One reason for the great development which Britain has made as a
manufacturing and trading nation lies in the fact that Britain was the
first nation to utilise on a large scale the power of steam as a help
to manufacture and trade. The steam-engine was a British invention.
The first railways were built in Britain. The first steamship to cross
the Atlantic was a British enterprise. A second reason lies in the
fact that when Britain began to use steam as a motive power she found
her supplies of coal so near her iron mines, and so near her clays and
earths needed for her potteries, that from the very first she was able
to manufacture cheaply and undersell most of her competitors. Her
coal-fields have an area of over 12,000 square miles, and wherever her
coal-beds are other natural products have been found near by, so that
her manufacturing areas and her coal areas are almost identical.
Taking Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, Wolverhampton, Sheffield,
Leeds, Newcastle, Durham, Bristol, Stoke, Carlisle, Cardiff, Swansea,
Glasgow, Paisley, and Dundee as centres, around each of these lies a
coal area of such richness as amply sustains it in its commercial and
manufacturing pre-eminence. London is almost the only great
commercial centre of Britain that does not lie in the midst of or
quite adjacent to a rich coal and other mineral region. But London is
within easy distance, not only by rail, but also by canal and by
coastwise sailing, of every coal-field and mineral deposit of Britain.
London, however, is an importing and exporting centre rather than a
manufacturing centre.
[Illustration: The coal-fields of England.]