”
Melanie Griffith: “That would be best.”
Melanie Griffith, who had prepared for this, took out a document and walked up to hand it to William I.
“Your Majesty, this is the Ministry of Agriculture’s plan to cut food production capacity, we have learned from the experience of the Austrians and are preparing to implement the Land Fallow Law.”
This proposal surprised the crowd, before this the Berlin government had discussed this issue, it was only because of the strong opposition from the Junker aristocrat-controlled Ministry of Agriculture that it ended in vain.
After an initial scan of the documents, Wilhelm I’s face clouded over. The same land fallow law, Prussia this land fallow law can be much more revealing.
On the surface of the problem is not big, a careful study will find that many problems have been ambiguous one stroke, a little analysis will find that this is only in consideration of the interests of the Junker nobility.
The nobles had a lot of land, and even with the introduction of the draconian land fallow law, they still had enough land to rotate around and cultivate, and the ones whose interests were really harmed were still the homesteaders who didn’t have enough land.
According to the regulations on this, because of the emergence of crop rotation technology, which reduced the land fallow time, the ordinary farmers who had just had a few days of good times, would soon be out of luck again.
If it is really implemented, a new round of land annexation will be staged in Prussia, and a large number of homesteaders will go bankrupt as a result.
“Melanie Griffith, are you sure that what’s on here is realistic, and that the Ministry of Agriculture hasn’t considered the consequences of doing so?”
Facing William I’s questioning, Melanie Griffith’s face did not change, and frankly replied, “Your Majesty, after the outbreak of the agricultural crisis, the market will inevitably undergo a round of elimination of the best and the worst.
The wave of bankruptcies will erupt whether we want to implement the Land Fallow Law or not. By taking measures proactively, we can still get through the crisis early, lest we implicate more people.”
This is quackery and fact. It’s a foregone conclusion that homesteaders won’t be able to compete with the big farmers. The way things are going, food prices have collapsed, and homesteaders will hang on for a few years at most before they go out of business due to high debt.
This was not something that could be changed by human power, it was just a matter of when it would break out. The Junker nobles changed their minds and agreed to cut production capacity, in addition to preserving the price of food, more than anything else, they wanted to carry out land annexation and expand their own homesteads.
Perhaps ordinary people would think that now that the price of food has plummeted, land has become worthless, however the Junker nobles who hold the power would not see it that way.
The population was constantly growing, while the land had no way to keep growing. From this aspect, the price of food would go up sooner or later.
Even if the international food prices couldn’t recover, they could still artificially raise the prices of domestic agricultural products by changing the rules.
In the original time and space, when the German Second Empire’s own food production was insufficient, the Junker nobles had dared to set up restrictive conditions to block foreign agricultural products from entering the domestic market, let alone now.
Farmer bankruptcy is also what the capital Junkers want to see, they can get more cheap labor. Just analyze the benefits to know that this plan has been unstoppable in the Kingdom of Prussia.
……
Following the introduction of the annexation-meaningful Land Fallow Law in the Kingdom of Prussia, European countries soon began to scramble to follow suit.
Big farmers and big capitalists jointly promoted the division of this feast, farmers to obtain more land, capitalists to obtain cheap labor, both sides with a seamless cooperation.
Austria was not left alone, except that there was also a Law on the Prohibition of Land Annexation in front of them. This was a bill issued by Franz after the outbreak of the Vienna Revolution in 1848.
It clearly stated that small parcels of land were forbidden to be traded privately and could only be sold to the local government at market value. (Specifically, land under 200 hectares)
These reclaimed agricultural lands could only be sold by the local government to farmers with less than 50 hectares of arable land, or to retired soldiers who owned less than 100 hectares of arable land, and to military nobles with less than 200 hectares of arable land.
(Remarks: Once the purchased area reaches this upper limit, it cannot be purchased further)
These purchased lands can still only be sold to the government if they want to be sold again, and cannot be traded directly with individuals.
Simply put, this means that small farmers can buy, but large farmers who want to expand can only go and acquire farms with an area of 200 hectares or more.
From the perspective of productivity development, the small farm economy will inevitably be washed out, and the mainstream of future agricultural production will be farms.
This kind of land merger helps to increase the competitiveness of agriculture, Franz naturally impossible to stop, but he does not want to see the domestic agriculture is monopolized, which is why he introduced this bill to limit the reckless expansion of the big nobles.
Under this law, more than 80% of Austria’s arable land was locked up and could only be circulated in the hands of the general public.
Aristocrats want more land or go to the colonies well, in the mainland as long as the arable land area of more than 200 hectares, and then want to expand can only be bought from the hands of large farmers.
(End of chapter)