The Corn Law-mandated price of corn was so high in the 1820s that it took most of a middle-class income to feed one's family ... many working people didn't earn enough to buy sufficient bread, and starved ... yet Britain still could not feed herself, over ten per cent of corn was imported still, some legally, some contraband, it made opportunity for young men of enterprise and sailing abilities
Situation got that way because parliament was dominated by landowners, due to outdated ridings [electoral subdivisions] and a highly restricted franchise, few had the vote ..... the impetus for raising the mandated corn price was the end of the napoleonic wars, in which corn had quite naturally risen in price due to the continent being occupied with pursuits other than farming .... so by 1816 or so UK farmland had risen in value considerably, and much of it had changed hands at high prices .... it was to 'protect this vital interest' that landowners voted themselves a guaranteed extortionate price for corn, and voted the rest into starvation, voted the nation out of the industrial revolution business
How about that US farm bill the other day, eh .... 190 billions USD ... heeeere piggy piggy piggy
craig is way wrong
'Canada and US Free Trade Issues' - #Subject-52940 - for about twenty years now a lobby with a core of southern landowners with yellow pine planted on old worked-out slave land has been getting control of the US 'Commerce' department, in an effort to drive out of the market the superior wood of the british columbians ... and it's been intensifying lately, current US administration seems to pander to this sort of thing |
