BRITISH AND AMERICAN STEEL GOODS.

Oamaru Mail, Volume IV, Issue 1129, 1 December 1879, Page 2 (Supplement)

BRITISH AND AMERICAN STEEL GOODS.

Despite the high tariff and the intensity of American competition in steel rails for railways (says the Mail), several American orders are being placed in England. .One order for 15,000 tons has been secured by Brown, Bayley, and Dixon (Limited), Sheffield, and another for a similar quantity has gone either to Barrow or Ebbw Yale, and there is a probability that an ordar for 10,000 tons more will be placed at Sheffield. The price at which the contracte are entered into is not positively known. It is, however, a few shillings above £4 a ton, a price which leaves but little margin of profit. The reason of the orders finding their way to this country is that English manufacturers are able to offer lower terms than their rivals in America. There can be no doubt that the iron aud steel trade is improving. There has of late been much more inquiry than for months past, and in many instances orders will be booked. The prices, however, are so low that manufacturers frequently decline to take them. A Yorkshire correspondent of the Sheffield Telegraph, who has travelled through the United States during the past two years, thus writes upon the prospects of British trade in America as regards the cutlery and iron and steel trade generally : —" With few exceptions, American goods in these lines are inferior iu quality to those manufactured in England, and cannot be produced at so low a price. I think it may safely be laid down as a certainty that under no ordinary circumstances can American hardware compete permanently iu England with British manufactures as a remunerative business operation. Of course it is possible that occasional shipments —bankrupt stocks bought at halfcost, perhaps—may find their way to England ; but these can have very little influence on the general course of trado. Still, in foreign countries and in sorno British colonies where English good 3 compete with American on even terms as regards freightage, customs duties, &c., it is possible that American manufactures will for a time get the upper hand. English goods are more durable and more trustworthy in the longrun ; they are at the same time relatively cheaper —that is, they give better value for the money. But American goods are more saleable, because smarter in appearance, more showy in every way, packed in such a way as to be more easily handled, and more effectively pushed and advertised. American goods, in fact, are made to sell, without much thought as to their wearing or permanent value. They will sell better than English goods, until purchasers havo learned by experience that the latter are really superior in quality. The protective tariff of the United States, however, is practically a confession that even in their own markets Americans cannot compete on even terms with British manufacturers in many of the most important lines of trade. Even as it is, English goods still find their way into America to a surprising extent. I have bought specimens of English cutlery at lower prices than the local manufactures, even in far western cities, where one would suppose it almost impossible that such competition could be sustained in view of the enormous percentage absorbed in ocean and railway freightage and customs duties. The future prospecta of this trade will depend mainly upon the tariff question. Ido not think it probable that there will be any considerable change for some years to come. The manufacturing interests of the Central and Eastern States would gladly see the tariff raised to a figure ensuring abso'ute prohibition of foreign goods. But freetraders, though a small minority iu the country as a whole, are still Btrong enough in the north-west and west to bring a powerful sectional influence to bear upon this question. Any considerable advance on the present tariff would endanger the existence of the Union as at present constituted. On the other hand, it is unlikely that any action will be taken tending towards free trade. The vast majority of Americans regard their presont tariff as a political and financial necessity. The maxims of the Oobden Club find small favour in this part of the world. By no process of reasoning can you convince the average Eastern American that it would be better for him to be dependent upon Britain for manufactured and let the thousand of mills and factories thatline the New England river banks go to ruin. In fact, the political question enters into this even more than the economical. Jt is just the same here in Canada, where the people have so emphatically declared that they prefer, if need be, to tax themselves on every article they consume rather than become, first commercially and then policaliy, dependent upon their neighbours of the United States. English hardware exports to America may, then, expect little help from tariff changes. On the other hand, it is probable that the lowest possible figures in cost of production in America have been reached during- the universal depression of the past four years. Prices in America must rise—in fact, they are rising already. The return of prosperity, now apparently near at hand, will, of course, tend to improve the demand for foreign goods in at least thefull proportion of the increased consumption of home produce. There are, however, some descriptions of iron and steel manufactures in which England cannot compete, either abroad or on the American Continent, with the United States. la locomotive engines and railway rolling - stock, for instance, America can defy the foreigner. American workshops can turn out locomotives at figures fully 25 per cent, belo.v English prices. This is done mainly by adhering to certain fixed desigus, thus avoiding multiplicity of patterns. On American railways there are only three or four distinct types of locomotives, and in each of these types there is little variation from a fixed standard. The leading shopß in Philadelphia and in Rhode Island send out annually hundreds of engines of which all the parts are perfectly interchangeable, exact duplicates of each other. This system discourages originality, but it is decidedly economical, and a startling contrast to the EQglish method of each railway building its own locomotives on innumerable different models, and taking a pride apparently in bringing out radical innovations of design on the smallest possible pretext. Sewing - machines, musical instruments, and stoves of all kinds must also be mentioned as examples of American manufactures which need fear no foreign competitor. In these lines Great Britain will always have to encounter the keenest rivalry in her struggle for the markets of the world."