The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1885-06-27 00:00:00

MR. GOSCHEN, M.P., ON THE CONDITION
_ OF TRADE.

On Tuesday afternoon, in response to the invita-
tion of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce, Mr.
Goschen gave an address on the condition and pro-
spects of trade, in the Manchester Town Hall. There
was a very large attendance. After apologising for
venturing to address an audience of suffering experts,
Mr. Goschen said he would snake only one reservation,
that the meeting should not think of the cotton trade
only, but of trade in its broad aspects. There was
no person in that hall who did not admit that there
was a depression in trade. That he should not
attempt to prove, nor should he follow into the ques-
tion as to the existence of low prices, as he under-
stood that the existence of low prices was generally
admitted. In this depression we had some features
that had seldom been seen before during a timo of
depression. We had a contrast between low prices
and no speculation, and we had the contrast
between low prices for the raw material,
yet with no advantage derived from the
manufactures and commerce generally. There was
one contrast to which he would ask their particular
attention, and it was this, to the universal acknow-
ledgment that there was depression in trade and at
the same time to the astounding statistics which weip
published by the inland Revenue Office as the income
tax returns. How was it that the income tax returns
showed a continual increase, while every manufacturer
and every merchant was complaining of ',absence of
profits? Because, if there was one feature about the
present depression, he took it that it was the absence
of profits? Lord Derby in his recent speech at the
Trinity House made the significant statement that no
proportion of the increased wealth of the nation had
gone into the pockets of the landowners, and, there-
fore, it was to be inferred that it was due
almost without exception to the growth of English
commerce, and Englieh manufactures, and English
foreign trade, and he showed that the gross assess-
ment of the income tax had risen in the last 15 years
from £430,000,000 to £600,000,000. He was bound
to say it was not true, not in the very slightest degree
true, that any such sum came from the increase in
trade, commerce, and manufactures going abroad.
Let us congratulate ourselves that at all events the
retail trade must be in a satisfactory condition
generally. This being the case, there ought to be a
greater inert's.o in the smaller inonmea than in the
larger ones, and so he found it to be. Taking the
years 1876, 1877, and 1882-3, be found that between
those years the increase in incomes under £5OO had
been 6 per cent., while those of £5OO and over had
been only 4 per cent.; therefore the profits of those
with incomes under £5OO had been very much larger
in proportion than the others. When he came to look
at some of the industries of the country which were
separated, then he passed from satisfactory progress
to most unsatisfactory decay. He saw that the profits
of the iron industry , had fallen from £7,000,000 to
£3,000,000, and that those of the mining industry
had fallen from £14,000,000 to £7,000,000. Those
were startling figures, showing under what con-
ditions some of the great industries of this country
were being carried on. He rejoiced to think that in
many other departments of trade it was not so, and
that our national industry was made up of such a
vast variety of separate industries that, notwithstand-
ing some might languish and suffer, many of those on
which the prosperity . and power of this country
depended were still fairly maintained. The savings
of the country seemed still to be accumulating. The
consuming powers of the country showed no signs of
diminution. In the consumption of liquor the decline
was, however, noticeable. We now only drank 10
glasses of spirits for every 13 that we drank in the
greatest drinking year, which was the year 1875, and
we had cut off one glass out of 10 even during the
last four or five years. In tobacco there was a very
slight decrease. Wo had cut off a pipe and one
cigar out of every 35, and that was supposed to be due
partly to the higher duty. There was some satisfac-
tory feature in regard to pauperism. Pauperism
had fallen during the last 15 years from 5 per
cent. to 3 per cent, of the population, not from 5 per
cent. to 3 per cent. upon the same, but from 5 per
cent. to 3 per cent. on the increased population. The
statistics with regard to the cotton trade showed that
competition was increasing, and the volume of trade
increasing, while profits might not be increasing at
the same ratio. The number of spindles of all kinds
had increased from 44,200,000 in 1879 to 47,000,000
in 1883, while the increase in the persons employed
had risen in those four years from 483,000 to 513,000.
The right hon. gentleman, referring to the complaints
of over-production, said that traders might object to
this large production, but they were not justified in
pointing to over-production as a cause of bad trade,
unless they could show that there were stocks rotting
in the stores. It was not desirable to rely
simply on our past prestige. We must look at the
conditions under which we obtained and maintained
our trade, and see which we could not command,
and which we could, and ought, and would con-
tinue to command. He wanted to know if there had
been a falling off in trade had there been no ex-
pansion. Where, if they examined the statistics, had
there been the most expansion, and in what direction
was there most hope. He found that while our trade
with the great manufacturing centres of Europe had
progressed very little, it had increased much more with
the colonies of those nations. We had increased more
with the smaller countries in Europe than we had
with the large countries in Europe, but most of all had
we increased in our own dependencies and colonies.
He thought that, looking to the picture of industry
and commerce which was spread out before us now,
the chief hope was this, that the teeming millions of
the old coinitry might find customers in the teeming
and increasing millions of Great Britain beyond the
seas. (Cheers.)

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