departments, taking first the import of crude drugs and medicinal preparations. Peruvian bark, in 1882, we exported to the value of £903,000. In 1895 it had fallen to £41,000. The cinchona market has left London for Amsterdam. The camphor refining trade has gone to Hamburg. Of opium we exported £371,000 in 1884; in 1895 only £95,000. Indigo, which touched two-andhalf millions in 1871, had shrunk to less than a million in 1895. Cochineal, which stood at £446,000 in 1867, went down to £29,000 in 1895. Our guano export has fallen from £634,000 in 1876 to £13,000 in 1895. Mr. Williams's second head is that of "Heavy Chemicals." In 1873 we exported £3,000,000 of alkali, in 1895 only £1,560,000. In 1873 there were twenty-four alkali works at Tyneside, now there are five. Germany, on the other hand, is increasing its output. In 1877 it produced 42,000 tons of soda, now its output is close upon 200,000. In the ten years, 1885 to 1894, her export of soda ash grew from 12,000 to 34,000 tons.

The fact of it is, he declares, our trade has simply gone to the devil, while the Germans are piling up fortunes. In the artificial manure trade we are in a bad way. The Germans are monopolising the production of sulphate of ammonia, a waste product saved from the coking ovens. According to a Scotch chemical manufacturer, the Germans have completely displaced every manufacturer of saltpetre in the United Kingdom, and have almost monopolised the consumption of the world. In salt the Germans are cutting us out even in our own dependency of India. Our salt exports to India are steadily falling. The Salt Union supply of salt for chemical purposes in England has fallen from 600,000 tons in 1890 to 500,000 tons in 1895. In the finer chemicals, the Germans have everything their own way. Of quinine four-fifths of the world's consumption is now made in Germany. In photographic chemicals they command the English market for albuminised paper and pyrogallic acid. The manufacture of aniline dyes has become almost a German monopoly. They buy coal tar from England and make nine-tenths of the artificial colouring that the world uses. Their export of aniline to China and Japan has gone up threefold in the last five years, whilst our exports have steadily fallen. What makes it worse is that the aniline dyes were the discovery of an Englishman, and at first the whole trade was in English hands.

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THE LESSER TRADES.

The German is like the locust and the cankerworm combined, for he stops at nothing. Everything great and small that comes in his way he devours, and he is even greater in demolishing the manufacture of such trifles as toys than in the construction of steam engines. In 1895 our imports of foreign made toys came to nearly a million sterling. Our export of toys is wil. Germany values her export trade in toys at £895,000 a year. glass, again, we are steadily importing more and more from Germany and Holland-for Holland is, in many cases, the port of export for Germany.

EXPORTS OF GLASS FROM ENGLAND.

In

On the other hand, the German export of glass and glass-ware has gone up from £1,900,000 in 1883 to

£2,338,000 in 1895. We have bought from Germany and Holland window-glass to the value of £203,000 in 1895, and other glass manufactures to the tune of £892.000. In pottery our export has dropped from £2,562,000 in 1885 to £2,170,000 in 1895. In Germany the export of porcelain has risen from £365,000 in 1885 to £738,000 in 1895. Exports in English cement have dropped from £1,282,000 in 1890 to £642,000 in 1895. The German export has grown from 346,000 tons in 1885 to 471,000 tons in 1895. This is a clear case in which we had nearly 300,000 tons start at the beginning, whereas now the Germans are leading us by 76,000 tons. Our import of glove leather from Germany was £706,000 in 1895, while we are only exporting to Germany £69,000. Of paper our export has fallen from £1,675,000 to £1,289,000. We imported paper from abroad to the tune of £2,845,000 in 1895. In musical instruments Germany holds the field. Our export of musical instruments has dropped from £265,000 in 1884 to £159,000 in 1895. We imported in 1895 musical instruments to the value of £996,000, of which sum £563,000 went to Germany and £147,000 to Holland and Belgium. It is estimated that in 1890 the world "consumed" 200,000 pianos, and of these 72,000 were made in Germany. New Zealand, in 1892, imported 531; 434 of these came from Germany. In bookbinding, printing, and lithography, Germany beats us hands down.

Such are the facts which Mr. Williams presents to us in his "Made in Germany." Holes may be picked here and there, averages may be shown to be miscalculated, he has no doubt ignored the brighter aspects of the landscape, but after all deductions are made, it cannot be denied that here we have a state of things that calls for the immediate and grave attention of every statesman and patriot in the country. Unless we can do something, and at once, to avert the threatened destruction of our trade, there is nothing before us but a catastrophe from which the imagination shrinks appalled.

III. THE SECRET OF OUR DEFEATS. How is it that, after maintaining our position of industrial supremacy against all comers for a century, the British champion should now be threatened with defeat? Mr. Williams gives many explanations, only some of which need concern us; others no doubt have their influence, but broadly speaking we are losing the race for exactly the same reason that other champions lose other races. We have grown fat and lazy. It is the old story of the hare and the tortoise once more. The British Hare, feeling secure, has careered gaily ahead of all competitors, and then, finding that it had the course to itself, it lay down and snoozed. Meanwhile, the German Tortoise, finding that his own unaided natural powers were inadequate to give him even a show in the international contest, mounted himself upon the motor cycle of applied science, and, before long, was able to get up sufficient speed to render the issue of the race a foregone conclusion-unless the hare wakes up, goes into training, and applies himself with a will to make up for lost time. The Germans are beating us all along the line for exactly the same reasons that they beat the French in 1870. They have taken more pains to know their facts; they have studied the task before them in a serious practical spirit, and they have gone in to win. For our part we have acted just like Napoleon's marshals: we have plumed ourselves upon our invincible prowess and our magnificent prestige. We have taken things easy, and have been, in short-to use the expressive Yankee phrase "Too dam comfortable all round."

GERMAN CHEAP LABOUR.

Of course, the pessimist will shrug his shoulders and maintain that nothing can be done unless our working population is prepared to accept a standard of living which would enable our manufacturers to compete on equal terms with the Germans. "We are ruined by German cheap labour." That is what we are told on every side. Long hours and low wages enable our German competitors to cut the throat of English trade, and there is no hope for an improvement as long as the English working man clamours for short hours and long wages, indulging every now and then in a ruinous strike which has the immediate effect of transferring orders wholesale to our German rivals.

Now there is no doubt something in this, but very much less than most people think. The most staggering piece of economic intelligence brought to the attention of the public last year was the report of the delegates of the British Iron Trade Association as to the condition of the ironworkers in Germany. These delegates made a pretty exhaustive examination of a number of German iron works, and on their return made a report as to what they thought of German methods. Mr. Williams says:

It was found by the delegates of the British Iron Trade Association that for loading-plates German mechanics are paid at the rate of a franc per ton, whereas the Middlesborough man gets only 5d. to 7d. An Englishman employed at certain ironworks in Germany, who had once been at Darlington and Middlesborough, and was therefore fitted to compare, discoursed the delegates thus:-" Undoubtedly our men are better off than the men in England. We pay, generally speaking, higher wages. You have some few men who get higher wages than any men in our works; but over the whole of the men we get higher wages than you pay. That is an absolute fact."

Mr. Williams further adds that the evidence of these delegates is fortified by the observations of such Englishmen interested in the trade who have travelied on the Continent in a note-taking spirit. The statistics of wages in Germany may be cited in confirmation. These show not only that the German's working income averages very fairly with the English, but that the German's wages are on a pretty steady upward grade. Nor is this confined to the iron and steel trades:

On the whole, wages in textile Germany average pretty equally with wages in textile England. Here and there, however, they are actually higher; and I have been told of German factory girls who clear their fourteen marks a week for just such work as in Belfast is done for 6s. to 94. The German hours are but little longer than the English, and are in process of reduction.

The most effective reply, however, to those who maintain that it is all a question of cheaper labour is contained in the following paragraph:

Belgian wages in the mining and iron trades rule lower than German. Yet Belgium complains more of German competition than does Germany of Belgian. The wages of New York printers are higher than those of London printers, yet they turn out cheaper work.

PROTECTION.

Mr. Williams labours this point more than I shall do. He may be right, or he may be wrong, but discussion on that question is as profitable as a discussion on what would have happened if Adam had quarrelled with Eve instead of making her the mother of his children. Mr. Williams believes that the German manufacturer is able to undersell his British rival in the foreign market because, being secured by a protective price at home, he is able to sell at a loss abroad. This may be so, but we

are committed to Free Trade, we have taken it for better or for worse, and it involves no disloyalty in our allegiance to the true principle of free exchange to recognise that it involves the sacrifice of certain minor advantages which the Protectionists can claim. In any case it is a pity that Mr. Williams should have drawn the red herring of Fair Trade across the road along which he wishes to lead his countrymen. For gool or for ill, both parties in the State are committed definitely to Free Trade, and although our way may sometimes lead through the wilderness, he is no true leader who would advise a return to the onions and garlic of Protection.

CHEAP RAILWAY RATES.

Broadly speaking, Mr. Williams thinks German railway rates are about half those which the English manufacturer has to pay. This he thinks is due to the fact that railways are generally and largely owned by the State, whereas all our lines are run for the purpose of making as big a dividend as possible. State subsidies to steamship companies, and a general facilitation of means of transport, so that any one can book goods to any part of the world from any place in Germany at through rates, tend no doubt to make the way smooth for the German competitor. As the Germans preceded us in the adoption of the parcels post, so by their combined rates and through cheaper rates goods are carried in many cases more cheaply from German ports even into English possessions than they are from Liverpool and London.

SECRETS OF GERMAN SUCCESS.

Dismissing this subsidiary and more or less extraneous aid to German success, Mr. Williams comes to the root and core of the whole matter when he says that though the Germans are beating us, they deserve to beat us. They take more trouble than we do, they turn out better work, and they are much more alert in every department to avoid waste, to please a customer, and to extend their business; in other words, the Germans are better up to their work than we are, and nothing will do any good until that fact is plainly recognised:

Up to a couple of decades ago Germany was an agricultural State. Her manufactures were few and unimportant; her industrial capital was small; her export trade was too insignificant to merit the attention of the official statistician; she imported largely for her own consumption. Now she has changed all that. Her youth has crowded into English houses, has wormed its way into English manufacturing secrets, and has enriched her establishments with the knowledge thus purloined. She has educated her people in a fashion which has made it in some branches of industry the superior, and in most the equal of the English. Her capitalists have been content with a simple style, which has enabled them to dispense with big immediate profits, and to feed their capital. They have toiled at their desks, and made their sons do likewise; they have kept a strict controlling hand on all the strings of their businesses; they have obtained State aid in several ways-as special rates to shipping ports; they have insinuated themselves into every part of the world-civilised, barbarian, savage-learning the languages, and patiently studying the wants and tastes of the several peoples.

GERMAN SCHOLARS AND ENGLISH SCHOOLMASTERS.

It is lawful to learn from an enemy, and, as a matter of fact, it is usually from our enemies we learn the most. Germans recognised that long ago, and they set themselves with characteristic energy to sit at our feet and learn all that we had to teach them. Fifteen years ago, when the English Iron and Steel Institute visited Berlin, Dr. Herman Wedding told his guests frankly that Germany had gone to school with the English iron

GREATER ADAPTABILITY.

Mr. Williams rightly gives a prominent place to the greater readiness of the Germans to please their customers. He tells one or two very interesting anecdotes to illustrate this subject. English manufacturers are too much given to dumping their goods upon the market, practically saying, "You have got to have this or nothing." The German, on the other hand, says, "If you do not like what I have, I will make you something to suit your taste." This insular insolence is losing us market after market:

It seems that many years ago England was exporting vast numbers of Turkey-red handkerchiefs to Russia. They were chiefly used as head coverings by the women, and were oblong in shape. The wearers would have liked them square, and their wish was made known to Lancashire. Lancashire, however, considered herself the better judge: especially as the change from oblongs to squares meant new machinery. So the Russian girls continued to curse their headgear, till in time their sorrow was turned into joy by the alvent of a German bagman. Their heads are still gay with crimson kerchiefs; but those kerchiefs do not come from Manchester.

As it loses us the privilege of supplying the Russian peasant girls with kerchiefs, so the same vice has destroyed our hardware trade in Servia. The British Consul at Belgrade in his report of 1894 tells the following story:

The Servian purchaser is resolutely conservative in adhering to traditions of shape and pattern, for which indeed he cares more than he does for quality; the kitchen knife, for instance, is an important article with which the Serb is accustomed to chop bones and meat; the blade must therefore be especially broad at its insertion into the handle, in order that the holder's knuckles may escape abrasion. The German manufacturer yields to this whim, and gives the blade the required shape, a concession which British manufacturers have hitherto refused. The result is the triumph of a German instrument, of which the blade turns on bone, over an English knife of about equal price but far superior temper. It is due to the German, however, to remark that he spares no trouble to give a proper finish to the article by carrying the metal of the haft quite through the bone or ivory handle to which he rivets it, whilst the English haft goes in a part of the way only, and works quickly loose. The question of pattern is equally decisive as regards other tools.

BOOKING SMALL ORDERS.

The Germans are not above taking orders at which their English rivals would turn up their noses. In proof of this, Mr. Williams says:

A

The big English houses want big orders, and, with starchy dignity and a shortsighted contempt for possible expansions, scorn the small order, leaving it mag animously to the German houses. They are ready enough to snap up any orders, however small. To be once more proverbial: "A cantle littles maks a muckle," is a Scots saying-practised by Germans. Not only so the small order often leads to the large. story lately current in the City illustrates the point. An English commercial traveller, returning from South America, was abused by the senior partner of his firm for sending home small orders, and was informed that no great house like theirs could take on the £5 busine-s. The traveller plea-led the German practice. The senior partner consigned the Germans to the devil. Five years after the traveller returned, and heard the senior partner's lamentation over the decay of business. "It's Germans," was his explanation. "The £500 orders have followed the five-pounders." The senior partner suggested that they must take anything they could get. traveller replied that there was precious little left. snubbed me once (so the hardy drummer punctated the moral) "for booking small orders, and sent the Germans to the devil. But it is our business which has gone to the devil. and there you are!".

The "You

GREATER CARE IN PACKING.

One great reason why British goods are handicapped in the Colonial market is that so little pains is taken to pack them. The Germans pack their goods much more carefully; they arrive in much better condition, there are fewer breakages en route, and when they are turned out they look well, while English goods often look their worst when they are fresh from the packing-case.

CONDESCENDING TO THE FOREIGNER.

The Englishman in his business relations is insular, and he has all the faults of his qualities. He does not take the trouble to learn the language of the people with whom he does business. His commercial travellers have to trust to interpreters. Goods are always supplied according to English weights and measures, and even tra le circulars, as the British Consul at Moscow pathetically complains, are sent round to Russian orchants in the English language. And here let me, in passing, recognise the good service which Lord Rosebery rendered to the awakening of the British trader by his instructions to British Consuls to report regularly and promptly on the condition of British trade in their district. It is true that up till now the Germans have made more use of our Consular reports than our merchants, but that, alas! is only too characteristic.

THE UTILISATION OF CONSULS.

The German Government employs its commercial consuls for the purpose of assisting the commercial classes to push their business. Hence, a German consul is the sworn friend and ally of every German bagman who visits a foreign country. He makes the pushing of German business a matter of personal pride, and his success is the best credential for official promotion. Our consuls, with a few brilliant exceptions, are not where they are wanted, or of any use where they are. Mr. Williams says:—

As Mr. Mundella pointed out to the Sheffield Chamber of Commerce, the Germans spend £800 a year on a Consul at Milan, the centre of Italian industry. England has a ViceConsul only, whose entire emolument is £50 a year, out of which he finds his own stationery! Our principal Consul is at Florence, where there is no trade.

In this, as in every other thing, we always come back upon the one fundamental fact by which the Germans have so smitten our hip. Their intelligence is greater. The Intelligence Department of the German staff was that which enabled them to beat the French army into a cocked hat, and it is the superior information and knowledge of the way the land lies which enables our German rivals to beat our traders out of our own markets.

Mr. Williams, in his careful survey of the causes of German success, lays stress upon the fact that the Germans are displaying more and more the sense of the immense importance of advertising their goods at national exhibitions, whereas our manufacturers are withdrawing more and more from these great bazaars. Another point (upon which there may be some difference of opinion) is that of the superior steadiness of the German workman. Saint Monday is not by any means generally worshipped in Germany as in England, but, finally, he comes back to what throughout has been the burden of his song:

SO

Lastly, let me reiterate that the great cause of German success is an alert progressiveness, contrasting brilliantly with the conservative stupor of ourselves. It is all very well to run an old-established business; but you must diligently and continuously be striving to bring its methods up to date. And this is what English manufacturers fail to recognise.

A GERMAN POLYTECHNIC.

How thoroughly the Germans had carried this out may be seen from Mr. Williams's description of the institution which is maintained in the town of Charlottenburg :

The Charlottenburg Polytechnic numbers on its teaching staff eighty-six professors, lecturers and assistants, and thirty private tutors, and is most admirably equipped with scientific instruments and every appliance for the prosecution of advanced studies in architecture, structural and mechanical engineering, shipbuilding, chemistry, metallurgy, and general science. There is a mechanical workshop in connection, and a library of 52,000 volumes; the chemical laboratories are lavishly fitted; the buildings, which were erected at a cost of £105,000, are all sumptuously appointed, and expense is practically disregarded.

CHEMNITZ AND MANCHESTER.

The contrast between England and Germany in this respect comes out again in the comparison between Manchester and Chemnitz. In Chemnitz the pupil at the technical school

receives a thorough grounding in the theory and technique of his chosen trade or profession, and the fees amount to only £3 a half-year, except in the case of foreigners, who pay double. The fees, of course, pay but a small proportion of the expenses, which are mainly provided by the State. In the winter of 1890-91 its pupils numbered 770. The population of Chemnitz

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was only 120,000; yet Chemnitz does not appear to be an exceptional town. Such a proportion of students to population is significant.

In Manchester, on the other hand, one-third of the day pupils are foreign pupils, who, after completing their studies, return to their homes, and compete with the people who provided their training at a nominal cost. In many other respects German technical schools cast ours into the shade.

REVIVE THE EDUCATION BILL.

Surely the way is plain enough. We must rouse ourselves as a nation to the task of improving the machinery by which we can educate our people and train them for the arduous contest into which they have now been forced. There is no drawing back. France might or might not have gone to war with Germany, and so avoided the catastrophe which overwhelmed her. We have no such option. In the industrial war which rages between the nations we must fight for our lives or face our doom. If the facts be as Mr. Williams describes-and although his exposition has been published month by month in a widely-circulated_review, adequate refutation has been attempted-then, surely, it is urgent that something should be done, and that at once. The Education Bill, abandoned because of the top hamper of denominational nonsense piled upon its head, still supplies au opportunity for getting our educational system into shipshape.

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FOR SECONDARY EDUCATION.

The Bill, although abandoned as a whole, can be revived in part. What is a matter of plain, national self-preservation is to pass at once a new Bill containing the clauses raising the age of compulsion and the section dealing with Secondary Education. All else could be left alone. This, or some similar measure, might be passed without dispute, almost without debate, if the public will but awake to a sense of its peril.

He who leads an uninstructed people into war, said Confucius many centuries ago, throws them away, but he who, in the present stage of industrial competition, allows his nation to face the conflict without adequate instruction, marches them straight into the abyss. Immersed in our own private affairs, each intent in his home or office, we have had neither the timɔ nor the opportunity to make ourselves master of th real significance of these signs of the times. owe thanks to Mr. Williams for having written up WJ before the eyes of all men, in such clear and unmistikkable terms, the danger which we are facing, and for insisting on the urgency for immediate action.

MORE MONEY FOR TECHNICAL EDUCATION.

Mr. Williams urges that more money should be spent on Technical Education. He says that Mr. Ritchie estimates that we spend £4,000,000 a year upon that now; but it is insignificant and half-hearted, and it would be indeed difficult for Mr. Williams to explain where that money goes. His own suggestion on the subject is as follows:

There is one suggestion I desire to put forward. The Technical Instruction Act provides for instruction in the principles of science and art applicable to industries and in the application of special branches of science and art to specific industries; but it forbids teaching the practice of an industry. This is wrong. The one ought to be done, but the other ought not to be left undone. The apprenticeship system is disappearing, and practical instruction in an industry must be provided. The actual trade must be taught. Here and there, it is true, despite the Act, actual trades are being taught, and