TRADE VICISSITUDES IN 1900. T HE Times trade reports for 1900
exhibit a story of exceptionally severe vicissitudes in several of the most important industries of the country which is fully borne out by information from other sources. In the main these fluctuations have been due to circumstances connected with the supply of raw material or of fuel. The costliness of the latter element has indeed been ari essential feature of the year from the point of view of manufacturing production. Coalowners, though they may not have begun to reap the full benefit of enhanced prices as early•as was popularly supposed, have, neverthe- less, been making very handsome profits indeed. And when we remember the succession of lean years through which the mining industry passed in the early " nineties," it is impossible not to be glad that during the past twelve months they have had their turn of pros- perity. Whether they would have been better advised to moderate their utilisation of the highly favourable market conditions in which, as the year advanced, they found themselves, is a question open to consideration. If they had done so from altruistic motives they would certainly have been the first set of British traders to act under such influences. Yet it is quite conceivable that the decline in coal prices which has now begun may go further and last longer than would have been the case if the coalowners had been content with somewhat lower rates than those which prevailed during a large part of the past year. Almost every manufacturing industry in Great Britain has been hampered by dear coal, but that condition has probably been felt the most severely in those which for a time appeared the best able to sustain its depressing influence. For some months the smelters of iron and the producers of finished iron and steel were able to raise their prices more or less in correspondence with those which they were paying for fuel. Thus the average price per ton for a typical quality of Cleveland pig-iron, for the first nine months of 1900, was the great figure of 68s. 3d., against 58s. for 1899 and 40s. 10d. for 1898. But it is already down to 53s., and the falling- off in demand for pig-iron there and elsewhere in the North of England has been such that the number of blastfurnaces in operation in that region, which stood at ninety-seven three months ago, has sunk to eighty-five. In the Birmingham district, again, the ascertained average price for a given quality of finished iron, for the months of September and October last, was £9 15s. per ton, as compared with £7 12s. ld. in the corresponding period of 1899. But while these high rates pre- vailed it was found that American and Belgian iron was coming into the district in large quantities, and also that the iron trade maintained from Birmingham with the Colonies was threatened. And so there has been a drop to £8, or less, in the current rates for iron of the quality just referred to ; Bessemer steel was selling at nearly £2 less a ton in December than in January, 1900 ; pig-iron is on the down- grade ; and in fact " there is no record of the trade having passed, in so short a period of time, from a position of profitable activity to one of acute de- pression." All this depression in the iron trade must mean a large diminution in the principal manufacturing demand for coal, and as, doubtless, the royal profits of the past year must have led to an extension of old pits and the sinking of new ones, with a prospective, if not actual, con• siderable increase in the coal supply, the conditions making for a gradual decline in the profits of coal mining appear to be pretty clearly provided. In the woollen and worsted industry the past year has been one of very considerable depression. This apparently has been mainly due to the large amount of speculative buying of wool which occurred at the close of 1899. There was a certain amount of " shortage " in the Australian wool clip, especially of the finer sorts, which were required for the kinds of cloth then mostly in fashion for both men's and women's wear, and the prices were raised extravagantly by purchases on account of Continental manufacturers. Yorkshire manufacturers bought largely, and their customers ordered cloth largely from them, in expectation that wool rates would be main- tained, or even further enhanced. The opposite happened. The German buyers were not able to hold the large pur- chases they had made, and the London wool market was flooded with what they were anxious to dispose of, at whatever prices could be got. The result was a sharp decline in wool prices, particularly of the finer sorts, which set in early last year, and continued to its close. How severe it was may be judged by the single fact that the value of merino wool per bale fell from £22 to £12. The manufacturers had made cloth largely, out of the wool they bought at the top prices, on the order of their customers, and the latters' warehouses and shops were overstocked with correspondingly high-priced goods of materials which, as bad luck would have it, began to go out of fashion. Of course, they were anxious to get rid of as much as possible of these costly stocks, and were consequently slow'in giving further orders to the manufacturers, whose looms have therefore been in many cases only partially occupied. The demand for clothes for the troops at the front has no doubt kept a number of houses going, but for those orders the competition has been very keen, and the profits realised have not been very extensive. And, on the other band, there must have been a very serious falling-off in the amount of custom for South African civilian clothing, as compared with years of peace and prosperity in that part of the world.
The cotton trade, rather surprisingly, presents a more cheerful record. There also there were misconceptions— though of an opposite kind from those which prevailed in the woollen world—as to the amount of the principal supply of raw material, Lancashire business men having pinned their faith to an American estimate of the American cotton crop, which turned out to have been much exaggerated. The result was such a scarcity in the early autumn as had never been known since the War of Secession. Speculators naturally took advantage of this state of things, and prices showed signs of reaching appalling figures, when the Master Cotton Spinners' Association decided to take joint action for their common protection. They accordingly, by resolution, suspended all purchases of "spot" cotton at Liverpool for several weeks, and to a very large extent stopped their mills. Possibly, in many cases, this was not altogether dis- agreeable course to those who took it, as the demand for our goods from India and China had sunk very low. In any case, the " corner " was surmounted without disaster to the trade, and since the new season's supplies of cotton began to come in, spinning and manufacturing operations have been resumed. Not only so, but bath the chief Eastern markets have resumed their demand upon Lanca- shire, at any rate to a very fair degree, and it is gratifying to know that the great cotton industry is now both active once more, and profitably so. It is to be hoped that the cotton operatives, who hitherto have been wisely guided in the matter of freedom of individual production, will hesitate long before they threaten the prosperity of their trade by the project mentioned by one of our correspondents last week of pressing for a Parliamentary limitation of the hours of adult labour in the mills. Foreign competition .for theirs and for the engineering and many other English trades is by no means the " bogey" working men often call it., but is a very real and grave danger. We are far from wishing that British wor...ing men should be driven by the fear of that danger into the acceptance of any such standards of work as would place an undue strain upon their physical or mental powers. But, except where they can show reasonable cause to believe that their health would suffer by doing so, there are the strongest reasons why they should abstain from any action that would reduce the output of their trade, whether by way of legislation about hours or by restraint upon the produc- tiveness of the individual artisan. And nowhere is this principle of more urgent importance than in the British engineering trade, which continues prosperously active, but with signs that the tide of orders is ebbing. If we are to have our share of the next flood, it can only be through the zealous co-operation of intelligent workmen with enlightened and enterprising employers, with a view to making the most out of every step in scientific discovery and mechanical progress.
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