THE ALLEGED EXCESS OP IMPORTS.
[To THE EDITOR Or THE "SPECTATOR.] SIR,—Might I trespass so far upon your space as to endeavour to vindicate your opinion that the figures of Mr. Cross which I gave in a letter in the Spectator of August 15th are of value in the present controversy ? In your last issue "Shipowner," with that playful and pitying toleration which seems to be the modern attribute of open minds and unsettled convictions, is at great pains to show that freights have not remained constant since Mr. Cross spoke in 1881. Who said they had ? Again, America has two seaboards. Mr. Cross was reckoning freight from Cardiff to San Francisco, as Cardiff sends coal chiefly to the Pacific ports, Liverpool to the Atlantic ports. To which trade was " Shipowner " alluding P Mr. Cross also reckoned wheat at a lower figure, which natui ally increased the cost of transport; but do these fluctuations alter the argument? Even on " Shipowner's " showing, there is an excess of 66 per cent. on the import returns, due solely to the fact that freight figures on one side of the account and not on the other. Of course freight fluctuates. The freight on a ton of grain from Chicago to Liverpool was in 1880 22 is.; in four years it
had fallen to 4s. In 1888 the freight per ton of food-stuffs was 35s., in 1891 it rose to 51s., and in 1894 was only 41s. Does this variation make it, therefore, the safer to neglect it? Surely it makes it the more important to eliminate its influence before the statistics can be of value. The old text-books of logic used to tell us that the validity of inductive reason- ing depended on certain fixed facts and "concomitant varia- tions"; but perhaps I should not refer to what may appear to the new school of debaters as mere moth-eaten shibboleths. Another variable factor omitted from comparative tables of exports and imports is the income derived from foreign invest- ments. As you pointed out in another connection last week, those coming before the Commissioners of Inland Revenue have almost doubled in twenty years ; but there are, of course, hosts of others of a private nature which never come into the Income-tax Returns, such things, for instance, as the interest on money lent to friends and relatives settled abroad, partly on a personal and partly on a business footing. Still another factor is the salaries of underwriters, Custom House officials, clerks, and others who are indirectly concerned in handling our immense import trade. It is this great commercial class, which Census Returns show to be steadily increasing, that cannot but look with dismay upon any attempt to dislocate
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