LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
THE GROWTH OF THE NATION'S WEALTH.
[To THE EDITOR 01P TEE " SPUTATOR.1 Sni,—In your article in the Spectator of August 22nd entitled "The Growth of the Nation's Wealth" you say :—" Fortu- nately, it is possible to bring the matter to a test, and to decide the fiscal controversy for those who have ears to hear and eyes to see. For the last twenty-five years—i.e., ever since the Fair-trade movement began—we have been told that the bleeding process has been going on" ; and then you review the many evidences of the growth of the national wealth. I am a very old reader of the Spectator, and am quite sure that the whole truth in any controversy, and not some merely apparent dialectic triumph, is its aim. But this whole article, though my desire for the complete truth is equally sincere, fails to shake my Fair-trade principles in the least. Let me very briefly state the reason.
For twenty-five years past I have probably spoken and written as much on that question as any man. Yet on the well-worn point of the great excess of our imports over our exports I believe I have never used any such language as that you arraign. I entirely agree that our excess of imports is paid for by our earn- ings as carriers and agents, by the interest and profits of our investments abroad, and in the various ways set forth by well- informed economists, and that probably on the whole our new investments exceed considerably our sales of investments. Only so far as our export of coal is concerned can we be said to be paying our way out of capital. That indeed is a serious and alarming exception. But beyond that, I believe you and I are, and have been all along, in full agreement as to this part of the economic question. Nay, the very fact that a continually grow- ing proportion of our excess of imports is paid for by the return of interest and profits on investments abroad, instead of by the increasing export of our manufactures, is one of the chief grounds of the Fair-trade agitation. In other words, we do not doubt the fact that our excess of imports is well and truly paid for ; but we consider the mode of payment dictated by the tariff walls set up against us by foreign nations is highly disadvantageous to our labouring population, and is operating towards the creation of intolerable social conditions.
The tax-free import of wheat, meat, silks, woollens, and a multi- tude of other articles which could be, and should be, produced at home by a more fully employed people aggravates the injury inflicted on us by foreign tariffs ; and it is but too clear that, in the midst of our accumulating wealth, there is growing up in our towns and cities a host of people with- out full or regular employment, whose children are untrained to any settled and remunerative industry, and therefore without one of the best and most vital forms of education. Is it not proclaimed aloud by the most zealous apologists of one-sided Free-trade that a vast mass of our population are living in such penury that an advance of a few shillings a quarter in the price of wheat would bring them face to face with starvation? It is too true ; they have come into this sad condition under a system which has given them extreme cheapness of food, but has paid no regard to procuring and reserving for them sufficient and remunerative employment. Hence the insuperable difficulty of the housing question ; you can never adequately house an insufficiently employed people, because their earnings do not enable them to pay the rent of healthy, commodious houses. Hence, again, the "compound householder " ; you cannot collect rates from such a population.
We say that it is wrong to import goods which these people ought to be employed in making ; wrong to let American and other Protection compel the transfer of industries and capital to their shores which might well have furnished sorely needed employment here. And no increase of income from these foreign investments can console us for the need- less misery and degradation existing here. We might well expect to see such evils in a poor country with small resources, and where person and property were insecure through bad government. But in England ! with such enormous and growing wealth as you describe; with vast and rich possessions all over the world; with the great Empire of India in peaceful possession ; with the longest experience in trade and industries, and the best Allied workmen, and a climate that braces to industry and energy,—surely the spectacle is too humiliating.
We cannot have too many foreign investments, or too much wealth in the hands of our upper and middle classes, so long as we see, in the first place, to the full and re- munerative employment of our labouring population. We cannot import too much of all good and useful merchandise, so long as we reserve for them, in the first place, the right to supply our needs by their fairly remunerative toil. Were they employed as they ought to be, we should need to import far more silk, wool, and all other materials for them to work upon, and then, were they housed (largely by the investment of their own savings) like our population in North-East Lancashire, for example, a huge demand would be created for furniture and comfortable household appointments, which, alas ! do not exist in the slums in which our disinherited populations now live. Protectionist nations have artificially deflected our exports, and played with and displaced our industries, to our hurt. But we are the greatest importers and customers in the world, and can use our power in their markets to bend back these deflections so as to secure employment for all our people. Fair-trade means that we should do this ; and it is, so far as I can see, the only practical proposal in the field.
Whit barrow Lodge, near Grange-over-Sands.
[We are glad to find that up to a certain point, at any rate, we are in agreement with our correspondent. But we part company from him when he ascribes the unsatisfactory aspects of the life of the wage-earning classes in large measure to free imports and foreign tariffs, and are convinced that his remedy would only prove worse than the disease.—En. Spectator.]
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