LESS FAVOURABLE POINTS.
So far, however, from this having been the case, the Trade Returns have been persistently unfavourable, showing a great increase of imports over exports, so that for the first eleven months of the year the visible adverse trade balance was £351,000,000, or even worse than the adverse balance for the year 1925. Comparison with 1926 is, of course, useless owing to the coal stoppage in that year. The figures of unemployment, too, although showing a slight improvement compared with a year ago, have testified to the general depression in our key industries, and further evidence of that fact has also been furnished in the industrial reports of leading concerns and in the financial results of English railways for the first half of the year. Nor has there been any improve- ment in the • state of the National Accounts, the last Budget showing for the financial year 1926-27 a large deficit, while increased taxation was only saved by the Chancellor of the Exchequer drawing heavily upon certain sources of revenue which cannot be tapped a second time.
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