Expanding Industry The revenue returns for the first nine months
of the Budget year show an excess in the ordinary revenue of 122,611,755 over the total for the same period last year— a welcome result of more active trade and of increased employment, incomes, and profits. Other figures, however, may somewhat modify the gratification such an increase must inspire. Thus, the relative "boom —for such economists account it—of the last three years has depended to a disproportionate extent on increased building activity, and there is evidence that this activity is abating. Over a longer period, employment figures show that building, transport, and distribution are occupying a steadily increasing, and mining and manu- facturing a diminishing, share of economic activity. What is surprising is that the expanding industries should have employed a total number of persons not only equal to all those who have left the contracting indus- tries, but a clear million more, who have come from increased population. But these changes show very evidently the shift in our economy from external to internal trade ; and though this year there was a slight increase in employment in coal mining and a considerable increase in shipbuilding, it is still true that to our present "prosperity" there corresponds an increase in economic nationalism and isolation.
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