THE DECENTRALISATION OF INDUSTRIES--(_continued_).
Italy and Spain--India--Japan--The United States--The cotton,
woollen, and silk trades--The growing necessity for each country
to rely chiefly upon home consumers.
The flow of industrial growths spreads, however, not only east; it
moves also south-east and south. Austria and Hungary are rapidly
gaining ground in the race for industrial importance. The Triple
Alliance has already been menaced by the growing tendency of Austrian
manufacturers to protect themselves against German competition; and
even the dual monarchy has seen its two sister nations quarrelling
about customs duties. Austrian industries are a modern growth,
and still they already give occupation to more than 4,000,000
workpeople.[15] Bohemia, in a few decades, has grown to be an
industrial country of considerable importance; and the excellence and
originality of the machinery used in the newly reformed flour-mills
of Hungary show that the young industry of Hungary is on the right
road, not only to become a competitor to her elder sisters, but also
to add her share to our knowledge as to the use of the forces of
nature. Let me add, by the way, that the same is true to some extent
with regard to Finland. Figures are wanting as to the present state
of the aggregate industries of Austria-Hungary; but the relatively
low imports of manufactured goods are worthy of note. For British
manufacturers Austria-Hungary is, in fact, no customer worth speaking
of; but even with regard to Germany she is rapidly emancipating
herself from her former dependence. (See Appendix G.)
The same industrial progress extends over the southern peninsulas.
Who would have spoken in 1859 about Italian manufactures? And
yet--the Turin Exhibition of 1884 has shown it--Italy ranks already
among the manufacturing countries. “You see everywhere a considerable
industrial and commercial effort made,” wrote a French economist to
the _Temps_. “Italy aspires to go on without foreign produce. The
patriotic watchword is, Italy all by herself. It inspires the whole
mass of producers. There is not a single manufacturer or tradesman
who, even in the most trifling circumstances, does not do his best to
emancipate himself from foreign guardianship.” The best French and
English patterns are imitated and improved by a touch of national
genius and artistic traditions. Complete statistics are wanting, so
that the statistical _Annuario_ resorts to indirect indications. But
the rapid increase of imports of coal (9,339,000 tons in 1910, as
against 779,000 tons in 1871); the growth of the mining industries,
which have trebled their production during the fifteen years, 1870 to
1885; the increasing production of steel and machinery (£4,800,000
in 1900), which--to use Bovio’s words--shows how a country having
no fuel nor minerals of her own can have nevertheless a notable
metallurgical industry; and, finally, the growth of textile
industries disclosed by the net imports of raw cottons and the number
of spindles[16]--all these show that the tendency towards becoming
a manufacturing country capable of satisfying her needs by her own
manufactures is not a mere dream. As to the efforts made for taking
a more lively part in the trade of the world, who does not know the
traditional capacities of the Italians in that direction?
I ought also to mention Spain, whose textile mining and metallurgical
industries are rapidly growing; but I hasten to go over to countries
which a few years ago were considered as eternal and obligatory
customers to the manufacturing nations of Western Europe. Let us
take, for instance, Brazil. Was it not doomed by economists to grow
cotton, to export it in a raw state, and to receive cotton goods in
exchange? In 1870 its nine miserable cotton mills could boast only
of an aggregate of 385 spindles. But already in 1887 there were in
Brazil 46 cotton mills, and five of them had already 40,000 spindles;
while altogether their nearly 10,000 looms threw every year on the
Brazilian markets more than 33,000,000 yards of cotton stuffs.
Twenty five years later, in 1912, there were already 161 cotton
mills, with 1,500,000 spindles and 50,000 looms, employing over
100,000 operatives.[17] Even Vera Cruz, in Mexico, under the
protection of customs officers, has begun to manufacture cottons, and
boasted in 1887 its 40,200 spindles, 287,700 pieces of cotton cloth,
and 212,000 lb. of yarn. Since that year progress has been steady,
and in 1894 Vice-Consul Chapman reported that some of the finest
machines are to be found at the Orizaba spinning mills, while “cotton
prints,” he wrote, “are now turned out as good if not superior to
the imported article.”[18] In 1910, 32,000 workpeople were already
employed in 145 cotton mills, which had 703,000 spindles, and 25,000
power-looms.[19]
The flattest contradiction to the export theory has, however, been
given by India. She was always considered as the surest customer for
British cottons, and so she has been until quite lately. Out of the
total of cotton goods exported from Britain she used to buy more than
one-quarter, very nearly one-third (from £17,000,000 to £22,000,000,
out of an aggregate of about £75,000,000 in the years 1880-1890). But
things have begun to change, and in 1904-1907 the exports were only
from £21,680,000 to £25,680,000 out of an aggregate of £110,440,000.
The Indian cotton manufactures, which--for some causes not fully
explained--were so unsuccessful at their beginnings, suddenly took
firm root.
In 1860 they consumed only 23,000,000 lb. of raw cotton, but the
quantity was nearly four times as much in 1877, and it trebled again
within the next ten years: 283,000,000 lb. of raw cotton were used in
1887-1888. The number of cotton mills grew up from 40 in 1887 to 147
in 1895; the number of spindles rose from 886,100 to 3,844,300 in the
same years; and where 57,188 workers were employed in 1887, we found,
seven years later, 146,240 operatives. And now, in 1909-1910, we find
237 cotton mills at work, with 6,136,000 spindles, 80,000 looms, and
231,850 workpeople. As for the quality of the mills, the blue-books
praise them; the German chambers of commerce state that the best
spinning mills in Bombay “do not now stand far behind the best German
ones”; and two great authorities in the cotton industry, Mr. James
Platt and Mr. Henry Lee, agree in saying “that in no other country
of the earth except in Lancashire do the operatives possess such a
natural leaning to the textile industry as in India.”[20]
The exports of cotton twist from India more than doubled in five
years (1882-1887), and already in 1887 we could read in the
_Statement_ (p. 62) that “what cotton twist was imported was less
and less of the coarser and even medium kind, which indicates that
the Indian (spinning) mills are gradually gaining hold of the home
markets.” Consequently, while India continued to import nearly the
same amount of British cotton goods and yarn (from £16,000,000
to £25,700,000 in 1900-1908), she threw already in 1887 on the
foreign markets no less than £3,635,510 worth of her own cottons of
Lancashire patterns; she exported 33,000,000 yards of _gray cotton
piece goods_ manufactured in India by Indian workmen. And the export
has continued to grow since, so that in the year 1910-1911 the value
of the piece-goods and yarn exported from India reached the value of
£7,943,700.
The jute factories in India have grown at a still speedier rate, and
the once flourishing jute trade of Dundee was brought to decay, not
only by the high tariffs of continental powers, but also by Indian
competition.[21] Even woollen mills have lately been started; while
the iron industry took a sudden development in India, since the means
were found, after many experiments and failures, to work furnaces
with local coal. In a few years, we are told by specialists, India
will be self-supporting for iron. Nay, it is not without apprehension
that the English manufacturers see that the imports of Indian
manufactured textiles to this country are steadily growing, while
in the markets of the Far East and Africa India becomes a serious
competitor to the mother country.
Why should it not be so? What _might_ prevent the growth of Indian
manufactures? Is it the want of capital? But capital knows no
fatherland; and if high profits can be derived from the work of
Indian coolies whose wages are only one-half of those of English
workmen, or even less, capital will migrate to India, as it has gone
to Russia, although its migration may mean starvation for Lancashire
and Dundee. Is it the want of knowledge? But longitudes and latitudes
are no obstacle to its spreading; it is only the first steps that are
difficult. As to the superiority of workmanship, nobody who knows the
Hindoo worker will doubt about his capacities. Surely they are not
below those of the 36,000 children less than fourteen years of age,
or the 238,000 boys and girls less than eighteen years old, who are
employed in the British textile manufactories.
* * * * *
Twenty years surely are not much in the life of nations. And yet
within the last twenty years another powerful competitor has grown
in the East. I mean Japan. In October, 1888, the _Textile Recorder_
mentioned in a few lines that the annual production of yarns in the
cotton mills of Japan had attained 9,498,500 lb., and that fifteen
more mills, which would hold 156,100 spindles, were in course of
erection.[22] Two years later, 27,000,000 lb. of yarn were spun in
Japan; and while in 1887-1888 Japan imported five or six times as
much yarn from abroad as was spun at home, next year two-thirds only
of the total consumption of the country were imported from abroad.[23]
From that date the production grew up regularly. From 6,435,000 lb.
in 1886 it reached 91,950,000 lb. in 1893, and 153,444,000 lb. in
1895. In nine years it had thus increased twenty-four times. Since
then it rose to 413,800,000 lb. in 1909; and we learn from the
_Financial Economical Annual_ for the years 1910 and 1911, published
at Tokio, that there were in Japan, in 1909, no less than 3,756
textile factories, with 1,785,700 spindles and 51,185 power-looms,
to which 783,155 hand-looms must be added. Japan is thus already
a serious competitor of the great industrial nations for tissues
altogether, and especially for cottons, in the markets of Eastern
Asia; and it took it only five-and-twenty years to attain this
position. The total production of tissues, valued at £1,200,000 in
the year 1887, rapidly rose to £14,270,000 in 1895 and to £22,500,000
in 1909--cottons entering into this amount to the extent of nearly
two-fifths. Consequently, the imports of foreign cotton goods from
Europe fell from £1,640,000 in 1884 to £849,600 in 1895, and to
£411,600 in 1910, while the exports of silk goods rose to nearly
£3,000,000.[24]
As to the coal and iron industries, I ventured in the first edition
of this book to predict that the Japanese would not long remain a
tributary to Europe for iron goods--that their ambition was also to
have their own shipbuilding yards, and that the previous year 300
engineers left the Elswick works of Mr. Armstrong in order to start
shipbuilding in Japan. They were engaged for five years only--the
Japanese expecting to have learned enough in five years to be their
own shipbuilders. This prediction has been entirely fulfilled.
Japan has now 1,030 iron and machine works, and she now builds her
own warships. During the last war, the progress realised in all
industries connected with war was rendered fully evident.[25]
All this shows that the much-dreaded invasion of the East upon
European markets is in rapid progress. The Chinese slumber still; but
I am firmly persuaded from what I saw of China that the moment they
will begin to manufacture with the aid of European machinery--and
the first steps have already been made--they will do it with more
success, and necessarily on a far greater scale, than even the
Japanese.
* * * * *
But what about the United States, which cannot be accused of
employing cheap labour or of sending to Europe “cheap and nasty”
produce? Their great industry is of yesterday’s date; and yet the
States already send to old Europe constantly increasing quantities of
machinery. In 1890 they began even to export iron, which they obtain
at a very low cost, owing to admirable new methods which they have
introduced in metallurgy.
In the course of twenty years (1870-1890) the number of persons
employed in the American manufactures was more than doubled, and the
value of their produce was nearly trebled; and in the course of the
next fifteen years, the number of persons employed increased again
by nearly fifty per cent., while the value of the produce was nearly
doubled.[26] The cotton industry, supplied with excellent home-made
machinery, has been rapidly developing, so that the yearly production
of textiles attained in 1905 a value of 2,147,441,400 dollars, thus
being twice as large as the yearly production of the United Kingdom
in the same branch (which was valued at about £200,000,000); and
the exports of cottons of domestic manufacture attained in 1910 the
respectable figure of £8,600,000.[27] As to the yearly output of
pig-iron and steel, it is already in excess of the yearly output in
Britain;[28] and the organisation of that industry is also superior,
as Mr. Berkley pointed out, already in 1891, in his address to the
Institute of Civil Engineers.[29]
But all this has grown almost entirely within the last thirty or
forty years--whole industries having been created entirely since
1860.[30] What will, then, American industry be twenty years, hence,
aided as it is by a wonderful development of technical skill, by
excellent schools, a scientific education which goes hand in hand
with technical education, and a spirit of enterprise which is
unrivalled in Europe?
* * * * *
Volumes have been written about the crisis of 1886-1887, a crisis
which, to use the words of the Parliamentary Commission, lasted since
1875, with but “a short period of prosperity enjoyed by certain
branches of trade in the years 1880 to 1883,” and a crisis, I shall
add, which extended over all the chief manufacturing countries of the
world. All possible causes of the crisis have been examined; but,
whatever the cacophony of conclusions arrived at, all unanimously
agreed upon one, namely, that of the Parliamentary Commission, which
could be summed up as follows: “The manufacturing countries do not
find such customers as would enable them to realise high profits.”
Profits being the basis of capitalist industry, low profits explain
all ulterior consequences.
Low profits induce the employers to reduce the wages, or the number
of workers, or the number of days of employment during the week, or
eventually compel them to resort to the manufacture of lower kinds
of goods, which, as a rule, are paid worse than the higher sorts. As
Adam Smith said, low profits ultimately mean a reduction of wages,
and low wages mean a reduced consumption by the worker. Low profits
mean also a somewhat reduced consumption by the employer; and both
together mean lower profits and reduced consumption with that immense
class of middlemen which has grown up in manufacturing countries, and
that, again, means a further reduction of profits for the employers.
A country which manufactures to a great extent for export, and
therefore lives to a considerable amount on the profits derived
from her foreign trade, stands very much in the same position as
Switzerland, which lives to a great extent on the profits derived
from the foreigners who visit her lakes and glaciers. A good “season”
means an influx of from £1,000,000 to £2,000,000 of money imported by
the tourists, and a bad “season” has the effects of a bad crop in an
agricultural country: a general impoverishment follows. So it is also
with a country which manufactures for export. If the “season” is bad,
and the exported goods cannot be sold abroad for twice their value at
home, the country which lives chiefly on these bargains suffers. Low
profits for the innkeepers of the Alps mean narrowed circumstances
in large parts of Switzerland; and low profits for the Lancashire
and Scotch manufacturers, and the wholesale exporters, mean narrowed
circumstances in Great Britain. The cause is the same in both cases.
For many decades past we had not seen such a cheapness of wheat
and manufactured goods as we saw in 1883-1884, and yet in 1886 the
country was suffering from a terrible crisis. People said, of course,
that the cause of the crisis was over-production. But over-production
is a word utterly devoid of sense if it does not mean that those who
are in need of all kinds of produce have not the means for buying
them with their low wages. Nobody would dare to affirm that there is
too much furniture in the crippled cottages, too many bedsteads and
bedclothes in the workmen’s dwellings, too many lamps burning in the
huts, and too much cloth on the shoulders, not only of those who used
to sleep (in 1886) in Trafalgar Square between two newspapers, but
even in those households where a silk hat makes a part of the Sunday
dress. And nobody will dare to affirm that there is too much food in
the homes of those agricultural labourers who earn twelve shillings
a week, or of those women who earn from fivepence to sixpence a day
in the clothing trade and other small industries which swarm in the
outskirts of all great cities. Over-production means merely and
simply a want of purchasing powers amidst the workers. And the same
want of purchasing powers of the workers was felt everywhere on the
Continent during the years 1885-1887.
After the bad years were over, a sudden revival of international
trade took place; and, as the British exports rose in four years
(1886 to 1890) by nearly 24 per cent., it began to be said that
there was no reason for being alarmed by foreign competition; that
the decline of exports in 1885-1887 was only temporary, and general
in Europe; and that England, now as of old, fully maintained her
dominant position in the international trade. It is certainly true
that if we consider exclusively the money value of the exports for
the years 1876 to 1895, we see no permanent decline, we notice only
fluctuations. British exports, like commerce altogether, seem to
show a certain periodicity. They fell from £201,000,000 sterling in
1876 to £192,000,000 in 1879; then they rose again to £241,000,000
in 1882, and fell down to £213,000,000 in 1886; again they rose
to £264,000,000 in 1890, but fell again, reaching a minimum of
£216,000,000 in 1894, to be followed next year by a slight movement
upwards.
This periodicity being a fact, Mr. Giffen could make light in 1886 of
“German competition” by showing that exports from the United Kingdom
had not decreased. It can even be said that, per head of population,
they had remained unchanged until 1904, undergoing only the usual ups
and downs.[31] However, when we come to consider the _quantities_
exported, and compare them with the _money values_ of the exports,
even Mr. Giffen had to acknowledge that the prices of 1883 were
so low in comparison with those of 1873 that in order to reach the
same money value the United Kingdom would have had to export four
pieces of cotton instead of three, and eight or ten tons of metallic
goods instead of six. “The aggregate of British foreign trade, if
valued at the prices of ten years previously, would have amounted to
£861,000,000 instead of £667,000,000,” we were told by no less an
authority than the Commission on Trade Depression.
It might, however, be said that 1873 was an exceptional year, owing
to the inflated demand which took place after the Franco-German war.
But the same downward movement continued for a number of years. Thus,
if we take the figures given in the _Statesman’s Year-book_, we see
that while the United Kingdom exported, in 1883, 4,957,000,000 yards
of piece goods (cotton, woollen and linen) and 316,000,000 lb. of
yarn in order to reach an export value of £104,000,000, the same
country had to export, in 1895, no less than 5,478,000,000 yards
of the same stuffs and 330,000,000 lb. of yarn in order to realise
£99,700,000 only. And the figures would have appeared still more
unfavourable if we took the cottons alone. True, the conditions
improved during the last ten years, so that in 1906 the exports were
similar to those of 1873; and they were better still in 1911, which
was a year of an extraordinary foreign trade, when 7,041,000,000
yards of stuffs and 307,000,000 lb. of yarn were exported--the two
being valued at £163,400,000. However, it was especially the yarn
which kept the high prices, because it is the finest sorts of yarn
which are now exported. But the great profits of the years 1873-1880
are irretrievably gone.
We thus see that while the total value of the exports from the United
Kingdom, in proportion to its growing population, remains, broadly
speaking, unaltered for the last thirty years, the high prices which
could be got for the exports thirty years ago, and with them the
high profits, are gone. And no amount of arithmetical calculations
will persuade the British manufacturers that such is not the case.
They know perfectly well that the home markets grow continually
overstocked; that the best foreign markets are escaping; and that
in the neutral markets Britain is being undersold. This is the
unavoidable consequence of the development of manufactures all over
the world. (See Appendix J.)
Great hopes were laid, some time ago, in Australia as a market for
British goods; but Australia will soon do what Canada already does.
She will manufacture. And the colonial exhibitions, by showing to
the “colonists” what they are able to do, and how they must do, are
only accelerating the day when each colony _farà da sè_ in her turn.
Canada and India already impose protective duties on British goods.
As to the much-spoken-of markets on the Congo, and Mr. Stanley’s
calculations and promises of a trade amounting to £26,000,000 a
year if the Lancashire people supply the Africans with loin-cloths,
such promises belong to the same category of fancies as the famous
nightcaps of the Chinese which were to enrich England after the first
Chinese war. The Chinese prefer their own home-made nightcaps; and as
to the Congo people, four countries at least are already competing
for supplying them with their poor dress: Britain, Germany, the
United States, and, last but not least, India.
There was a time when this country had almost the monopoly in the
cotton industries; but already in 1880 she possessed only 55 per
cent. of all the spindles at work in Europe, the United States and
India (40,000,000 out of 72,000,000), and a little more than one-half
of the looms (550,000 out of 972,000). In 1893 the proportion was
further reduced to 49 per cent. of the spindles (45,300,000 out of
91,340,000), and now the United Kingdom has only 41 per cent. of
all the spindles.[32] It was thus losing ground while the others
were winning. And the fact is quite natural: it might have been
foreseen. There is no reason why Britain should always be the great
cotton manufactory of the world, when raw cotton has to be imported
into this country as elsewhere. It was quite natural that France,
Germany, Italy, Russia, India, Japan, the United States, and even
Mexico and Brazil, should begin to spin their own yarns and to weave
their own cotton stuffs. But the appearance of the cotton industry in
a country, or, in fact, of any textile industry, unavoidably becomes
the starting-point for the growth of a series of other industries;
chemical and mechanical works, metallurgy and mining feel at once
the impetus given by a new want. The whole of the home industries,
as also technical education altogether, _must_ improve in order to
satisfy that want as soon as it has been felt.
What has happened with regard to cottons is going on also with regard
to other industries. Great Britain, which stood in 1880 at the head
of the list of countries producing pig-iron, came in 1904 the third
in the same list, which was headed by the United States and Germany;
while Russia, which occupied the seventh place in 1880, comes now
fourth, after Great Britain.[33] Britain and Belgium have no longer
the monopoly of the woollen trade. Immense factories at Verviers
are silent; the Belgian weavers are misery-stricken, while Germany
yearly increases her production of woollens, and exports nine times
more woollens than Belgium. Austria has her own woollens and exports
them; Riga, Lodz, and Moscow supply Russia with fine woollen cloths;
and the growth of the woollen industry in each of the last-named
countries calls into existence hundreds of connected trades.
For many years France has had the monopoly of the silk trade.
Silkworms being reared in Southern France, it was quite natural
that Lyons should grow into a centre for the manufacture of silks.
Spinning, domestic weaving, and dyeing works developed to a great
extent. But eventually the industry took such an extension that home
supplies of raw silk became insufficient, and raw silk was imported
from Italy, Spain and Southern Austria, Asia Minor, the Caucasus and
Japan, to the amount of from £9,000,000 to £11,000,000 in 1875 and
1876, while France had only £800,000 worth of her own silk. Thousands
of peasant boys and girls were attracted by high wages to Lyons and
the neighbouring district; the industry was prosperous.
However, by-and-by new centres of silk trade grew up at Basel and in
the peasant houses round Zürich. French emigrants imported the trade
into Switzerland, and it developed there, especially after the civil
war of 1871. Then the Caucasus Administration invited French workmen
and women from Lyons and Marseilles to teach the Georgians and the
Russians the best means of rearing the silkworm, as well as the
whole of the silk trade; and Stavropol became a new centre for silk
weaving. Austria and the United States did the same; and what are now
the results?
During the years 1872 to 1881 Switzerland more than doubled the
produce of her silk industry; Italy and Germany increased it by
one-third; and the Lyons region, which formerly manufactured to the
value of 454 million francs a year, showed in 1887 a return of only
378 millions. The exports of Lyons silks, which reached an average
of 425,000,000 francs in 1855-1859, and 460,000,000 in 1870-1874,
fell down to 233,000,000 in 1887. And it is reckoned by French
specialists that at present no less than one-third of the silk stuffs
used in France are imported from Zurich, Crefeld, and Barmen. Nay,
even Italy, which has now 191,000 persons engaged in the industry,
sends her silks to France and competes with Lyons.
The French manufacturers may cry as loudly as they like for
protection, or resort to the production of cheaper goods of lower
quality; they may sell 3,250,000 kilogrammes of silk stuffs at the
same price as they sold 2,500,000 in 1855-1859--they will never
again regain the position they occupied before. Italy, Switzerland,
Germany, the United States and Russia have their own silk factories,
and will import from Lyons only the highest qualities of stuffs. As
to the lower sorts, a foulard has become a common attire with the St.
Petersburg housemaids, because the North Caucasian domestic trades
supply them at a price which would starve the Lyons weavers. The
trade has been decentralised, and while Lyons is still a centre for
the higher artistic silks, it will never be again the chief centre
for the silk trade which it was thirty years ago.
Like examples could be produced by the score. Greenock no longer
supplies Russia with sugar, because Russia has plenty of her own
at the same price as it sells at in England. The watch trade is no
more a speciality of Switzerland: watches are now made everywhere.
India extracts from her ninety collieries two-thirds of her annual
consumption of coal. The chemical trade which grew up on the banks of
the Clyde and Tyne, owing to the special advantages offered for the
import of Spanish pyrites and the agglomeration of such a variety of
industries along the two estuaries, is now in decay. Spain, with the
help of English capital, is beginning to utilise her own pyrites for
herself; and Germany has become a great centre for the manufacture
of sulphuric acid and soda--nay, she already complains about
over-production.
* * * * *
But enough! I have before me so many figures, all telling the
same tale, that examples could be multiplied at will. It is time
to conclude, and, for every unprejudiced mind, the conclusion is
self-evident. Industries of all kinds decentralise and are scattered
all over the globe; and everywhere a variety, an integrated variety,
of trades grows, instead of specialisation. Such are the prominent
features of the times we live in. Each nation becomes in its turn a
manufacturing nation; and the time is not far off when each nation
of Europe, as well as the United States, and even the most backward
nations of Asia and America, will themselves manufacture nearly
everything they are in need of. Wars and several accidental causes
may check for some time the scattering of industries: they will not
stop it; it is unavoidable. For each new-comer the first steps only
are difficult. But, as soon as any industry has taken firm root,
it calls into existence hundreds of other trades; and as soon as
the first steps have been made, and the first obstacles have been
overcome, the industrial growth goes on at an accelerated rate.
The fact is so well felt, if not understood, that the race for
colonies has become the distinctive feature of the last twenty years.
Each nation will have her own colonies. But colonies will not help.
There is not a second India in the world, and the old conditions
will be repeated no more. Nay, some of the British colonies already
threaten to become serious competitors with their mother country;
others, like Australia, will not fail to follow the same lines. As
to the yet neutral markets, China will never be a serious customer
to Europe: she can produce much cheaper at home; and when she begins
to feel a need for goods of European patterns, she will produce them
herself. Woe to Europe, if on the day that the steam engine invades
China she is still relying on foreign customers! As to the African
half-savages, their misery is no foundation for the well-being of a
civilised nation.
Progress must be looked for in another direction. _It is in producing
for home use._ The customers for the Lancashire cottons and the
Sheffield cutlery, the Lyons silks and the Hungarian flour-mills,
are not in India, nor in Africa. The true consumers of the produce
of our factories must be our own populations. And they _can_ be
that, once we organise our economical life so that they might issue
from their present destitution. No use to send floating shops to
New Guinea with British or German millinery, when there are plenty
of would-be customers for British millinery in these very islands,
and for German goods in Germany. Instead of worrying our brains by
schemes for getting customers abroad, it would be better to try
to answer the following questions: Why the British worker, whose
industrial capacities are so highly praised in political speeches;
why the Scotch crofter and the Irish peasant, whose obstinate labours
in creating new productive soil out of peat bogs are occasionally
so much spoken of, are no customers to the Lancashire weavers, the
Sheffield cutlers and the Northumbrian and Welsh pitmen? Why the
Lyons weavers not only do not wear silks, but sometimes have no food
in their attics? Why the Russian peasants sell their corn, and for
four, six, and sometimes eight months every year are compelled to mix
bark and auroch grass to a handful of flour for baking their bread?
Why famines are so common amidst the growers of wheat and rice in
India?
Under the present conditions of division into capitalists and
labourers, into property-holders and masses living on uncertain
wages, the spreading of industries over new fields is accompanied
by the very same horrible facts of pitiless oppression, massacre of
children, pauperism, and insecurity of life. The Russian Fabrics
Inspectors’ Reports, the Reports of the Plauen Handelskammer, the
Italian inquests, and the reports about the growing industries of
India and Japan are full of the same revelations as the Reports
of the Parliamentary Commissions of 1840 to 1842, or the modern
revelations with regard to the “sweating system” at Whitechapel
and Glasgow, London pauperism, and York unemployment. The Capital
and Labour problem is thus universalised; but, at the same time,
it is also simplified. To return to a state of affairs where corn
is grown, and manufactured goods are fabricated, _for the use of
those very people who grow and produce them_--such will be, no
doubt, the problem to be solved during the next coming years of
European history. Each region will become its own producer and its
own consumer of manufactured goods. But that unavoidably implies
that, at the same time, it will be its own producer and consumer
of agricultural produce; and that is precisely what I am going to
discuss next.
FOOTNOTES:
[15] During the census of 1902, there were in Austria 1,408,000
industrial establishments, with 1,787,000 horse-power, giving
occupation to 4,049,300 workpeople; 1,128,000 workpeople were engaged
in manufactures in Hungary.
[16] The net imports of raw cotton reached 1,180,000 cwts. in 1885,
and 4,120,000 cwts. in 1908; the number of spindles grew from
880,000 in 1877 to 3,800,000 in 1907. The whole industry has grown
up since 1859. In 1910 no less than 358,200 tons of pig-iron and
671,000 tons of steel were produced in Italy. The exports of textiles
reached the following values in 1905-1910: Silks, from £17,800,000
to £24,794,000; cottons, £4,430,000 to £5,040,000; woollens, from
£440,000 to £1,429,000.
[17] _Times_, August 27, 1912.
[18] _The Economist_, 12th May, 1894, p. 9: “A few years ago the
Orizaba mills used entirely imported raw cotton; but now they use
home-grown and home-spun cotton as much as possible.”
[19] _Annuario Estadistico_, 1911. They consumed 34,700 tons of raw
cotton, and produced 13,936,300 pieces of cotton goods, and 554,000
cwts. of yarn.
[20] Schulze Gäwernitz, _The Cotton Trade_, etc., p. 123.
[21] In 1882 they had 5,633 looms and 95,937 spindles. Thirteen
years later these figures were already doubled--there being 10,600
looms and 216,000 spindles. Now, or rather in 1909-1910, we find
60 jute mills, with 31,420 looms, 645,700 spindles, and 204,000
workpeople. The progress realised in the machinery is best seen from
these figures. The exports of jute stuffs from India, which were
only £1,543,870 in 1884-1885, reached £11,333,000 in 1910-1911. (See
Appendix H.)
[22] _Textile Recorder_, 15th October, 1888.
[23] 39,200,000 lb. of yarn were imported in 1886 as against
6,435,000 lb. of home-spun yarn. In 1889 the figures were: 56,633,000
lb. imported and 26,809,000 lb. home-spun.
[24] In 1910 the imports of cotton and woollens were only £2,650,500,
while the exports of cotton yarn, cotton shirtings, and silk
manufactures reached a value of £8,164,800.
[25] The mining industry has grown as follows:--Copper extracted:
2,407 tons in 1875; 49,000 in 1909. Coal: 567,200 tons in 1875:
15,535,000 in 1909. Iron: 3,447 tons in 1875; 15,268 in 1887;
65,000 in 1909. (K. Rathgen, _Japan’s Volkwirthschaft und
Staatshaushaltung_, Leipzig, 1891; Consular Reports.)
[26] Workers employed in manufacturing industries: 2,054,000 in
1870, 4,712,600 in 1890, and 6,723,900 in 1905 (including salaried
officials and clerks). Value of produce: 3,385,861,000 dollars in
1870, 9,372,437,280 dollars in 1890, and 16,866,707,000 in 1905.
Yearly production per head of workers: 1,648 dollars in 1870, 1,989
dollars in 1890, and 2,514 dollars in 1905.
[27] About the cotton industry in the United States, see Appendix I.
[28] It was from 7,255,076 to 9,811,620 tons of pig-iron during
the years 1890-94, and 27,303,600 long tons in 1910 (£85,000,000
worth). The total value of products of the steel works and rolling
mills reached in 1909 the immense value of £197,144,500. In the
_Statesman’s Year-book_ for the years 1910-1912, the reader may
find most striking figures concerning the rapid growth of the iron
and steel industry in the States. We have nothing parallel to it in
Europe.
[29] “The largest output of one blast-furnace in Great Britain does
not exceed 750 tons in the week, while in America it had reached 2000
tons” (_Nature_, 19th Nov., 1891, p. 65). In 1909 the Bessemer steel
plants had 99 converters; total daily capacity of ingots or direct
castings, double turn, in 1909, 45,983 tons.
[30] J. R. Dodge, _Farm and Factory: Aids to Agriculture from other
Industries_, New York and London, 1884, p. 111. I can but highly
recommend this little work to those interested in the question.
[31] Per head of population the exports of British produce appear, in
shillings, as follows:--
1876 =121s.=
1877 119s.
1878 114s.
1879 _112s._
1880 129s.
1881 134s.
1882 =137s.=
1883 135s.
1884 130s.
1885 118s.
1886 _117s._
1887 121s.
1888 127s.
1889 134s.
1890 =141s.=
1891 131s.
1892 119s.
1893 114s.
1894 _111s._
1895 112s.
1896 116s.
1897 117s.
1898 116s.
1899 =130s.=
1900 =142s.=
1901 _135s._
1902 _135s._
1903 138s.
1904 141s.
1905 153s.
1906 173s.
1907 =194s.=
1908 _171s._
1909 192s.
1910 =201s.=
[32] The International Federation of the Cotton Industry employers
gave, on March 1, 1909, the following numbers of spindles in the
different countries of the Old and New Worlds:--
United Kingdom 53,472,000 = 41 per cent.
United States 27,846,000 = 21 ”
Germany 9,881,000 = 8 ”
Russia 7,829,000 = 6 ”
France 6,750,000 = 5 ”
British India 5,756,000 = 4 ”
Other nations 19,262,000 = 15 ”
----------- ---
130,796,000 = 100 ”
[33] J. Stephen Jeans, _The Iron Trade of Great Britain_ (London,
Methuen), 1905, p. 46. The reader will find in this interesting
little work valuable data concerning the growth and improvement of
the iron industry in different countries.