Part 8 (1/2)
NOT A PROTECTIONIST PAMPHLET.
First, I join issue with respect to the motive and nature of my book.
Your correspondent says that I lean to the conclusion that ”the only way to prevent the commercial downfall of our country is to revise the Free Trade policy which we deliberately adopted fifty years ago,” and, as his readers will remember, he proceeds on that a.s.sumption, and reiterates that statement throughout his articles. It is really unpardonable. Would any of those readers, who were not also readers of my book, imagine that the first chapter of that book contains a disclaimer of holding a brief in favour of any particular doctrine or remedy, Fair Trade being specially named; that not more than seven of my 174 pages are concerned with Protection; that I strenuously and at considerable length advocate other reforms, and often point to other matters as being the determining causes of the decline in a particular trade? Your correspondent knew all this perfectly well, and yet, in order to damage my book with a Free Trade public, deliberately conveyed to them the impression that ”Made in Germany” was merely a Protectionist pamphlet. He omitted all reference to technical education, the superiority of German business methods, and the other reforms whose advocacy formed the bulk of the book. And this is the man who sprinkles around charges of ”misrepresentation,” and of having ”skilfully conveyed a false impression”! From a child I was never much impressed by outbreaks of virtuous indignation.
THE CHARGE OF DATE-COOKING.
He reviles me for my dates, and in his own diagrams proves the wisdom of my choice. The object of my book was to show that England's industrial supremacy was departing. Clearly the way to do this was to show the height to which that supremacy had attained, and to contrast it with the position to-day. Now, his first diagram shows that the highest point was reached at the commencement of the nineties. Of course, therefore, I made my comparisons beginning with that period, except where the decline had begun earlier. What is there wrong in this? Similarly I am derided as an ”ingenious person” because, in order to show that our production of pig-iron was on the downward grade, I gave the figures for 1882, the highest year, and for 1894, the latest available year. If there were any truth in the charge of date-cooking I should have given to my readers the figures for 1892, which was the lowest year since 1882. It has suited the correspondent to misconceive the whole purport of my book. I was not writing an industrial history of Europe for use in schools. My work was to rouse the manufacturers of England to a sense of the danger threatening their dominion, and I went in detail through the various trades wherein this danger was apparent, showing how great they had been and what was their condition to-day. In different trades the decadence had begun at different periods; to take the same starting year of comparison in each case would, therefore, have been a stupid error.
”Made in Germany” is a call to arms, not an academic disquisition on the movements of trade.
”ARTFUL AND INGENIOUS.”
But what of your correspondent's method? With a large air of virtuous impartiality he adopts 1886 for his starting-point all through his tables. It may be my denseness, but beyond meaningless uniformity, I can see absolutely nothing in this method to commend it. I see, however, that it is very useful for optimistic purposes. Did it not strike the reader that, in most industries, 1886 was a year of bad trade, and that therefore its adoption as a starting year of comparison would result in a very inaccurate view of England's former industrial glory? If I felt inclined to adopt his language towards myself I might be tempted to say that his choice of years was ”artful” and ”ingenious,” for to say, with blunt frankness, ”I will take the last decade and stick to it all through,” is an admirable way to score with the unsuspecting public. The pose of impartiality is excellent. Your correspondent's figures are doubtless as correct as they are interesting, but (in the light of the explanation I have given) I submit that those diagrams might as well have remained undrawn; they do not destroy the tables in ”Made in Germany,” and, so far as dates are concerned, are ineffectual as a commentary.
THE ABUSE OF STATISTICS.
Your correspondent has a better case for his diagrams when he gives weights as a set-off against money figures, and I cannot, of course, take exception to the use of those statistics. But I do take exception to their abuse; and when he attempts to draw from them the inference that the British manufacturer has nothing to complain of in the matter of falling prices, I suggest that there is an abuse. Of course, in some industries the decrease in the price of raw material has made it possible to manufacture for a lower price, but your correspondent goes much farther than the facts warrant when he a.s.sumes that the difference in price is balanced by an all-round difference in raw material. He forgets, for example, that coal, which in most manufactures is an item of prime importance in the cost of production, is not cheaper than it used to be in his favourite year 1886. Then the average price was 845s.
per ton, in 1894 it was 1050s. per ton. Wages, too, are an even more important item, and these are on the upward grade. So also are rent, rates and taxes. Take his champion instance of the cotton trade. Men used to make fortunes at it. Whoever hears of fortunes being made to-day in cotton manufacture? What we do learn is that recently fifty-two out of ninety-three spinning companies were paying no dividend at all.
Prices are cut because of foreign compet.i.tion. The foreigners have to cut their prices too, but that does not make the fact of foreign compet.i.tion any the less disagreeable. I still think, therefore, that I followed the right method in laying more stress on money than on weights and measures, and anyway no harm could be done by it, because I used money figures for comparison in both the English and the German tables.
To read your correspondent one would imagine that I had confined myself to money figures when tabulating English trade, and to weights when giving the corresponding instances from Germany. Your correspondent was so preoccupied with my skilful conveyance of false impressions that he apparently overlooked the misleading nature of many of his own impressions.
EXCESS OF IMPORTS OVER EXPORTS.
This anxiety has also seemingly taken his attention away from consistency in his own statements. In the first article he rejoices over the fact that our imports exceed our exports, regarding that circ.u.mstance as a sign of prosperity; in his second article (when he has another sort of article in hand) he writes as follows:-”When two tradesmen have mutual transactions, that man will feel that he is doing best who sells more to his neighbour than he buys from him. And rightly so!” That note of exclamation is his. It also represented my feelings when I read the statement. I am also quite at one with him in the quoted remark, but (as in my poor way, I tried to be consistent) I am at issue when in his first article he chuckles over the excess of imports.
Suppose that excess to be made up entirely of s.h.i.+pping, sale commissions, and interest on foreign investments, and that it does not imply that we are living on our capital; even then the thing does not work out quite happily. s.h.i.+pping is all right, of course, but sale commissions less so; they spell enrichment, doubtless, to a certain cla.s.s of City men, but the working and manufacturing cla.s.ses generally get nothing out of these foreign manufactures. Still less do they share in the third item. It does not help this country's industries to aid the establishment of rival industries abroad, which is what foreign investments mostly mean; while when the returns on those investments are used to purchase foreign goods it is again difficult to see exactly where the English industrial cla.s.ses come in. With regard to the entrepot trade, your correspondent says that it ”seems somewhat to halt in the process” of slipping away; but as his own figures show that the sixty-seven millions of 1889 have dwindled in six years to the sixty millions of 1895, I don't think I need occupy further s.p.a.ce by combating his a.s.sertion with figures of my own.
Yours faithfully, ERNEST E. WILLIAMS.
_(To be concluded.)_
MR. WILLIAMS'S REPLY.-II.
_To the Editor of the ”Daily Graphic.”_