Yet, as the Westminster Gazette points out, even now the
exports for the first eight months are six and a half millions more than in the corresponding period in 1906, and it is only with the " record " figures of 1907 that those of this year compare unfavourably. Compared with 1902, the figures for 1908 show that while imports had increased by only a tenth, exports had gone up by over a third. A more serious index of the depressed condition of trade, however, is to be found in the Report on Changes in Rates of Wages and Hours of Labour issued this week by the Board of Trade. During the first six months of 1908 415,641 workmen have been affected by increases, and 429,478 by decreases, the figures fel. the corresponding period in 1907 being 1,168,236 and 207. The net amount of the decrease per week in the wages of those, affected is 216,247 for January-June, 1905, as against an increase of 2115,170 for the. same period in 1907. As in last year, the changes affecting coal-miners have been the predominant factor, changes in the engineering and shipbuilding trades and in iron and steel manufactures standing next.
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