Hermann von Schullern zu Schrattenhofen: Review of F. Ph. Koenig on English Agriculture (1897)

Hermann von Schullern zu Schrattenhofen’s review examines Koenig’s 1896 study of English agriculture under international competition. It combines an appreciative account of the book’s empirical method with reservations about its optimistic prognosis. Koenig’s agricultural experience in England, Germany, the United States, and Canada gives his evidence particular weight in contemporary disputes over falling grain prices, overseas competition, and grain futures trading. Schullern values the book as material for resolving these disputes, without treating its conclusions as definitive.

The review follows the book’s three-part structure. Parts I and II investigate English and Scottish counties, consistently distinguishing predominantly pastoral “grazing counties” from arable “corn counties.” For Schullern, this distinction is essential both to explaining the crisis and to understanding the historical development of English agriculture. An initial statistical survey traces land use, ownership and tenancy, livestock, harvests, and prices across several decades. It shows that declining arable acreage coincided with an expansion of permanent pasture, rather than a general abandonment of cultivation. Schullern reproduces Koenig’s pointed formulation:

Statt so vieler Getreidefelder sieht man in England eben mehr Vieh auf üppigster Weide, aber noch lange keinen Friedhof.

English translation: Instead of so many grain fields one simply sees in England more cattle on the most luxuriant pasture, but by no means yet a graveyard.

This image encapsulates Koenig’s reinterpretation of apparent agricultural decline as productive adaptation. The county investigations then test that interpretation against local circumstances, including wages and agricultural workers’ conditions. Schullern explicitly commends their attention to concrete evidence:

Es scheint uns, dass der Verfasser bei allen diesen Darlegungen einer durchaus rationellen Methode gefolgt ist, indem er möglichst aus der vollen Wirklichkeit geschöpft und individuelle Thatsachen vorgeführt hat.

English translation: It seems to us that in all these expositions the author has followed a thoroughly rational method, in that he has drawn as far as possible from full reality and has presented individual facts.

Part III widens the inquiry to grain and animal-product imports, England’s natural and institutional advantages, railway tariffs, sea and rail freight rates, and farm organization. A concluding chapter considers the British colonies and the United States, while statistical tables supplement the argument. Schullern particularly highlights the chapters on imports as concise statements of Koenig’s account of the crisis and its remedies.

Koenig’s favorable assessment rests on a combination of economic adjustment and environmental opportunity. English land values and rents had adapted to changed conditions, land indebtedness remained comparatively limited, and the maritime climate permitted extensive conversion to pasture in ways unavailable to Germany. The review quotes Koenig’s account of how the initial losses were distributed:

Den ersten Anprall der Krisis musste die englische Landaristokratie durch Reduciering der Pacht tragen, dann mussten auch die Pächter ihren Theil des Verlustes, aber nur den geringeren Theil auf sich nehmen.

English translation: The first impact of the crisis the English landed aristocracy had to bear through a reduction of rents; then the tenant farmers too had to take upon themselves their share of the loss, but only the lesser share.

Rent reductions thus figure alongside changes in production as mechanisms of recovery. Koenig sees pastoral farmers prospering while arable districts continue to struggle, and argues that the crisis has made cooperation between landlords and tenants increasingly necessary.

Schullern’s central reservation concerns the step from present improvement to durable security. He accepts that conversion to pasture has brought immediate benefits to individual enterprises and the wider economy, but questions whether it constitutes a lasting remedy. A substantial contraction of English grain cultivation may entail economic and social dangers; moreover, European livestock farming might eventually face a crisis resembling that already affecting arable production. His criticism therefore does not deny successful adaptation. It challenges the assumption that changing the branch of production removes the underlying exposure to competition.

The closing paragraph makes a distinct conceptual intervention in the debate over grain “overproduction.” Schullern rejects measuring surplus against human needs as though those needs were already satisfied. The economically relevant comparison is between available products and consumers’ restricted ability to pay. Overproduction is consequently relative to purchasing power, not evidence of abundance beyond actual requirements. This distinction preserves its explanatory importance for falling prices while exposing the inadequacy of treating weak effective demand as an absence of need. The review’s significance lies in this conjunction of empirical approval, caution about sectoral remedies, and a demand-side clarification of agricultural crisis.