The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1880-10-16 00:00:00

TRADE PROSPECTS.

The Times comments upon the trade and, navigation re-
turns of the past month in a leader, from which we make the
follcrying extract :

_
"The trade and navigation returns for September,
confirm the pleasant promise of the previous months.
In September, 1879, British commerce exhibited
already symptoms of revival as compared with 1878.
The past September indicates in bolder characters that
the improvement was not transitory or accidental.
An increase of 23i per cent. in the imports and 15 per
cent. in the exports implies an enormous impulse to
industry in the United Kingdom. A vast body of
capital which was either locked up in a state of
stagnation or producing nominal profits must have
been sent in lucrativ.e motion to yield such a result.
Arms and heads which have been idling or been idly
employed must have been provided with genuine and
useful work. When times were at their worst, Liver-
pool, and Manchester, and Bradford, and Birmingham,
and Bristol, and London wore an appearance of anima-
tion and activity. Sheffield workshops were busy.
There was abundance of shipping ready to sail, or just
returned to harbour in the Tyne and the Clyde.
British capital and labour have not actually been life-
less during the most dead of the dead half-dozen
years which followed the feverish excitement of the
Franco-German war. The country and its people
survived, and even put by money in that melancholy
interval of dwindling trade. A change marked by a
rise nearly of a fourth in imports and sixth in exports,
added to the moderate gains of the preceding period,
is equivalent to a change from a competence to
affluence. If there be a danger at all in the altered
circumstances of trade, it is that the nation, after
learning the virtues of economy and self-denial, ma3P
be tempted to a presumptuous belief in the setting in
of a new age of leaps and bounds of wealth.

Dismal auguries will not be wanting from the
enemies of free trade founded on the larger propor-
tionate percentage Of imports. The truth is that
imports in themselves, and when the rise in their
amount continues over a sufficiently long period, are
as good a test of prosperity as exports. A failure in a
harvest may render an enhanced importation of food
indispensable. There is no need to deny that the
consequent expenditure is no evidence of present
-prosperity amoßg the consumers, though it May be of
prosperity in the past which has supplied the required
purchase money. But apart from a casual jump, due to
such a misfortune, in the import of corn or meat, every
addition to the percentage of imports demonstrates a
corresponding addition, not merely to the desires of
the importers, but to their means of supplying them.
From this point of view it matters little what is the
particular description of goods introduced. That
Englishmen have bought in September, 1880, more
foreign materials, of whatever kind, than in Septem-
ber, 1879, is proof positive that they have found them-
selves this year in possel'ion of a larger margin of
come than last year. In fact, however, when the
statistics are analyzed, it will be seen that a very
considerable quantity of the imports evidences the
enjoyment of resources as well for the putting
in operation of remunerative industry as of
filling mouths which have been lately going
half empty. Families have afforded to eat
more beef and more corn, and they have purchased
more of these commodities abroad as well as produced
more at home. But the growth of a manufacturing
demand has equally been felt for snore cotton and
silken and woollen and hempen goods. The percent-
age of September imports is elevated at least as much
by the importation of materials which set spindles
and shuttles and steam engines whirring as by the pro-
vision for dinner and breakfast tables. Were there
no possibility of inquiring into the nature of the
several constituents of the import trade, it would still
be amply satisfactory that its figures were growing.
With the single exception we have mentioned of a
lost harvest, enlarged importation necessarily testifies
to enlarged resources. If snore comes in, it is that some-
how or the other there is more to pay for it. No in-
stance can be discovered in the whole history ot trade of
a;country crawling into a burrow like a bear and feed-
ing off its accumulated fat. It is not in order to dispel
anxiety lest the kingdom should be gradually attenua-
ting its capital to the condition of a skeleton for its mere
daily sustenance that the special figures of recurring
trade and navigation reports require to be examined.
Their use is to explain, not to re-assure. While some
sections isf them show that the subsistence of the people
is more plentiful, others of them intimate that the
people live more comfortably because they are working
harder and more advantageously. The figures on
the side of imports in reality are only a counter-
part of those on the side of exports. Both alike,
when they fall, signify that British industry is less
active and profitable. Both alike, when they rise,
show that British capital is growing at a heightened
rate. If there be a difference, it is in favour of im-
ports as a proof of multiplying riches. Improbable
though it must always be, it is barely conceivable that
a nation might do as a whole what recently was done
by some American manufacturers, and work and ex-
port at a loss. Its exports might then manifest on
their face an increase of commercial prosperity which
would be altogether illusory. That a country with
less revenue accruing year by year should buy more
and more abroad is not only improbable, but incon-
ceivable. _ . _

Imports and exports unite in establishing that Eng-
land is better off this autumn than it was last autumn,
as it was better off in 1879 than it had been in 1878.
They establish equally that foreign States are better
off also. The Ottoman. Empire itself need scarcely be
excepted, though for. it an improvement upon 1879
implies no absolute industrial regeneration. This
island is a workshop and banker and middleman for
the world, and the world
.cannot grow in riches with-
out paying toll here. British coalfields are worked for
the benefit of foreigners as much as Englishmen. When
foreign populations feel they have money in their
purses or marketable goods in their stores, they com-
mission Durham ironmasters or Lancashire. York-
shire, and Warwickshire manufacturers to forge and
spin on their account. A formidable bulk of the im-
ports into England is only in transit elsewhere. For
example, of the hides and skins which help to raise the
level of the September figures not a few are but on
their way to Paris to re-appear on this side of the
Channel at a future day in the form of boots and
bindings. As British capitalists could not import on
an enlarged scale unless they knew their resources to
be in the same measure enlarged, so they would not
consent to import unless the market abroad had grown
proportionately active in its dealings with Great
Britain. This country might manage to subsist on
its savings and on its internal
.industry. To increase
substantially in wealth, its fofeign commerce must in-
crease. For its foreign commerce to increase foreign
industry must increase too. In the four or five years
which preceded 1879 British trade was depressed., not
because Englishmen and Scotchmen had ceased to be
ready to labour and to sell. It was that their cus-
tomers in every diviSion of the globe had, from one
reason or another, ceased to produce, and therefore
had ceased to be in a position to consume. Great
Britain and the world at large are tied together in
such a manner that their prosperity rises and sinks by
an involuntary sympathy. A narrow cemmercial
policy may discourage British trade. Germans and
Spaniards and Canadians, and Victorians may imagine
they can benefit themselves by manufacturing at home
ill and dearly what they have hitherto purchased of
Englishmen good and cheap. But the earth is spacious.
For a market closed in one quarter two are opened in
another. A regyet is pardonable that the neighbours
of great Britain are not very -neighbourly in their
tariffs. The loss, however, of European custom is
redressed as it is, and tends Ls. be redressed more
amply still, by new demands from remoter
regions . .