English No. 1, they are put into casks and brined. About Brining. 330 lbs. of onions are put into a hogshead, a layer of 44 lbs. of salt is then placed on top of them, and water is added. This treatment causes the onions to shrink sufficiently to permit of the lid being coopered on, and the hogshead is closed in. After a short time, a little salt water is added through the bung-hole to make up for loss by evaporation and fermentation, but the hogshead then remains untouched until the goods are sold, as it is considered that the reopening of the cask makes the onions soft. The loss in weight by shrinkage is about 7 per cent. and a hogshead is sold as containing 24 cwts.

The average rate of wages paid to men employed in these brining factories is £1 a week.

Prices of Dutch Silverskins in Brine.

The prices per hogshead quoted in September last for Dutch Prices of silverskins in brine f.o.b. Rotterdam, were as follows: No. 0, Dutch silver75s.; No. 1, 65s.; No. 2, 55s.; No. 3, 35s.

A later quotation received in October gives 70s. for first grade, and 64s. for second grade, of No. 0; 55s. for No. 1; 45s. for No. 2; 35s. for No. 3; and 24s. for No. 4, the latter being very large. Those reductions are no doubt due to the large supply available from the abundant crop of this year.

Last year No. 0 fetched 80s. per hogshead, and the other sizes were correspondingly higher in price. The demand for Nos. 0 and 1 is much greater than for Nos. 2 and 3, and the factories consequently purchase smaller quantities of the latter from the growers. Nos. 3 and 4 are often sold for mixed pickles for immediate consumption.

Onions rejected by the sorters on account of bad shape or greenness are sold for sauce making.

Freight Rates on Brined Onions.

skins.

The freight rates charged on onions in brine from Rotterdam Freights to London in September last were as follows:

from Rotterdam

Netherlands Steamboat Company.-2s. 6d. per hogshead to to London London, delivered to vans at quay.

Rotterdam London Line.-1s. 6d. per hogshead to Thames; 2s. 6d. per hogshead to Thames, delivered to vans at quay.

A second quotation by this line given in October was at the rate of 10s. per ton, delivered to vans.

Great Eastern Railway.-3s. 3d. per hogshead to London

Freights

from Rotter dam to

Birmingham.

Comparison of Dutch and English systems.

Zeeland Shipping Company.-14s. 2d. per ton in 2-ton lots. and upwards; 15s. 6d. per ton under 2 tons, to London, Blackfriars Station, by ordinary goods service.

From Rotterdam to Birmingham the freights were:-

Netherlands Steamboat Company.-37s. 7d. per ton, in lots of 5 tons and over.

Great Eastern Railway.—25s. 3d. per ton, in lots of 2 tons and upwards.

From the foregoing rates it appears that about 2s. 6d. to 3s. per hogshead must be added to the Rotterdam prices for brined onions in order to get at the actual cost of the goods to the London pickling firms, and something must also be allowed for the cartage from the wharf or station, as the case may be, to the picklers' premises.

Dutch and English Systems compared.

The foregoing observations embody the principal points brought out by the inquiries made with regard to the Dutch trade in brined onions. The social and economic conditions under which the industry is conducted in the Netherlands differ in many respects from those existing in this country, and thesedifferences must be taken into account in any attempt to institute a comparison between the expenses of cultivation on the Dutch small holdings and on the large market gardens in the Biggleswade district. For instance, it has been suggested that the cost of labour in Holland is so much cheaper than in this country, that it has enabled the Dutch exporters to undersell the British produce. But with regard to this question of the relative cost of labour, it has already been pointed out that the Dutch gardeners may themselves be regarded as labourers, inasmuch as they perform practically the whole of the work on their holdings, with the aid of their wives and children. They are a sober, hard-working class with little or no ambition, and their standard of living is of the humblest description. In seasons of low prices, such as is the case this year, the Dutch cultivator is worse off than a labourer, as his net profits would not represent a return for his work equivalent to the wages ordinarily paid to male labourers in the neighbourhood, which range from 15s. to 20s. a week. When prices are high his profits naturally rise, but after he has paid his rent and manure bill they seldom much exceed the weekly wages of a day labourer. So that, though wages in Holland are actually not much less than those paid in the market-gardening districts in this country, they do not enter so largely into the cost of production, because the Dutch grower of silverskins employs little outside labour and is content to work on his holding for a return which in some seasons is not equivalent to the wages of ordinary labourers.

On the other hand, his outgoings for rent are higher per acre than those ruling in this country, and he can claim little

advantage on his manure bill. It is clear, therefore, that, even under the most favourable conditions, the net profits realised by the cultivator of silverskins in Holland would be quite inadequate to satisfy the social requirements of agriculturists and market gardeners in this country.

In connection with this question of the relative cost of labour it must, however, be observed that in the Netherlands all the expenditure involved in dealing with the crop after it is gathered. is borne by the brining factories. And in the case of the cost of peeling, which is the largest item in the labour bill, there is a difference amounting to nearly one penny per peck between the prices paid to Dutch peelers and those quoted by the Biggleswade growers. The former receive one penny per kilo., which is under 71d. per peck of peeled onions, while at Biggleswade the price paid is stated to be 8d. a peck.

These differences, however, have not been of sufficient influence to enable the brining factories to place their goods on our markets at prices persistently lower than those at which English goods have been quoted, and, in fact, the evidence collected by the Board, both in the Netherlands and in this country, has gone to show that the prices paid by pickling firms for first quality Dutch silverskins in brine delivered in London have, in some seasons, been higher even than those quoted for home produce. It is, indeed, a mistake to assume that the increasing demand for Dutch silverskins in this country is to be explained by reference merely to the question of prices. Nor is it to be explained by any real difference in the quality of the onions, since the silverskins grown in Holland do not possess any inherent properties which make them intrinsically superior to the onions of the same variety produced in this country. The secret of the success of the Dutch competition is to be found. mainly in the fact that the onions exported from the Netherlands present, on the whole, a better appearance, and more readily meet the requirements of the pickling firms, because more effective methods and greater care are employed in their preparation for brining. The organisation of the brining industry in the Netherlands has enabled the factories, by collecting their supplies of raw onions from a large number of growers and by the use of improved apparatus, to send to this country large consignments of onions in brine possessing greater uniformity in size, shape and colour than it seems possible to obtain by the methods at present adopted at Biggleswade. It is just this uniformity in the bulk which the great pickling firms in this country desire, and for goods possessing it they are prepared to pay a higher price than for produce which is deficient in this respect.