MR CHAMBERLAIN ON TRADE.
MR. CHAMBERLAIN'S speeches to the Birmingham Jewellers' and Silversmiths' Association are always interesting ; but he has seldom given even to them an address so interesting and original, so full of thoughtful policy in the widest sense, as that which he delivered this day week in proposing the toast, "Our City and Trade." We do not refer mainly either to the animated and impres- sive tribute to the late Dr. Dale, or to the testimony which he gave to the prosperity of trade in the glittering and brilliant objects in which jewellers deal, even at a time when much more substantial goods are yielding little or no profit at all. That is a very curious indication of the tendency of the English to hold all the more eagerly to that which brightens and adorns life at those periods at which the more solidly useful articles of commerce are most care- fully economised. The less reason we have to congratulate ourselves on the prospect of living comfortably and with ease, the more we love the dazzling light of bright and beautiful and fascinating ornaments. But we refer chiefly to what Mr. Chamberlain said as to the true policy of a great commercial nation like our own in seasons of depression. He warned the public mind of Birmingham against taking refuge in those theories of Protection and exclusion of imagined rivals which are apt to possess the minds of commercial men when they find themselves undersold and outbidden by competing traders. He pointed out that when, in the time of Henry VIII., there were only four millions of Englishmen instead of thirty millions, there were just the same complaints that labourers were crowding into the towns, that profits were falling, and that land was going out of cultivation, which we hear now. And he asked how it had come about that whereas then this little country had with difficulty supported a population of less than a seventh of its present magnitude, it now supports, and supports far more easily, a population more than seven times as large. And he answered the question by pointing to the vast increase in our home trade which had followed our welcoming foreign trade instead of restricting it. By multiplying foreign customers on a large scale, we had not diminished, but greatly in- creased, the volume of our home trade. And then he went on to apply that lesson to the present crisis. What, he asked, is the natural remedy for dwindling profits, and what seems like ruinous competition ? Not a jealous and niggardly policy of diminished opportunities and contracted obligations, but the opening of new markets in which we shall find new customers and a larger margin of profit. Mr. Chamberlain held that on a day when the labourer calls out lustily for a. "living wage," the capitalist should look out all the more eagerly for a "living profit," not by relying on cutting-down again the labourer's wage to its old starvation-rate, but by opening new fields of enterprise where the margin of profit has not yet fallen to a minimum, and where the surplus of agricultural production over its cost has not yet been extinguished, or all but extinguished, till rent has virtually disappeared. And he held that our Government should do more than it does to multiply the resources which this generation is opening up in new and rich fields of productive energy. Asia, as we have repeatedly shown, though a large customer of ours, is now doing a great deal to supplant our labour by bringing us competitors offering labour just as skilful as our own, and yet content with wages less than a quarter of those which ours require. Why do we not look to our new African fields of enterprise for the compensation which our Asiatic rivals are gradually wresting from us ? What is the use of gaining for England such a large field of new enterprise, as we have in Uganda, for instance, if we are not prepared to follow the example which Rome set us two thousand years ago, when she opened up the great provinces she had acquired, by driving great roads through them, and so enabling the people of Italy to import the produce of the most distant regions, and to pay themselves in kind for the new order and peace which the Roman legions were able to establish ? Railroads are the modern equivalents for the ancient roads, and it ought to be our policy, especially in times of great depression, to push economical railroads through our new provinces, thereby not only enabling us to avail ourselves of the virgin soil of the great African uplands, but also to bring order and peace and justice to Africa, as we have already brought order and peace and justice to India and other parts of Asia. Mr. Chamberlain thought that it is not a really economical policy to shrink from the preliminary expenditure necessary for all really new enterprise. Such shrinking in a rich country like ours, with vast stores of unused capital, is not wise thrift, but short-sighted parsimony. We ought to be pushing on the great approaches of commerce to our new fields of enterprise, and so enabling private wealth to follow in the wake of a pioneering Government. This is what we have done in India, and this is what we should do,— 'with prudent and cautious steps of course,—in Africa. And by that course we shall be enabled to compensate ourselves for the loss which the competition of hordes of exceptionally cheap labourers from the East, brings to those who produce precisely the same kind of goods in England. No wonder that English producers of corn and coal, and cotton and iron, feel the strain of the competition with Asiatic producers of the same products, when Asia pays her labour in pence where we have to pay in shillings. But the true remedy is to avail ourselves of the great openings for new adventures in the semi-tropical uplands of Africa, where the English race is not excluded by tropical heat, and English capitalists can find almost un- limited fields of adequate profit. The Government, and the Government alone, can initiate this enterprise, for, till safe communications are made between the coast and the interior, private capital will not willingly hazard itself. But the Government may very wisely initiate it, for such enterprise is essential not only to open new and rich fields of commerce, but to introduce peace and order and justice where at present all is a chaos of mere rich possibilities.
We must say that this speech of Mr. Chamberlain's seems to us one of the largest minded, most prudent and sagacious which we have recently had from any of our statesmen. We can only express a hearty wish that before long he himself may be in a position to give that wise guidance to our commercial policy which his advice shows us that no one could give in ampler measure.
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