The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1880-07-31 00:00:00

IS BETTER TRADE AT HAND?

Yes, it is; and for reasons which are not difficult to
estimate nor far to seek, Trade will be better because
there are snore commodities to trade with, and be-
cause these commodities are as a rule in this country
better and cheaper than they ever were before.
And, further, trade will be better because the
workmen, manufacturers, and merchants who live
by trade have for the last few years been com-
pelled by hard necessity to mind each his parti-
cular business, and discover how it could be im-
proved by harder work and keener invention. People
frequently talk in unthinking slipslop as if a revival
of trade in a country like this were a matter of senti-
ment of volition. They say that trade would be
better if everybody engaged in it would think it
would be better—which is much the same thing as
saying that if a heavy man sitting on a basket thought
that the basket with its contents ought to ascend like
a balloon, it would certainly do so. For the last few
years trade has been bad chiefly because the harvests,
the foundation of all trade, have been bad in more
countries and in a more severe degree than has hap-
pened for two or three generations.

Our true strength in the future, as in the past mid at
this moment, consists in compellinK the custom of
foreigners by the cheapness and excellence of our
goods. In this very year we shall send a million tons
of iron and steel to the United States. Why? Not
because the ironmasters of Pennsylvania have re-
duced their tariff, or intend to reduce it, but because
Cleveland and Derbyshire and South Wales can
produce iron and steel so good and cheap that
it can berir the cost of carriage to New York,
pay the preposterous import duty there, and still
beat Pittsburg and Philadelphia in the markets of the
North-West. The abundance which has blessed
North America for the last three years will this year,
for the fourth time, add. to the train of beneficent
economic causes which are fast obliterating within the
Union the calamities of the war, of the devastation of
the South, of the curses of inconvertible paper money
and of the monstrous speculations and frauds of
1871-73. A wave of the same abundance seems at
length to have reached Europe. Our own harvest
in 1880 may be among the lsest we have had
for a long time. It cannot be a serious
failure. The same remark applies to France,
Hungary, and Italy. In Germany there will be a de-
ficient produce, and a produce still mare deficient in
Russia. But taking the European harvest of 1880 as a
whole, it is, according to actual appearances, certain
that there will be no such deficiency of 35 or 20 per
cent, below the average yield as there was in 1879.
Raw materials are cheaper, and likely to be so.. 'rho
cotton crop of the United States is estimated this year
at aconsiderable percentage over 1879.
Better trade is at hand, therefore, by the force of
natural causes : firet, because the seasons are more
prolific, and the earth, by the abundance of its pro-
duce, affords that wealth of commodities—the ex-
change, application, and distribution of which alone
constitute trade—for gold and silver are no more than
accustomed and convenient counters. Secondly, as
regards this country, because we have earned greater
prosperity by the only methods which never
fail—
that is to say, greater frugality, greater skill, greater
inventions, greater industry, and, above all, by a
noble disregard of the false aids and the delusive
palliatives which other countries, to the great detri-
ment of their people, perpetually exact from the
ignmance and corruption of their Governments.

In this agreeable picture there is one dark and
ominous shadow. The military armaments of Europe
have risen since 1865 from 117 to 160 millions sterling
per annum, and in most of the countries, Germany in
particular, the mere waste of public revenue is a trifle
compared to the waste and demoralization of labossr
occasioned by an armed force almost co-extensive with
the male population of the military age. The time
is not distant when the strain will become too severe
to be borne, and when a revolt political in
its aims, but pvaely economic in its origin—inasmuch
as it will arise from the impossibility of keeping?,
nation together when two-thirds of its best labour is
wasted—will furnish another example of the self-
destructive tendency of Governments which aPPIY.
feudal and military principles to an age of personal
rights, cash payments, a free press, and free trade.—
Pall Mall Gazette.