The Sunday Times of last Sunday published an article on
the future of British shipping by Lord Inchcape which was cheerful reading. Lord Inchcape declares his belief that the needs of the world in the way of manu- factures, irrigation and agriculture, and so on are so urgent that they are bound to be met, and that the mere act of meeting them will involve an intensive development of transport and chiefly, of course, of shipping. He thinks that this improvement will be greatly aided by the awaken- ing recognition among British workers that only upon the exchange of productive labour can human prosperity be based. The statistics which Lord Inchcape provides show that in the first nine months of the present year 67 per cent. of the tonnage entering ports of the United Kingdom was British and in the same period 64 per cent. of the tonnage clearing from the ports was British. In other words the total so far this year for British ships is considerably more than twice that of all the other ships. The challenge from foreign shipping has been growing weaker, not stronger.
*
Previous page
