The Birmingham age-herald., 1914-11-01

a commercial and financial panic ar not Now that the fear of that is dis appearing people are beginning to spend again. but not as freely as be fore, especially among the comfortable classes for most of them are looking forward with apprehension to inc heavy war bill which must be paid out of income tax and are saving ae- cordingly. Against this however. is tho increased prosperity of a large sec .ion or the working class, which again IS balanced by the proportion who are on short time or whose wages have been reduced. A curious feature of the war Is the increased prosperity and consequently the increased spending power of the poorest class. the char women and casual female workers. Nearly all of these had a husband or son often dependent to some extent on their earnings. Many of these men have enlisted and their women are now drawing separation allowance and a proportion of the main pay. amounting to minimum of about s4 a week and in cases where there are children go- ing up as high as s750 a week. How many of these women there are it Is impossible to say, but their number Is very large and practically all the money they receive goes into circula- ton at once
 Foreign Trade Has Suffered
 ordlnary foreign trade also has sui fered. The August returns showed a reduction of over s6S.000. 900 or about
 24 per cent in imports and of about ss9, ,O0oo0O or about 45 per cent in ex- ports. The returns for September show a loss of ss1,ooo,0oo in imports and
 sts,0O0,0O0 in exports. The improve ment in the latter item began with the clearing of the seas by the Brit ish fleet. Of course they are still down
 heavily, for Germany and Austria were important customers of England and It Is too soon yet for the efforts which are being made to capture German trade to have borne much fruit. A satisfactory feature of the trade re- turns from the British point of view is that the imports of grain and four show an increase of nearly s4,000,0o0, while meat including live stock, has only decrea sed Sl5o,000 compared with August, 1913. In the imports the class of manufactured ar ticles has suffered most severely. falling to S33,000,0O0 from total of s76, ,000, GOO. Food drink and tobacco have only fallen off about 10 per cent and raw materials about 16 per cent. In exports the biggest decline also has been in manufactured ar ticles, amounting to s7s,000,000 in a total of STA, ,o00,000 The exports of food, drink and tobacco dropped about 50 per cent and of raw materials about 30 per cent Much or this import and export trade will prob ably be recovered as 1t was lost in the early days of the war before the govern nlent undertook the insurance of ships and cargoes and before the seas were clear
 Cotton Trade Slack In the home trade, of course. in addi- tion to the cotton trade, which has all ready been mentioned. there is good deal of siaclxness in the branches devoted to tho manufacture of articles of luxury and of articles for women's use.
 The home office, through it's inspectors of factories has been taking a sort of in- formal census and has received reports from 1o,o46 factories employing normally ,335,S45 men and 660,653 women. Business is reported normal in 3206 of these fac tories, slack in 5S42 and unusually good in s9S. Full time is being worked in 55. 1 per cent of these factories, short time in 42.3 per cent and only 2.2 per cent have closed or are preparing to close. A large proportion of the short time is in the Lancashire cotton area and the census was taken only up to the end of the sec ond week in September before work had really begun on the war orders. The causes assigned for the pressure of work in the 99S busy factories are war orders in 654 cases, diversion of trade from other countries in 176 cases and other causes in POS cases. In 4976 cases out of the 5S42 cases of slackness the reason given Is the cancellation of orders, es- ptcially for luXuries due to the war Other reasons given are shortage or high price Of raw materials, overproduction following period of good trade and trade dis putes
 Trade in London
 Some idea of the condition of trade in London can be gleaned from an interview with Harry Gosling, secretary of the Transport Workers union a member of the London county council and of the special committee for the relief and pre- vention of distress of which John Burns is chairman.
 With regard to London as a whole '' Gosling said, 'I should say that trade is good. but there are patches of extreme distress.
 The condition of thousands of fe- male employees Is very serious Much of this unemployment is probably due to panic among their employers at the outbreak of the war and will likely
 prove to be only temporary in char acter. People seem to have written off clothes and furniture as unnecessary items of expenditure for the time be- ing"
 As whole the percentage of unem- ployment Is falling at the moment.
 For the wecA ending September 1t was 6.3 in the insured trades, of which | accurate statistics are kept. The nex week 1t had fallen to 6 ,and by Sep
 tember IS. which is the last week for which the figures are available. 1t was down to 5.7. Of course one must still bear in mind the effect of recruiting B on the labor market.
 Government Prepares to Aid The government is preparing to deal with the dislocation of trade caused by the crisis. It is working out D scheme Tor the advance of money at n low rate of interest to business firms who find themselves in temporary dif- 1 nculties owing to the disruption of commerce. They will have to satisfy committee of experts of their essen tial soundness. Several millions of dol lars have been earmarked for this pur- pose.
 Those who have suffered most of all by the war are the holders of secur- ities and the stock brokers, etc. The Bankers Magazine states that 3S7 rep resentative securities show a loss com pared with January, 1907 of no less than $3,302,500,000. In British and In-
 dian funds the loss has been $790,00O, : 900, foreign government stocks $56O,- OO0,000 and American railway secur- fites $600,000,000. Of course the loss
 Is not all British and is not all due to the war and no one can tell how the prices now quoted will change when the stock exchanges reopen. Copyright, 1914, by Curtis Brown.)