5 DECEMBER 1903, Page 19

On Monday Mr. Chamberlain forwarded to the Times a long

letter from Mr. Brailsford, Chairman of the Ebbw Vale Steel, Iron, and Coal Company—whom he described as "one of our greatest experts "—describing the desperate condition of the iron and steel trade. Unanswered and uncontradicted, Mr. Brailsford's letter might have created a considerable impression, but it is not too much to say that his facts and figures have been annihilated by the letter of Mr. Hugh Bell —of whose credentials it is not necessary to spaak—in Thursday's Times. Mr. Bell replies to Mr. Brailsford's state- ment that "the steel trade is going rapidly, and a great deal of it is already gone," by showing that out of the 2150,000,000 or 2160,000,000 which represents the total value of the steel and iron trade of Great Britain in 1902, only 215,750,000 stands for imports. Of these 28,000,000 worth came from Germany, Holland, and Belgium, but in the same year we sent them 26,750,000 worth of similar articles. Then Mr. Brailsford stated that we could have sold hundreds of thousands of tons of steel toAmeric,a last year but for their Protective tariff. As a matter of fact, in that year we did export to America upwards of 2,10,000.000 worth of iron and steel. By way of completing Mr. Brailsford's discomfiture the South Wales Daily News has unkindly reprinted his address to his shareholders last June, when he announced that the assets of the company had doubled in the last eleven years; that the pig-iron and finished-steel outputs had increased in each case by forty thousand tons in the same period; that the net annual profits for ten years before 1892 had averaged 2500, and for the eleven years since 250,000, or an increase of 5,000 per cent ; and finally, that the wages for the last year had increased by 22,000.