The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1876-10-07 00:00:00

AMERICAN COMPETITION.

The Times publishes the following letter, which may be read
with profit by English manufacturers :
Sir,—Your columns have recently been open to
correspondence bearing upon the manufacturing
industry of the United States. In the summer of 1851
I found myself in the United States, one of a number
of agents representing English houses for the sale of
such goods as are produced in Birmingham and
Sheffield, and are generally known by the term hard-
ware. My head quarters were at Philadelphia and
New York, but my periodical journeys extended to
Savannah in the South, and Quebec in the North.
The ten years which ensued were years of the utmost
prosperity with scarcely a check. On more than one
occasion, it became necessary to advise customers that
their orders could not be executed within the limits of
time which had previously been considered necessary,
and we even went so far as to reject orders offered by
those whom we did not consider entitled to be regarded
as importers, while at home a feeling seemed to arise
that anything would sell and was good enough for the
American market.

But, in the face of all this prosperity, we agents had
a growing undercurrent of uneasiness, for elch succes-
sive year saw the introduction of some article of
American manufacture, which we regarded as our own.
One year it would be axes, then edge tools, saws, files,
and table cutlery, and at last it even began to be
whispered that steel was an object of their attention.
But it was not the mere fact of their manufacturing
those articles that so much caused our uneasiness as
that, from the first, there was a superior intelligence
brought to bear upon the design, shape, and finish, of
the article manufactured. If, for instance, it was an
axe brought under our notice, we observed that it had
been constructed with a scientific regard to the purpose
for which it would be used ;, if also the obj sct examined
was a hay fork, that strength and neatness of form,
combined with the utmost lightness, had been
obtained by the use of steel, instead of iron, as a raw
material.
Of course it was our duty as agents to collect samples
of these goods as they made their appears,nce, and send
them to the home department for their consideration,
and I remember well that when we met, either at our
offices or on our travels, as, for instance, when on one
occasion six of us met at the same hotel at Charleston,
South Carolina, we compared notes, each relating his
experience, and the result seemed to be unanimous that
the nature of the growing competition was not realized
In its strongest feature, and that was the superior in-
telligence brought to bear upon the style, shape, and
finish of the article manufactured.

Our comments assumed the form of jokes, of which
each had one to tell, and the following may serve as an
illustration. The narrator informed us that, having
taken with him to England a sample which it was de-
sirable to imitate, he bad a consultation with his princi-
pals, and it was decided to call into the meeting the
foreman of the department to which that article be-
long ed , and the following conversation ensued :
"You see that article; you can make others like it ; if
PO, you can go stead and make as many as you like.
"Oh, yes. I can make it, but (after a pause) would
It not be better if it were a little more rounded off
there ?" " Ah, that is not the question ; we must
have them exactly like that, or not at all. You can
make them ? " "Oh, yes, I can make them, but (per-
suasively) don't you think now it would be better to
make them a little more rounded off there?" " No.
It is not a question of what we think, or what you
think; we must have them exactly like that, or not at
all." "Well, then, if you will not take them my way,
you may make them yourself." And so the matter
ended. It was not worth their while to change that
foreman forsome other who would be just as ignorantly
averse from any change ; and, after all, it was only
one more article "gone by the board."
I give this as it was actually told, but without the
dialect, as an illustration of the nature of the competi-
tion, with which we were threatened, and of the way
in which it was met or even understood. In this
latter respect, however, we might have learnt some-
what from an American writer of that day (Emersor ),
who, describing our commerce, said, "'Tie not, I
suppose want of probity, to much as the tyranny of
trade, which necessitate a perpetual competition of
underselling, and that, again, a perpetual deterioration
of the fabric."

It would be absurd to pretend that there will be any
immildiate decline in the manufactures of this country
arising from this competition. The restless enterpri4e
which is opening up the whole world, sending steamers
into every water, constructing railways in every clime,
will long prevent this by opening up new markets in
which our enormous wealth will long give us the pre-
dominance.

But, to rely upon wealth alone would be to rely upon
a mere brute force which for a time might enable us to
boast that we were the largest producers of raw
material and heavy goods (i.e., machinery), but in the
end would leave us stranded, our skilled labourers
gone, and, such are the great changes which ecience is
effecting in the production of raw material; simplify-
ing the proce:s and enabling the people of other coun-
tries to prepare their own, even our wealth might fail
to manifest its power.

Education done will enable us to maintain even an
equality of position, and he who would interfere
with its full development is a Nero who would fiddle
while Rome was burning. It is incredible that the
experience of the Netherlands in the time of its com-
mercial prosperity, with which education went hand
in hand, should have been lost sight of so long; the
more so when we consider that it was from its citizens,
strarded on our shores, we obtained our knowledge of
many of those manufactures which have since con-
duced so much to our commercial prosperity.
That we are doing much with education I am aware.
I counted the other day the tickets (1,266) which repre-
sented the actual readers, in a branch free library of
this town, and it is a goodly number, but not enough
for a town of this importance, in which every member
should be a reader—for we must remember that in the
United States, or rather its people, we have foemen
worthy of our steel, foemen to whom will now equally
apply that description not so long ago applied to us by an
American writer, "Nature loves inoculati3n ; a child
blends in his face the faces of both parents and some
feature from every aecestor whose face hangs on the
wall. The best nations are those most widely re-
lated. . . . Neither does this people appear to be of
one stem, but, collectively, a better race than any
from which they are derived."
One thing we do know, and that is, the nature of
the manufacturing energy with which we shall have to
compete; we know the chief weapon which it will nee,
and that is education; forewarned is to be fore-armed.
Education must be carried into every village. and
hamlet, for it is from them our towns are recruited;
we must have no more "village Hampdens," nor
"mute, inglorious Miltons " dying in their recesses.
We want them all in the race which is before us, and
neither must the Government of this country, while
pretending to check, by taxation, in reality foster that
drunkenness which is unnerving us for the contest.
P.
Sheffield, Sept. 27.