To: DavesM who wrote (238524 ) 3/16/2002 3:43:12 PM From: craig crawford Read Replies (1) | Respond to A Picture of the Age: Part Two 1874 - 1899 christchurch.birkenhead.net Each of these countries raised trade barriers against British goods while Britain continued with her belief in total freedom of trade. Germany and the USA were able to develop huge sources of coal and iron, using the expertise that Britain had been a century in attaining. More importantly, perhaps, was the massive import of cheap American grain as the Middle West was opened up. Most European countries saw the danger to their farming and stopped American imports. Britain allowed the cheap grain to flood in, so that British farming could no longer compete. The result was a severe depression in the countryside, forcing workers to leave the country for the town, but it also meant much cheaper food, so that though there was unemployment, the workers did not suffer as they might have done in the past. Britain became the only country dependent on imported food: she was always only three months from starvation and therefore, despite her great wealth, the most vulnerable country in Europe. Her Navy was now a vital necessity to keep those trade routes open and she dared not quarrel with her major food supplier, the USA.
