Richmond dispatch. [volume] (Richmond, Va.) 1884-1903, 1897-10-13
AMERICAN COMPETITION ABROAD.
American Manufacturers Capturing
English Contracts.

~
English Contracts.
CNew York Journal of Commerce.)
The Iron Trades Review, OF London,
after dwelling at considerable length
upon the heavy disadvantages under
which English industries are being placed
by the shorter hours OF labor which have
been enforced during the past few years.
takes up the competition OF American
manufacturers in the following serious
manner:
There is, however, another point of
view whence the subject of shorter hours
may be viewed in reference to American
industry. The competition of the United
States is being increasingly felt In all
great branches OF manufacture. This
certainly applies in a specially marked
degree to the mechanical industries. Let
any one who desires TO reach the bottom
facts on this question look into the con-
ditions of the equipment OF our cycle
factories. He will find that the great
bulk of the machines used are OF Ameri-
can origin. Let him look into our boot
and shoe factories. and he will find the
same fact. Let him examine the cir
cumstances of our soap and other chemi-
cal industries and he will find that
American soap-making machinery Is
now being largely introduced into this
country. India rubber manufacturers are
also increasingly dependent on the me-
chanical inventions Of the United States.
In the iron and steel trades American
competition has recently been so success
full, not only in neutral, but In our own
home markets, that it has been an alb
sorbing subject of discussion for we'll on
20 trade IL
not free from apprehension as TO the
future, while American coal is being pro-
duced for little more than one half Of the
cost of our own. The success of Ameri-
can manufactures In British markets has
been so conspicuous a feature OF our
recent industrial history that II
has called for large amount
of comment from the daily press,
which does not usually concern
itself greatly with such matters.
In a recent leading article in the Daily
Telegraph, a journal to which one would
not ordinarily go for information on
such a matter, we find the following
remarks on the industrial situation re-
garded from this point OF view: LOOK
at some of the trade facts which are
emerging while this senseless contest OF
fellow-countrymen continues MesSrs.
Parker. cleClTitdl tIiHiil''tSs VI w WV
hampton, report that recently the Ameri-
cans have carried of important tram
way electrical equipment contracts IN
the face OF English tenders. including
the Dublin, Bristol, Coventry, sydney
Brisbane, and other Colonial and home
undertakings. Americas success against
English engineers has, they state, been
astounding, another example being the
Central London electrical railway. III,
they aver hours are TO be reduced 10
forty-eight in this country, with SINH
lar curtailment of machine-tool produc-
ton, British competition Will be prac-
Ideally impossible. 1t Is currently ru-
mored that the London and Northwest
ern Railway Company is In present
treaty for the delivery OF 100000 tons OF
steel rails. and, with the low prices and
cheap freights prevailing, the hing Is
only too credible. Our manufacturers
have lost the large rail contracts for
Canadian main railways. in which we
appeared to possess proscriptive right.
while recently, an order for 1900 tons
for this country was secured by an
American firm, by dint of low price ana
promptness of delivery. the quality. OF
course. being secured by a rigid speclh-
cation. Only short time ago another
order for rails for an English line was
also lost by our manufacturers. not 10
the United States, but TO Germany. Nor
L. IL only in regard to rails that
the men and masters between them
are letting the present and future slip
out of their grasp. We are becoming
more and more dependent on Ameri-
can toomakers, and 1t has been
English orders-orders from the land
where Sheffield, and Birmingham, and
Ipswich and such manufacturing places
are-that lately, in their bad times, sus-
tanned the Yankee cutters and hardware
men. We have gone to the United States
TO build the elevators for the Central
London railway, and we have to look to
the same side OF the Atlantic for the cleo
trical plant with which the traffic is to be
worked. We are unable properly TO
equip an electrically tramway.
and until our manufacturers take the
trouble to teach their hands how TO pro-
vide the new machinery, the large and
increasing contracts for this industry
must be taken by Americans. Examples
of the fatal effect of these disputes be-
tween labor and capital might be culled
from all parts of the commercial world,
which once so generally appertained 10
British capital when IL was fearless, and
TO British industry when IL was faithful
and sensible. Do the workingmen know
and realize that the barbed and unoarbed
wire fencing with which the sheep pas
lures of Victoria and New South Wales
are shut In come now no longer In any
quantity from the mother country, where
its production used to fill many a poor
household with plenty. but from Ger
many. from America. and by and by, as
likely as not, from Japan
ct would be idle 10 multiply citations
of this sort All the trade journals have
been full OF them for months past.
American rivalry has become the staple
subject OF the conversation of manufac-
turers when they meet on Change or
elsewhere. and no danger that has threat
ened Englands economic supremacy dur
ing the last half century Is so serious
ar so likely TO be permanent
IAN this would hardly be germane to
the immediate question that has been
considered in these articles II the Ameri-
can workmen had shorter hours, or even
"a short hours as the workmen employed
In our own home Industries"
Arctic Game.