A DISTINCTLY cheering impression in regard to the condition and prospects
of the trade and industry of the country as a whole is to be derived from a perusal of the extremely interesting supplement dealing with that subject which was issued on Wednesday by the Yorkshire Post. Published in Leeds, our contemporary is very well placed for taking a survey of the state of our industrial activities ; for Leeds is exceptionally rich in the diversity of trades carried on in its midst, and therefore in its opportunities for being in touch with the best sources of information as to those and cognate trades in other parts of the chief industrial areas of Great Britain. It is a widespread and, we imagine, a sound opinion that when the productivity of the country in respect of iron and steel and the chief manufactures thereof is in a vigorous state, there exists a good foundation for general prosperity. If so, a foundation of that kind is unquestionably afforded at the present time. How or why, exactly, there came about the great stimulus to demand which has lifted the iron trade into a condition of high prosperity is probably little understood. The philosophy of the ebbs and flows of commercial and manufacturing activity has yet to be worked out. And so we are told that in the Midlands, "before they quite recognised what was happening, many blastfurnace proprietors found," last summer or in the early autumn, "that they had sold out their production not only up to the end of the year, but in many cases well into next."
The same kind of thing was happening, had perhaps begun to happen earlier, in Scotland and at Middlesbrough, —that Mecca of the iron trade. Of course, it meant a substantial increase in price, both for pig-iron and for the elementary manufactures therefrom. Thus, Scotch pig- iron, Cleveland bars, and steel rails sold respectively, close to Christmas, 1905, at £2 18s. 3d., £7, and £5 17s. 6d. per ton, as compared with £2 12s. 6d., £6 2s. 6d., and .21 10s. at the same period in 1904. And the rising prices did not check the demand, for the figures for exports for the first eleven months of 1905, as compared with the same months of 1904, show an increase in pig- iron of some 165,000 tons, in "railway iron and steel" of ' over 60,000 tons, and in "other manufactured iron and steel" of not far short of 300,000 tons. These figures, we may be sure, represent very solid compensations to the ironmasters for the anxieties, short profits, and even losses of some recent years. And also they represent a largely increased employment, and under the entirely amicable arrangements by which wages are adjusted in the iron trade substantially increased wages, for a strenuous and hardy class of workmen. In Cleveland, for example, there are eighty-six blastfurnaces now in operation, as compared with seventy-seven at the end of last year, and the wages of blastfurnacemen have been advanced about four and a half per cent. during the year. It is interesting to note that while the estimated total output of Cleveland pig-iron for 1905 is 3,300,000 tons, as compared with 3,123,000 in 1904, and smaller totals in the two previous years, the "shipments of pig-iron, manufactured iron, and steel from Tees ports" in this year are estimated at a figure slightly less than that recorded for last year, and substantially less than those for 1902 and 1903. But the explanation does not seem far to seek. It lies, plainly, in the fact that the great manufacturing industries—the engineering and ship- building—for which the Middlesbrough district provides so much of the material, have been, and are, in a condition of healthy vigour. "For the fifth successive year," the Yorkshire Post points out, "the export trade "— in the products of the engineering shops—" shows an expansion, and the home demand has been greater, more particularly since the early autumn." There have been disappointments in regard to South Africa, which during the first eleven months of 1905 took more than half-a- million's worth less of our engines and machinery than in 1904, and nearly a million's worth less than in 1903. Nevertheless, the total exports of these products of our forges and foundries, and of the best brains and energy of our master-engineers and their men, have risen steadily from a value of a little over seventeen millions sterling in the first eleven months of 1902 to nearly the same margin above twenty-one millions in 1905. Among the chief of our customers for these goods—especially locomotives—have been India and South America, for both of which accounts orders are still in hand in Leeds and other engineering centres. There are, no doubt, some persons who will look with mingled feelings upon some features of our engineering exports—such as the rise, steady if slow, to above two millions sterling in the value of the exports of steam engines—other than locomotives and agricultural—and in the jump of nearly half-a-million upwards, to £5,042,404, in the value of our exports of textile machinery. These exports, it may be said, however much money they bring into the pockets of the owners of our engineering shops and the workers in them, cannot but mean the strengthening of our competitors in textile and other branches of manufacture. We cannot join in any such regrets. The Protectionist, indeed, ought—if really logical—to be ready to consider the question of taxing, or even prohibiting, the export of machinery ; but we cannot wonder that he has not the courage of his logic. And we, who, with all Free-traders, believe in the utilisa- tion of the energies and resources of the country for the economic purposes which they are best fitted to promote, cannot see with anything but satisfaction the evidences afforded by the figures to which we have referred, of the steadily growing adaptability of those engaged in the great engineering trade to the conditions created by the infinitely varied demands of the world at large.
Eminently is this the case also with the Lancashire cotton industry, as to which the Yorkshire Post is entirely in accord with the statements made in Mr. Tattersall's letter in our last issue. Notwithstanding violent fluctua- tions in the prices of the raw material, "the trade has experienced a more prosperous state of affairs than has ever been known. Enormous gains have accrued to spinners, while the profit per cent. has been greater on weaving than spinning All through the year there has been" —in cotton fabrics—" an enormous business done, ship- ments for the twelve months being a record. Every loom that can possibly be gaited has been at work, and there has been quite a number of sheds put down. India, China, and all our foreign customers have absorbed more piece goods than last year, while the home trade has assisted export goods. It has been an un- exampled year of great prosperity, in which some manu- facturing firms have doubled their capital." To say that all this burst of good fortune has been entirely the reward earned by enterprise and other economic virtues might perhaps be going too far. But, in the main, it is reasonable to believe that the large gains which have been, and are now being, reaped in Lancashire represent the long result of the wise and careful laying of plans in such fashion as to meet the needs and the tastes of human beings living in diverse climatic conditions and of very varying degrees of civilisation. And also, be it remembered, there has been among masters and operatives in the cotton trade during the present year the exercise of an exceptional amount of self-control in regard to the division of the great earnings of their industry. If headstrong counsels had prevailed, the entire fabric of prosperity which we now contemplate with so much satisfaction might have been utterly wrecked, and the future prospects of the whole trade obscured. As it is, the present wealth of Lancashire enforces one of the most vital lessons which can be learned by an industrial nation.
No such great profits, but steady progress, is reported of the ready-made clothing industry ; and the improvement in trade generally, with the greatly increased resources acquired by very large numbers of the working classes, seem to afford the assurance of continued and growing prosperity to the purveyors of garments for their wear. Similar causes probably account for the access of prosperity which has been enjoyed by the cycle trade, and which is expected to continue during the coming year. At the other end of the social scale, the large profits secured by persons of the employing class doubtless have a good deal to do (together with a reduction in prices) with the development of the motor industry, for which also much activity is augured in 1906. The woollen and worsted trades do not appear to have shared in the great pros- perity which has fallen to the cotton and iron industries. In many branches there has been a good deal of activity and .employment, but the high prices of wool have had a hampering influen9e, and have kept down the maagin of profits. Still, even so, there was a very sub- stantial increase both in the quantities and in the values of the exports of woollen and worsted tissues,—the sterling figures rising from £12,572,178 in the first eleven months of 1904 to £14,340,394 in the same months of the present year. A series of interesting articles in the Nottingham Daily Express, it may be added, has shown in detail that the hosiery trade of Nottingham and Leicester is by no means in the parlous condition set forth by pessimistic witnesses before Mr. Chamberlain's "Tariff Commission," and that many persons deeply interested in it are entirely averse from the quack remedies which these witnesses advocate for its difficulties, such as they are. On the whole, it may be confidently anticipated that the trade figures for the past and recent years, and the recognised prospects of a continued revival in the next twelve months, will reinforce the conviction of an overwhelming majority of our people that future industrial prosperity is to be sought, not by fiscal nursing, but by the development of the qualities which have so far enabled us to hold our own in the distribution of the world's productivities, and the cultivation of those aptitudes in which we fall behind our competitors.
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