PROFITS.
[TO THE EDITOR OP TIER " SPRCTLTOR21
SIR,-Your correspondent " H." in the Spectator of July 30th makes use of the familiar plea of our Tariff Reformers to explain away the vast increase in the profits of our iron and steel trades as indicated in the Income-tax Returns.
The Tariff Commission Report says that "the large profits which appear in the Income Tax returns are principally due to the fact that special circumstances have operated in the case of Iron and Steel manufacturers owning and working collieries, and not to the prosperity of the Iron and Steel trade." Your correspon- dent " H." points exultantly to this quotation. He is obviously as unfamiliar with the metal industries as is the Tariff Com- mission itself.
These attempts to explain away the figures in the Income-tax Returns are futile, and this particular plea, though honoured with the support of the Times, is quite ludicrous. The iron and steel profits that figure in the Income-tax Returns are increased only to a small extent by coal profits. It is a notorious fact that in the five years 1898-1902 most handsome profits were earned by steelworks in South Wales which had to buy every ton of coal that they consumed. I have the evidence of my own dividends to prove that the average profits in this quinquennium of a steel- works in which I am interested, and which owns no collieries, work out at 20 per cent. per annum ! This was not peculiar to South Wales. A North of England firm engaged in the iron and steel trade earned a profit of over 4300,000 in the year 1901, and declared a dividend of 25 per cent. This year iron and steel profits will undoubtedly show a great falling. off, which means that these industries are not exempt, any more than other indus- tries, from the laws governing the ebb and flow of trade.
For all that, our iron and steel trades are full of vitality. Is it not a strange form of patriotism on the part of the New Pro- tectionists to insist, in face of the incontrovertible evidence of our Income-tax Returns, that great British industries are going headlong to Gehenna ? If this is the new Imperialism, then Gpd deliver us from it !
am, Sir, &c., Bau*Wir,
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