British Rivals in Trade.

Pelorus Guardian and Miners' Advocate., Volume 9, Issue 58, 22 July 1898, Page 3

British Rivals in Trade.

A writer in Cassell’s Magazine doling with the subject of the compettors with Britian in trade, gives sonce interesting facts to prove the inrotds that the foreign manufac tures are making into industries and markets where a few years ago the Britisi workmen were supreme. His contribution to this question has been ably seconded by Sir Edward Reed, the well known Engineer, who in an exhaustive letter to the London Times recently related how he saw a shop full of new machinery at an engineering works on the Clyde, “ American made,” although it was such as is produced at Leeds; how he saw two very fine steel forgings, *» made in Germany,” which cost between £IOO and £2OO less than they would in Sheffield itself, the natural home of the steel industry; and how he found that a certain forging of very special design, which could be produced only out of the very best materials, and by the very best workmen, was being “ made in Germany ” for a Thames firm, the pattern being sent from Germany. In recent visits to the Continent and the United States he had opportunity to observe the. equipment and character of the establishments which now threaten British trade. When he Saw ihe shipyards and engineering yrorks at Hamburg and Stettin, he ancj other members of the Institution of Naval Architects “■ began to yronijpr hpF they were to bold their pym without some ameliorations and conditions of labour in favour of British employers.” In New York he found capitalists, - masters, ironmasters, engineers, and commercial men speedily underselling British coal—-both in foreign markets and also in their native country. The anticipation appears to be justified by the perfection of the equipment and the abundant use of labor-saving appliances in American factories; and he instances the Newport News Shipbuilding and Pry Pock, Com?any’s Wor|s at Newport News, in [ifginia, which, he admits, he would fifnd it hard to match in all respects 6n his own side of the Atlantic. Even in France, which by Englishmen generally has been regarded rather as an agricultural than a great competing manufacturing he» found that in sections of engineering work, British products were entirely falling out of the compeliiion. The warning from Sir Edward Reed ought to carry great influence with the yrorkruen. He is an eminent engineer, and is therefore well qualified to estimate the various complexities of tl»e problem * but he is also a'sincere and friend to the labourer, whether Of high or low degree. In his opinion the unions err through ignorance rather than from malice; but their organisation often makes them masters pf the situation, and therefore renders the difficulty of the English manufacturers all the greater in competing with their foreign rivals. The injury done to British trade by the Engineer’s strike was something enormous, and, in order to provide against a similar calamity, Sir Edward Bttd makes an earnest appeal for the education of the workers so that they may be enabled to use their undoubted power wisely Jnd’well ia the owtt iwwfcj*

Mb Swinburne is one of the few men who have attained eminence, yet left their University without taking a degree. Although Mr Swinburne had a remarkable gift for classics, and is indeed one of the finest Greek scholars, he could not s.ettle down to work at Balliol. His heart was elsewhere, and he left Oxford without a pang to luxuriate with Walter Savage Landor in Italy. Mr Swinburne leads a hermit’s life at Putney, wedded to “ Children and the Muses.”