BRITISH TRADE.

Evening Post, Volume LXXVI, Issue 111, 6 November 1908, Page 4

BRITISH TRADE.

WELLINGTON MERCHANT'S NOTES. Mr. David Jones (Ross and Glendining) has just returned from a tour- of the Old Country. He confined his travelling to England and his native country, Wales. In course of conversation with a 'representative of The' Post, Mr. Jones drew a somewhat doleful picture of trade in Britain. He thought the price of wool would improve, and this was the view held by a number of wool buyers who were fellow passengers to New Zealand. There was slackness in the woollen trade, but the pinch was not so great there as in the cotton trade. H-ere, things were very bad, hands working three days a week, and a reduction in wages proposed. "I don't think this is justified," Mr. Jones added in referring to the reduction "I have the most reliable information from men heavily interested in j cotton mills that they have for the past seven years been coining money. In fact some mills have been paying 37£ per cent. The owners have made so much in the fat years that they can now afford to let their mills remain idle." "I admit," Mr. Jones continued, "that the operatives have been making good ! wages too ; but with their large families and other expenses of living they have not been able to put much by, [ if anything, for the lean years. I cannot help thinking that the employers have been a little too premature in reducing wages. They really could afford to run the mills on stock, if yon like, so as to keep the people in work. The mills are free — or most of them — and the owners have secured themselvwi very weiy*

Mr. Jones was asked if he took any mental voles of the unemployed problem. "Yes," he replied, "I saw much, distress due to unemployment. T went down the Tyno on one of tho little steamers there. I saw over 150 large r steamers lying idle in the river — wanting freight. Swan and Hunter's great yard was empty : there was not a single hull on the stocks. Tho Armslrong.Whitworth works employ about 30,000 hands when in full swing, but when 1 } was there only 3000 men were working, j The shipping trade — both building and |- ireight — was extremely bad. Of the unemployed in Glasgow you will have heard." Discussing Imperial politics, Sir. Jonej predicted that in four years, or less, there would be tariff revision. "That must come," he added. "Why I wan shown a huge building just completed. 'Do you see those window-sills?' said a friend, who waa showing me round. 'Well,' he said, 'everyone of them was made in America and we have plbavy of carpenters here who could and would do the work if they could get it.' " It was suggested that "Ichabod" was written over Cobdenism in Britain? "Assuredly, so," was Mr. Jones's reply. "It is felt more and more keenly every day in England that the industries must hay« some protection ; moreover the elections, increasing tariff-re-form victories, show the trend of thought. Why, oven in Wales, which as you may know was always, and still is, intensely radical, the people are beginning to think for themselves. They will not be led by party as formerly. It used to be a sort of follow-my -leader procession ; but now the people are almost conservatives in respect to tariff-reform. Britain is having this forced upon her. Free-trade is a noble thing so long as it is adopted by other countries, such as America and Germany for example ; but it is found that the one-sided arrangement will work no longer — found by the people themselves, although long foreseen by master minds. The public are waking up to the fact that they must have come protection."