| | | | |
Germany | 3.1| 3.3| 2.8| 2.5| 2.4| 2.6| 2.8| 3.1| 3.3| 3.3| 3.1| 3.2| 3.9| --
--------+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----

TEXTILES.

To our textile industries Mr. Williams has devoted a chapter which is
one of the gloomiest in his book. Let it be at once admitted that we are
no longer the monopolists of the textile industries of the world to the
extent to which we once were. Nor could any sane man expect that we
should for ever retain our former exceptional position. Other nations
move as well as we. They buy the machines which we invent and make; they
employ our foremen to teach them the arts we have acquired, and in time
they learn to weave and spin for themselves instead of coming to us for
every yard of cloth or every pound of yarn. This relative advancement of
foreign nations and, too, of our own Colonies and Dependencies was and
is inevitable. It is part of the general industrialization of the world.
But what we have to note with satisfaction is that this process has
involved little or no positive loss to us, that we are still far ahead
of all other nations in the production of textiles, and that even in
those cases, notably the woollen industry, where our export has fallen
off we can point to an increased demand by our own people for the goods
we manufacture. It is not in this spirit that Mr. Williams will look at
any British industry. Even where he has a fairly good case, he spoils it
by gross exaggeration and by the suppression of counterbalancing facts.

COTTON YARN AND THE PRICE THEREOF.

Dealing first with cotton, he follows his usual device of picking out
bumper years, and then exclaiming, "See what a fall since then!" he goes
on:--

"A consideration of moment is that this decline in values does
not signify a corresponding decline in quantities. On the
contrary, in yarn manufactures, with an actual increase in the
exported weight, there is a decrease in the cash return. Thus in
bleached and dyed cotton yarn and twist there was a qualitative
rise between 1893 and 1895 from 36,105,100 lb. to 40,425,600
lb., with a fall in the value thereof from L1,862,880 to
L1,832,477. Between 1865 and 1895 the average price per lb. of
cotton yarn declined from 23.98d. to less than 8.85d. 'Tis a
good enough explanation of the vanishing dividends, the low
wages, the lack of enterprise and initiative."

Mr. Will