The Daily Chronicle in a leading article in its issue
of Tuesday drives home the lessons to be drawn from the new Board of Trade Blue-book on " The Progress of Merchant Shipping in the United Kingdom and the Principal Maritime Countries." Here are some of the most striking figures. In 1870 68.4 per cent. of the tonnage entered and cleared at ports in the United Kingdom was British ; in 1904 the British proportion was 64.3. Again, in 1894 the proportion of British to total tonnage in the Suez Canal was 8 out of 11; in 1904 it was 12 out of 18. The percentage of the foreign trade of the United States carried in British bottoms is the same in 1904 (50.5 per cent.) as in 1870. In the Canadian trade the proportion of British and Colonial tonnage to the whole shows a slight falling off, but in the much larger volume of ocean-borne trade with Australia the British proportion remains constant.
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