The Feilding Star. Oroua & Kiwitea Counties Gazette. Published Daily. WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 1896. "MADE IN GERMANY."

Feilding Star, Volume XVIII, Issue 119, 18 November 1896, Page 2

The Feilding Star. Oroua & Kiwitea Counties Gazette. Published Daily. WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 1896. "MADE IN GERMANY."

The dread which arose in the minds of many people in England and her Colonies that Germany was making giant strides to overtake and pass Great Britain as a manufacturing and commercial nation, and which has really been a main contributing cause to the bad feeling between the two nations, has caused an investigation to be made, the result of which shows that England still maintains her supremacy. It has been proved that the fears of the decay of British Industry are groundless A lecturer, quoted in the Melbourne Argus, has collected evideence on the subject and we acknowledge our indebtedness to the Dunedin Star for extracts therefrom. The verdict of « Royal Commission on Technical Education, after visiting the leading industrial establishments on the European Continent was that the people of the United Kingdom still maintained their position at the head of the industrial world. The secre tary of the British Iron and Steel Institute in his volume entitled English Supremacy said : — " No single nation can expect to be equally to the front in all manufactures. Climate, soil, natural products, the genius aud character of the people, and many other varying circumstances conjointly determine what shall be special to 1 each. All Continental nations, like our own, have built up special industries by a steady and careful regard , to their requirements. In those industries their artisans have attained ; superior skill and aptitude, as our own operatives have done in cottons and woollens. Other industries, again, have been built, more or less, upon local resources, and England is not so destitute of such resources that she ' need grudge them to others. But, in ' a general way, it may be affirmed with the utmost confidence, that in regard to industries that are followed on a large scale England remains facile princeps." A French writer pays a ' tribute to England which it is highly qualifying to receive. He says : — " Nowhere and at no period of tho world's history has there been an industrial power to match England. America, vast, energetic, and adventurous, has not equalled it, notwithstanding the colossal scale of all she undertakes. Lying as ;t were midway

between the old continent and the new, the British Isles form the great central factory of the world, and other manufacturing countries are but subordinate industrial suburbs. The shores of these islands have become the great commercial quays of the world. There is no nation, small or great, to which the commerce of England is not either a boon or a menace. But what strikes the observer even more than England's power is the coexistence and independence of two phenomena which have been supposed to be mutually opposed to one another namely, the greatest development of modern industrial methods, and most advantageous position of the workers." An American authority, who was commissioned by the United States to enquire into the economy of production and the state of technical education in Europe, in his essay on the " Economy of high wages," referring to Great Brit am, says that what gives that country her firm hold of the world's trade in cotton goods is not cheap labor, as America, her only possible rival, has demonstrated. It is not alone the say ing effected by giving a lighter oloth, but that the English really give a sightHer fabric. In color and finishing be awards them the palm for unmatched excellence. " x'here is." as be says, " no manufacturer or workman so proud of his ruleof-tbumb efficiency as the English, and, speaking from practical results, no one else has a right to be so proud of it. Strange to say that in many lines of manufacture where technical skill and science play the greatest part, Germany, with all the help it receives from | its school training, has not been able to ! approach the superiority of British work. The color and finish of cotton velvets, for instance, and of silk plushes, to name only a specimen or two, are of guch acknowledged superiority that the English more than hold the market against the rivalry of Germany. That country has not been able to supersede England in neutral markets." Mr Mul hall, in his Statistical Dictionary, sums up the situation in telling figures: — "Great Britain, with a population of 36,000,000, produces wealth to the amount of £1, 247, 000,000 per annum ; France, with 37,500.000 population, pro duces .£965,000,000 ; Germany, with 45, 000,000 population, produces £850,000,---0Q0; Russia, with 80.000,000 population, produces £760,000,000 ; and Austria, with ,38,000,000 population, produces £602,000,000. England, with the smallest population, and shorter hours of work than prevail abroad, produces by far the most wealth." It was finely said by John Bright, " I believe that in the centuries which are to come it will be the greatest pride and the highest renown of England that from her loins have sprung a hundred millions it may be two hundred millions — of men who dwell and prosper on that continent which the grand old Genoese gave to Europe." Happier far than Ancient Rome, Great Britain is not the " Lone Mother of Dead Empires." She is, in Bright's eloquent words, the living Mother of great Nations on the Amen can and Australian continents, which promise to endow the world with all her knowledge and all her civilisation, and with even something more than the freedom she herself enjoys.