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I-TWO HISTORICAL PRECEDENTS.

IR JOHN GORST'S Education Bill has been abandoned, and the Opposition chortles in its joy over a party gain. But if both parties were patriots they would combine to forget the contentious part of that unfortunate measure and concetnrate all their efforts upon a desperate 'attempt to save the industrial supremacy of Great Britain, which is now visibly tottering to its fall.

COLONEL STOFFEL'S WARNINGS BEFORE SEDAN, 1869. The remarkable little book which Mr. Williams has published under the title of "Made in Germany," reminds me of the fateful despatches on the German military organisation which Colonel Stoffel sent to the Emperor Napoleon from Berlin, wherein in the plainest possible language he foretold to the doomed Empire the fate that was in store for it, should war ever break out between France and Germany. Colonel Stoffel's despatches were suppressed. It was not till after his prophecies had been terribly fulfilled they were allowed to see the light. But even if they had been given to the world with the same publicity enjoyed by Mr. Williams's articles, it is doubtful whether anything could have been done to avert the catastrophe. And that is the doubt, the horrible nightmare-doubt, which oppresses us as we read the ghastly exposition of the extent to which German competition has eaten, is eating, and seems likely to continue to eat into the very heart of the British trade.

66 THE TRUTH ABOUT THE NAVY," 1884.

No one can charge me with being a pessimist or an alarmist so far as my country is concerned. Rather may I be accused with good reason of an optimism that has stood the proof of many ordeals and has emerged triumphant. Only once, and that was when I published "The Truth about the Navy," was I seriously alarmed, and the response which the publication of these articles received proved that my alarm was not unfounded. The revival of the British naval supremacy dates from the sounding of that alarm, and there will indeed be reason to thank God and take courage if the revival of the waning industrial supremacy of our country should date from the publication of Mr. Williams's timely but terrible exposition of our danger. Our commercial ascendency is to-day in very much the same position that our naval supremacy was in 1884. Trading upon the prestige of Trafalgar, successive administrations had allowed the navy to run down. Instead of being equal to any two combined fleets, it was an open question whether it could cope easily with a single antagonist. Our naval officers were in despair. The sea Lords told me almost with tears in their eyes that they could do nothing to rouse Ministers to a sense of the national peril. If war broke

"Made in Germany." By E. E. Williams. (London: W. Heinemann.) Reprinted from the New Review, with additional chapters.

out, they added gloomily, the Lords of the Admiralty would be hanged from the lamp-posts at Whitehall, but the nation whose safety had been sacrificed would not regain its position even if the whole Cabinet swung by the neck in Downing Street.

A REMINISCENCE OF ENCOURAGEMENT.

How well I remember that gloomy time of utter despair, and how constantly I laboured to instil a little hope and confidence into the hearts of the admirals. 'Only let the public know the facts," I said, "and I can answer for the result." "Never," was the reply; "as long as Mr. Gladstone lives there is no hope." Fudge," I said; "Mr. Gladstone's objection will go down like a ninepin if only public opinion can be roused." The result showed that I had not misjudged the common sense or the resolution of my countrymen. Our naval expenditure, which had dropped to £11,000,000 in 1883, has arisen to £18,700,000 this year. Britain has recreated her navy, regained her old position of naval supremacy, and reaps as the reward of her sacrifices a consciousness of safety and strength that stood her in good stead in the trying months with which this year opened.

MR. GLADSTONE IN 1884. LORD SALISBURY IN 1896. To-day we are confronted by a peril as great and as overwhelming from an industrial point of view as that which menaced us on the sea twelve years ago. We have

a Ministry at Downing Street which, like Mr. Gladstone's in 1883, is wedded to an ideal of retrenchment in matters where retrenchment is suicide. As Mr. Gladstone always longed to economise on the navy, so Lord Salisbury yearns to economise on education. Both yearnings are natural enough, both have their roots in religious convictions, but both are absolutely incompatible with the maintenance of our national greatness. As the nation had to overrule Mr. Gladstone in 1884, so the nation must and will overrule Lord Salisbury in 1896.

Let us take courage from the reminiscences of 1884. In the spring the then First Lord of the Admiralty had declared in his place in the House of Lords that the Navy was in such a state of ideal perfection he really would not know what to do with the money if an extra two millions was offered him as a gift. Even so Ministers in the spring of this year have proclaimed abroad to an astonished world that in this year of peril the supreme duty of the State is to enforce a policy of pinch penny upon the teachers of the country. But in the autumn of 1884 the very same First Lord of the Admiralty, who six months before did not know how he could spend another penny upon the Navy, stood up in the House of Lords to demand an immediate addition to the Navy entailing an expenditure of many millions. What had happened in the meantime? Nothing save the publication of some articles which woke up the nation. So we hope and expect that the publication of Mr. Williams's exposition of the parlous state of British trade in its struggle with German competition will produce a similar right-about-face, and that when next we hear anything of the Education Bill it will be a Bill to promote education by providing

for increased expenditure, not for the teaching of the catechisms of the sects, but for enabling the British artisan and manufacturer to hold their own in the life and death struggle which has begun with Germany.

THE DUKE OF DEVONSHIRE.

The precedent is good and reassuring. But there is another good omen. By a strange destiny the Duke of Devonshire, who as Minister of War forced the hand of Mr. Gladstone in 1884 to accede to the demands of the nation for increased armaments, is now Minister of Education. In Lord Salisbury's Cabinet he has an even more potent voice than he had in Mr. Gladstone's. In 1884 he had Mr. Chamberlain as his keenest antagonist. To-day Mr. Chamberlain would be his most efficient ally. The duke is a sagacious man. His father was one of the first men in England to discern the need of improved technical education. The Duke, of all men not actually engaged in trade, knows how keen is the German competition. A little painstaking examination of the facts and figures contained in Mr. Williams's book will suffice to convince him that the time has come for him to assert himself once more, otherwise many years will not pass before the bitter despairing cry, 66 Nous sommes trahis!" will burst from the starving lips of a ruined nation.

II. THE FACTS OF THE CASE.

The industrial supremacy of Great Britain has been long an axiomatic commonplace, and it is fast turning into a myth, as inappropriate to fact as the Chinese Emperor's computation of his own status. This is a strong statement. But it is neither wide nor short of the truth. The industrial glory of England is departing, and England does not know it."

That is the way in which Mr. Williams begins his exposition of the present condition of English trade. There is a conscious sense of strain about it, which to many readers will detract from the value of his statement of facts. But the facts are facts, however sensationally they may be presented, and even if we took fifty per cent. discount off Mr. Williams's reckoning, the facts to which he calls our attention are quite grave enough to justify, although not to 'necessitate, any resort to exaggeration. Those who read "Made in Germany' will rise from it with a confused impression that things are in a bad way; but although the author succeeds in producing this impression, it is only when with pen in hand you attempt to bring together within a small compass the array of facts and figures which he throws artistically about his papers, that you realise what a difference there is between the method of a statistical abstract and that of the writer of startling articles in a popular periodical.

It is true, no doubt, that Mr. Williams has had great difficulty owing to the varying classification of different goods, and also owing to the fact that figures are not always obtainable for the same class of goods for the same periods for purposes of exact comparison. He is also loose in his calculation of percentages, as, for instance, when we are told that imports have fallen off about 120 per cent., which is manifestly impossible. Nothing can fall off more than 100 per cent. I mention these blemishes first, in order to discount any criticism that may be made as to the shortcomings of the author, for when all allowance has been made, and all these shortcomings and over-statements have been combed away, there remains a body of facts based upon the official statistical returns which, taken together, are sufficient to arrest the attention of the most heedless.

THE FALL IN VALUES.

The great fall in the value of commodities which has been one of the most remarkable features of recent years, is one of the elements which contribute greatly to obscure an exact appreciation of the extent to which the growth of British commerce has suffered a check. It is obvious that in certain articles whore the fall has been the greatest we may be doing twice as much business as before, while the total amount of money received for the year would show a falling off. Nevertheless, this element affects Germany equally with ourselves, and does not vitiate the result of a comparison between the increase and decrease of imports and exports into the two countries during the same period. To what extent the value of goods has fallen it is difficult to say, nor does Mr. Williams attempt to give any exact estimate as to He the percentage to which the prices have fallen. mentions that cotton piece goods in the last thirty years have gone down from 5d. per yard to 2d.; printed linens from 9d. a yard to 5d., while galvanized iron has dropped in the same period from £25 a ton to £11 10s. In 1865 steel manufactures were quoted at £68 10s., in 1894 they have fallen to £26 10s. It is obvious, therefore, that in the case of those four commodities we should have to do nearly three times as much business in order to earn the same amount of money. average, however, is by no means so great as this. Still, the fact that prices have fallen, and fallen heavily, must be borne in mind in estimating the significance of Mr. Williams's statistics. Nor must it be forgotten that it is sometimes possible to make as much profit when prices are low as when they are high, because the high price of manufactured articles may be due to the high price of raw material. The probability, of course, is the other way; still, in order to avoid any appearance of straining a point, it may be as well to admit this at

once.

THE PERIODS OF COMPARISONS.

The

Our chief difficulty in arriving at an approximate estimate as to the extent to which our trade has been hit by German competition is enhanced by the haphazard manner in which Mr. Williams pitches upon the years and commodities by which he makes comparisons. The value of his book would have been enormously enhanced had he, in an appendix, printed a carefully tabulated statement of German and English imports and exports, say, for each year since the foundation of the German Empire. As it is, we have comparisons sometimes between the years 1865 and 1895; between 1883 and 1893; between 1878 and 1894; between 1880 and 1894; between 1882 and 1894, and between 1890 and 1895, and so forth.

THE CENTRAL FACTS.

Notwithstanding all these difficulties which confront the reader of Mr. Williams's effective little book, the main fact stands out unmistakably enough, which is thus stated:

In '72 the total declared value of British and Irish produce exported from the United Kingdom was £256,257,347; in '95 it had suk to £226,169,174; and in the meantime the population of Great Britain and Ireland had grown from 31,835,757 to 39,131,166. The market is bigger, the ability to supply the market is greater; but, whereas the proportion per head of exported British produce was £8 18. Od. in '72, it had sunk to £5 11s. 3d. in '94. This is what foreign competition means to us.

It may be said that this is chiefly due to the drop in prices, but admitting this, that fact in no way diminishes the significance of M. Williams's second statement, which

it is necessary to print in immediate juxtaposition to the former. During the last ten years during which the fall in prices has been heavy

The total value of manufactured goods imported into the United Kingdom by Germany rose from £16,629,987 in '83 to £21,632,614 in '93: an increase of 30-08 per cent.

An increase of 30 per cent. on German imports into the United Kingdom, which has taken place pari passu with a drop in prices which can hardly be estimated at less than 15 per cent., is very significant indeed. Nor is this all. Mr. Williams says:

It is worthy of note that while the total imports into England declined in value by £22,000.000 between '83 and '93, the imports of manufactured articles increased by over £13,000,000.

These three facts constitute the gist of Mr. Williams's contention. All the rest is more or less a filling up of detail, but these three statistical items suffice to justify all the outcry which he has made. Let us recapitulate them. They are: (1) while the population in twentythree years has increased by over 7,000,000, the declared value of our exports has fallen by £30,000,000, so that the proportion per head of exported British pro luce has fallen from £8 1s. in 1872 to £5 11s. 31. in 1894. That is the first fact. The second is that, in ten years between 1883 and 1893, while the value of British exports was declining, the value of German manufactured goods imported into this country went up by £5,000 000, an increase of over thirty per cent. (3) In the same ten years, the imports of manufactured articles from abroad show an increase of £13,000,000 in face of the fact that the total value of our imports had fallen by £22,000,000.

THE HANDWRITING ON THE WALL.

The significance of these figures no optimist can gainsay. Our industrial supremacy, which enabled us for nearly a century to command the markets of the world, is visibly threatened, and threatened not merely in the markets of the world, but in our own markets. We are, in fact, being beaten by the Germans in a field which we have hitherto regarded peculiarly as our own. Just as in 1884 we woke up to the fact that France was seriously threatening our naval supremacy, so in 1896 we have now to wake up to the fact that our commercial supremacy has largely been undermined by our German competitors.

Recent years have witnessed a world-wide depression in trade, and the exports of every country have gone down; but whereas the exports of the United Kingdom declined 6 per cent. between '92 and '94, those of Germany went back but three, while in amount England's loss was four times greater than Germany's.

Further, he maintains that, at this moment, notwithstanding the revival of trade, which we all thankfully recognise, there are many industries in this country which are still languishing under depression, and these industries are precisely those which are most flourishing in Germany. For instance, he quotes the following paragraph from the newspapers of this year :

The Barrow Steel Works, employing about 3,000 men, have been closed owing to scarcity of orders, and to the unremunerative prices of what orders were forthcoming. The Duke of Devonshire recently reduced royalty rents, and a reduction

was made in railway rates, but not sufficient to enable the concern to be worked at a profit.

In the shipbuilding trade the German yards are unable to execute their orders, and English builders are thankful to snap up the German leavings. In the Lancashire cotton trade he quotes the following alarming statement from an official organ:

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Turn whichever way we may we are met with grimly significant indications that the condition of things is steadily going from bad to worse.

Yet, at the same time, German cotton spinners are flourishing, and find it difficult to cope with the orders for their goods.

GERMAN GOODS IN THE ENGLISH MARKET.

Mr. Williams asks any one who doubts whether the German is ousting us from our own markets to institute an inquiry as to how many articles which he personally uses are made in Germany. He says:

Your investigations will work out somewhat in this fashion. You will find that the material of some of your own clothes was probably woven in Germany. Still more probable is it that some of your wife's garments are German importations; while it is practically beyond a doubt that the magnificent mantles and jackets wherein her maids array themselves on their Sundays out are German-made and German-sold, for only so could they be done at the figure. Your governess's fiancé is a clerk in the City; but he also was made in Germany. The toys, and the dolls, and the fairy books which your children maltreat in the nursery are made in Germany: nay, the material of your favourite (patriotic) newspaper had the same birthplace as like as not. Roam the house over, and the fateful mark will greet you at every turn, from the piano in your drawing-room to the mug on your kitchen dresser, blazoned though it be with the legend, A Present from Margate. Descend to your domestic depths, and you shall find your very drain-pipes German made. You pick out of the grate the paper wrappings from a book consignment, and they also are "Made in Germany." You stuff them into the fire, and reflect that the poker in your hand was forged in Germany. As you rise from your hearthrug you knock over an ornament on your mantelpiece; picking up the pieces you read, on the bit that formed the base, "Manufactured in Germany." And you jot your dismal reflections down with a pencil that was made in Germany. At midnight your wife comes home from an opera which was made in Germany, has been here enacted by singers and conductor and players made in Germany, with the aid of instruments and sheets of music made in Germany. That this is not a mere fantastic exaggeration is proved by the following table of the declared values of German goods imported into Great Britain in the year 1895:

Steel and iron goods (1894) Woollen manufactures

Paper ditto.

Musical instruments

Cotton manufactures

Toys

China, etc.

Prints, photos, etc.

Linen manufactures

£1,220,000

1,016,694

586,835

563,018

536,471

459,914

216,876

111.825

91,257

In some articles, such as wire, for instance, we import more from Germany than we export to all the rest of the world. In 1894 Germany sent us 59,000 tons, while we only exported 36,000. Mr. Williams goes into great detail to illustrate the way in which articles made in Germany are superseding in England articles manufactured at home, but at present I will confine myself to broad, general statements.

GERMAN COMPETITION IN THE FOREIGN MARKET.

Under this head, Mr. Williams marshals an array of statistics which are to the last degree disquieting. In

the last ten years the declared value of our exports to foreign countries has been diminishing. Those of Germany have been advancing by leaps and bounds. Here are some of the figures quoted to illustrate the growth of the German export trade in markets which we have hitherto regarded as our own. It is rather awkward to tabulate them, owing to the fact that Mr. Williams, for reasons of his own, has selected different years for the purposes of comparisons, but the general effect is the same whatever years are selected :

German Exports to Foreign Countries.

Of course it would have been much better if Mr. Williams could have given us a carefully prepared table covering the whole field, setting the facts of German and English trade side by side. This, I hope, he will do in a second edition of his book, which I feel sure will be called for, but at present I am taking his figures as they stand. By themselves, without addition or correction, they abundantly justify his contention that German trade is forging ahead, and that this has largely been effected at the cost of British commerce.

GERMAN RIVALRY WITH ENGLAND

As the German armies for ten years before Sedan were carefully prepared with an eye to the overturn of the military supremacy of France, so German policy has been systematically based upon the conviction that England was the great enemy.

The Royal Commission on Technical Education Report for 1881 contains this statement:-"Every step taken for the improvement of German industries was influenced mainly by the desire to strengthen their position with regard to the civalry of England."

There was no personal antipathy in this. The Germans simply asked themselves who were leading in the race. They found the French ahead in the arts of war, the English in the arts of peace. They put themselves quietly and resolutely into training, in order that they might beat the French in the field. They did so, with a thoroughness which has surprised the world. No sooner had the smoke of the battlefield cleared away than they set themselves as deliberately and as resolutely to challenge the industrial supremacy of Great Britain. In the figures which I have just quoted we see but the beginning of their success. They have already won their Forbach and Worth in the industrial campaign, but they have as little notion of halting in their march as Von Moltke had of stopping short of the walls of Paris. Fortunately the English industry is not in as desperate a condition as were the French legions on the eve of Sedan, but it will be well for us if we take measures in time, otherwise there may be a death flurry like Gambetta's levy en masse with the same disastrous results.

GERMAN COMPETITION IN IRON AND STEEL.

The facts concerning the production of iron and steel in Germany and England are among the most startling of all those which Mr. Williams has collected. With his statistics before us it is indeed difficult to deny that in one great staple industry there is every indication that the hare is being beaten by the tortoise. We are steadily losing ground; the Germans are steadily gaining. Here again we have to lament the difference of dates selected for comparison, but the facts are too glaring to be affected by the difference of a year or two.

THE PRODUCTION OF PIG IRON.

In 1880, Britain used 18,000,000 tons of iron ore. In 1880, Germany used 7,000,000 tons. In 1892, both countries produced 11,000,000 tons. Germany, in 1894, produced 3,617,000 tons of steel; in the same year, England only produced 1,535,000 tons of steel ingots. As it is with pig-iron so it is with iron and steel manufactures. Our export to Germany of wrought and unwrought iron fell from 374,000 tons in 1890 to 298,000 in 1895. We sent to Germany £196,000 worth of telegraph wires and apparatus in 1891, but only £22,000 worth in 1895.

ENGLISH EXPORTS TO GERMANY.

Implements and tools in 1890.

1895.

£68,000

£55,000

£326,000

£146,000

£1,526,000

£1,456,000

But while our iron exports to Germany are steadily falling, German exports to England are steadily rising. In five years the value of sewing machines imported by England from Germany rose from £68,000 to £102 000, while unenumerated iron manufactures rose from £203,000 to £409,000. In 1891 Germany sent us 110,000 tons of manufactured iron and steel, while we only sent her 32,000 tons of the same commodities.

GERMAN IRON IN GREATER BRITAIN.

Mr. Williams brings into strong relief the fact that the Germans find the British Colonies and British India more profitable fields for the sale of German goods than any of the German colonies. The Germans, indeed, finding a fair field and no favour in British Colonies, are making their way in Greater Britain just as they are making it in the United Kingdom. In Australia, in 1893, they sold 24,000 tons of iron and steel; in the following year, 1894, they increased their exports to 42,000 tons; at the same time, in the same colony, the sale of English iron and steel was steadily falling off, as the following table shows:

BRITISH EXPORTS OF IRON AND STEEL TO AUSTRALIA.

market for iron and steel in British India. The following figures are indeed lugubrious reading:

ENGLAND.

Iron.

Steel.

BELGIUM.

Iron.

Steel

GERMANY.

Iron. Steel. 1887-8 4,077,000 373,000. 189,000 43.000 8,000 3,000 1894-5 1,957,000 370,000. 1,176,000 448,000. 75,000 81,000 It is, in truth, the wretchedest reading; from supplying India with 98 per cent. of her iron and 95 per cent. of her steel in '83-4, in '94-5 we had declined to 61 per cent. of her iron and 41 per cent. of her steel.

In Canada also Mr. Williams says that our fellowsubjects in the Dominion took nearly 50 per cent. more of German goods in 1894 than 1893, while English exports showed a more than equivalent falling off.

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"Hardware, &c.," exports from Germany in '92, '93, and '94 :The figures are £3,795,200, £3,756,100, and £3,704,100. The slight decrease in value is caused by falling prices; the tables of quantities showing an increase. England's exports of hardware and cutlery for those years were worth £2,194,726, £2,046,606, and £1,834,481-a very much more serious business! In '82 we exported hardware and cutlery to the value of £4,107,125; since then there has been an almost steady declension, till in '95 the total reached is but £1,856,532.

The same results appear when we take different countries. Russia, which in 1893 took 78,000 tons of German iron and 59,000 tons of English, in 1895 took 168,000 tons from Germany and only 50,000 tons from England. Italy, in 1890, took 50,000 tons from Germany and 161,000 tons from England; in 1895 bought 89,000 tons from Germany and 144,000 tons from England. When we come down to details it is the same story. In 1884 we sold 4,000,000 catties of nails to Japan, while ten years later we only sold 3,000,000; where is formerly the Germans only supplied 2,000,000, they are now supplying 19,000,000.

We once monopolised the hardware tra le of Tunis; it is now non-existent. Our export of steam engines has fallen from £4,443,000 in 1890 to £2,797,000 in 1895. Germany exported only £280,000 worth of steam engines in 1899, but it had pulled up to £420,000 in 1895. Iu the Balkan peninsula Germany has cut England clean out. Servia in 1893 only took £1,496 worth of English machinery out of a total import of £37,000. Bulgaria, in 1894, bought £9,480 worth of English tools, while her payments to Germany were £121,000. The same supplanting of British goods is even more conspicuous nearer home:The Ironmonger's Special Commissioner to the Antwerp Exhibition of '94, reviewing the matter with an expert's eye, was especially struck with the falling off in Sheffield cutlery in the Belgian city. English firms, he wrote, now "send a dozen where they formerly shipped a gross." In shop windows

where some forty years before he remembered "a fine assortment of all sorts of English tools and cutlery, a few shipcarpenter's adzes and axes from Spear and Jackson and W. Greaves and Son are the remnants remaining." What wonder that his visit impressed him with the belief that the great lesson of the Antwerp Exhibition was the rapid decadence of England's industrial supremacy."

In ship building Mr. Williams maintains that the foreign orders are falling off, the figures which he gives being a change from 183,000 tons for foreign trade in 1889 to 89,000 tons in 1893.

TEXTILE GOODS.

The author maintains that the outlook for Lancashire is as bad as it is for Cleveland :

In '81 England exported cotton-piece goods (white and plain) to the value of £37,169,517; in '95 her total was only £27,353,695. As far back as '72 her export of cotton-piece goods, printed, checked, or dyed, reached £23,360 694; last year it was only £19,424,928. She sent away £621,913 worth of stockings and socks in '82, and only £219,381 worth in '95. The prosperity of her sewing-thread industry is of later date; yet in '91 it was worth £3,254,193, but in '95 no more than £3,162,161. To our own dominion of Canada she sent (in '93) $51,000 worth of cotton stockings alone. Nay, she exports to England herself; and while her cotton manufactures costs us £235.547 in '91, in '94 we bought them to the tune of £462,801.

Yorkshire is just as badly hit as Lancashire:

In the fourteen years between '80 and '93 our exports to the States of woollen dress-goods have fallen from 40,620,256 square yards, valued at $8,719,721, to 27,503,999 square yards, valued at $4,588,009; while Germany's have risen from 3,024,879 square yards, valued at $759,900, to 20,246,819 square yards, valued at $4,464,688. Our proportion of the total trade was 56.5 per cent. in '80, and 28 per cent. in '93; Germany's was 5 per cent. in '80, and 27 per cent, in '93.

Ulster is even in a worse case than Lancashire or Yorkshire. In 1864 we exported £2,992,000 of homespun linen yarn; in 1895 our export was only £965,000. Between 1890 and 1894 our import of German manufactured linen increased from £85,000 to £112,000. Our export of home-made linens in 1864 was valued at £8,173,000; in 1895 it had fallen to £4,083,000. In the jute trade we have not to lament a positive decrease, but there is nothing like the increase which Germany can boast. Between 1885 and 1895 the German jute export ran up from £10,000 to £117,000. Our export of jute-yarns and manufactures stood at £2,176,000 in 1885; in 1895 it was worth £2,589,000. Our export of jute-yarn to Germany has dropped from £60,000 to £8.000 in five years, while instead of sending £189,000 of ma ufactured jute as we did in 1890, we only sent them £17,000 in 1895. The import of jute into London fell between 1883 and 1893 from 113,000 to 101,000 tons, and at Dundee from 206,000 to 175,000 tons. On the other hand, Hamburg, which only imported 15,000 tons in 1883, imported in 1893 nearly 84,000 tons. In Italy and in Turkey, Germany has cut us out both in linen and in jute. In silk we are simply nowhere. In 1895 our export of silk and silk manufactures was only £1,729,000, while we imported £15,000,000 worth of silk. Germany exported silk in 1894 to the tune of £5,125,000.

CHEMICALS.

Germany is overtaking us in iron and steel, and threatening us in textiles; but she is beating us hand over hand in chemicals. Our English chemists have for a long time past lived in Queer Street. Their German rivals are flourishing to the tune of dividends of 28 per cent. Mr. Williams subdivides chemicals into various