t surprising, as since July last the Munitions Ministry has
erected (or improvised) and started a large number (it is not
permissible to say how many) of State munitions works, and it has also
mobilised the whole engineering resources of the nation to such an
extent that in the first week of December no fewer than 2026
manufacturing establishments had been declared "controlled firms."

But it would be a mistake to suppose that, while war manufactures
prospered, all other industry languished and decayed. To prove the
contrary and show that only here and there were there heavy losses, we
may quote some figures compiled by the _Economist_, which show that 720
industrial concerns publishing their reports during the first nine
months of 1915, and having a capital of L531,678,701, made profits
amounting to L52,881,300, or under 2-1/4 millions less than in the
previous year (which in the case of almost all the reports was a year
before the war).

Dissecting these figures, we find that not only iron, coal, steel, and
shipping companies report enormous profits, but that increased earnings
were shown by breweries, gas, rubber, oil, and trust companies, and
others. The large exceptions which depressed the total profits were
textile companies (other than those engaged on war contracts), catering,
and cement companies. Shipping leads the van of prosperity owing to
phenomenal freight rates, while iron and steel and shipbuilding, as
direct and established purveyors of armaments, are close behind. As
showing the industrial tendency of the year, one may quote the remarks
of a trust company chairman at a recent meeting. Of 150 home investments
possessed by his company, he remarked that a hundred had since the war
yielded the same as in the year before war, while thirty had paid less
and twenty more.

Into the circle of munition producers have been drawn cycle and motor,
machinery, electrical, and many other branches of manufacture. Of other
industries driven to fever heat by the war may be mentioned woollen and
leather factories. Secondary effects of the war also produced a boom in
several unexpected quarters. For instance, the high wages earned by war
workers, and too generously spent in a vast number of cases, led to a
strong demand for cheap furniture, pianos and many types of household
goods which in normal times are usually out of reach of the purse of
most wage-earners. But one trouble has beset all industries in common--a
short