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The United States, with a population exactly twice as large as that of the United Kingdom, consumed in 1909 exactly six times as large a quantity of cotton goods as the United Kingdom. In other words, the average American family bought in 1909 three times as many shirts, sheets, handkerchiefs, etc., as the average British family. The figures 20,000,000l. for Great Britain and 120,000,000l. for the United States are practically manufacturers' cost prices. As the charges and profits of the middleman are far larger in America than in Great Britain, it follows that the American public expends not six times but from eight to ten times as much money on cotton goods as does the British public. We may therefore safely say that the average American family buys every year three times as large a quantity of cotton goods, and spends every year from four to five times as much money on cotton goods of every kind, as the average family in Great Britain.

Our cotton industry suffers from the narrowness and insufficiency of the British home markets. It suffers from the poverty of our working population, whch has to stint itself of cotton goods. What prevents the average British family spending as much on cotton sheets, shirts, etc., as is spent by the average American family? Chiefly the insufficiency of British wages, which all Tariff Reformers wish to raise, and which, no doubt, they will be able to raise considerably under Tariff Reform. Universal experience has shown that the introduction of a Tariff has that effect upon the wages of labour. If our people were as prosperous as the American people, our cotton industry should theoretically be able to sell every year in the British home market from four to five times as large a quantity of cotton goods as it does at present. It should sell, in the United Kingdom alone, cotton goods to the value of from 80,000,000l. to 100,000,000l. It is of course doubtful whether our workers will become as prosperous as the American workers. Besides, if they should become as prosperous, they might not be as lavish in their expenditure on cotton goods. They might prefer some more exhilarating form of spending their money. However, it seems perfectly fair to assume that under improved industrial conditions, which Tariff Reform will no doubt bring about, every British family should spend half as much money as the average American family. That is, surely, a conservative estimate. In that case we should have a sale of cotton goods in the home market of about 50,000,000l. per year. If British wages were better, the home market should easily be able to absorb an additional 30,000,000l. worth of British cottons. This, therefore, is another reason why Lancashire should support Tariff Reform.

Apart from this more remote benefit, Tariff Reform would bring an immediate benefit to the British cotton industry in the home market. Very few people are aware that Great Britain is an enormous importer of foreign cotton goods, which enter this country in constantly growing quantities, as the following figures show :

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The cotton goods imported into Great Britain during 1911 were classified as follows:

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It will be noticed that the cotton goods imported into Great Britain in 1911 were not coarse yarns and piece goods, but belonged almost exclusively to the highest class. They were goods which were made valuable owing to the large amount of labour contained in them. It is probably an understatement to say that of the 10,379,1511. of cotton goods imported into Great Britain in 1911, 7,000,000l. represented wages of labour and profits of manufacturers and middlemen. The bulk of these 7,000,000l. could be secured to British manufacturers, middlemen, and wage earners by Tariff Reform. Comparison will show how enormous is the amount of cotton goods imported into this country. Cotton piece goods constitute 75 per cent. of our cotton exports. Of these we sent the following to those European countries enumerated in the monthly accounts of trade and navigation, and the United States:

British Exports of Cotton Piece Goods in 1911

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In 1911, therefore, the foreign cotton goods which we imported were of greater value than the piece goods which we exported to all the countries enumerated in the foregoing table.

To our cotton industry the Chinese market is second in importance only to the Indian market, which is by far our largest outlet. In 1911 we sent to China, inclusive of Hong Kong, cotton goods of all kinds to the value of 10,018,2191. The foregoing figures show that by a tariff we can secure to our cotton industry within our frontiers a market about as large as that afforded for cotton piece goods by all Europe and the United States combined, and considerably larger than the Chinese market. We can have it for the asking. It can be secured by Lancashire by a stroke of the pen. These figures show incidentally that we need not fear retaliation, because we can capture in the home market cotton trade of far greater value than that which we can possibly lose by retaliation. Besides, experience teaches us that a carefully drafted tariff, supported by a wise diplomacy, does not lead to retaliation or to a Customs

war.

I think the Lancashire cotton industry has not understood its best interests in opposing Tariff Reform. It has opposed it through lack of knowledge. It has opposed it because it honestly believed that a tariff would have a fatal effect upon its productions, and especially upon its export trade. It has opposed it because it has not sufficiently studied its great rival, the American cotton industry, and the effect which the high Protective tariff has had upon that industry. That effect was described as follows by the United States Tariff Board in its Report:

On account of the different mill methods in this country, the domestic labour cost of weaving on a large variety of plain fabrics of wide consumption is below the foreign cost. Except in the case of a few special fabrics, and in the case of various manufactured articles, some of which are produced in this country to a very slight extent, the American industry practically supplies the whole consumption. The imports of yarn in 1910 were less than one-half of 1 per cent. of the home production in pounds. The imports of cotton cloth were less than 2 per cent. of the home production in value.

Mill prices are in many cases as low in this country as in the world's markets. Where higher, as in the case of the finer classes of products, they are rarely higher by anything like the whole amount of the duty. The effect of the present tariff, then, in most cases is not so much to add the duty to the domestic manufacturer's price as to secure him the American market; and, in the case of most articles of widest consumption, to prevent the competition of the foreign manufacturer, either in normal or abnormal times. On account of more costly methods of distribution in this country from producer to consumer, the latter pays a decidedly higher retail price than the European consumer, even in the case of fabrics on which the cost of production and the mill price are as low here as there.

How would the simultaneous introduction of Tariff Reform and of American manufacturing methods affect the cotton workers?

It may, of course, be argued that if we introduced American labour-saving machinery we should displace 150,000 cotton workers, and that, for that reason alone, we ought not to change our manufacturing methods. That argument seems to me illogical. Experience teaches us two lessons: Firstly, that the introduction of labour-saving machinery increases the demand for manufactured articles so greatly as not to reduce, but to increase, the number of workers; secondly, that a deliberate retention of antiquated methods and labour-wasting machinery inevitably brings about the ruin of industries and of the workers engaged in them. Lastly, it is not my impression that the American cotton workers work harder than the English. Their great output is solely due to better machinery and organisation. By clinging to its present methods and to Free Trade, Lancashire will not even succeed in maintaining its present position. It will, instead, hand over its trade in neutral markets partly to the more perfectly equipped cotton industries of the United States, and partly to the cheap labour industries of Japan and China, to the great harm of Lancashire and its workers.

It is frequently asserted that Tariff Reform would ruin our cotton industry. I think I have shown that Tariff Reform should greatly benefit it. It would raise wages substantially, increase our market for cotton goods at home, and preserve for us the markets of India and the Dominions and Colonies. It should rather lower than increase our cost of production, and therefore promote our cotton exports to foreign countries. Of the industries of this country the cotton trade should be one of the greatest beneficiaries.

J. ELLIS BARKER.

A COMEDY OF LLAN AWSTIN

SKETCHEd from LIFE

THE most important edifice in the town of Llan Awstin, in the opinion of Gwilym Rhys, was that which contained the town library, and the most important person in it undoubtedly himself, the custodian thereof.

His kingdom was a very tiny one, consisting of a narrow slip of a room on the second floor of the Llan Awstin Town Hall, which had been boarded off roughly for the purpose, the major portion being used as a billiard-room. The revenue derived from the billiards made possible the existence of the library, though to suggest such a thing to Gwilym would have offended him. deeply. The billiard-room was a thorn in his side, and he hated the sounds of clicking balls and noisy laughter which came through the partition.

Gwilym Rhys had not always been librarian of Llan Awstin. For nearly thirty years he had been schoolmaster at the village of Llan-y-Graigoleu, five miles away. An able, almost a brilliant, master, but never a popular one either with his pupils or with those in authority over him. For he was a silent, surly being. If he had been a poet this reserve might have been forgiven him. His fellow-countrymen would have set it down to the awen' working within him, and have shown for that mysterious force the customary Celtic appreciation and respect. But he had no power of expression, and none knew of his passionate devotion to the bards of his own country, of the hours, out of school-time, that he would spend in poring over his two especial favourites, Dafydd ab Gwilym and Goronwy Owain. So he lived, a solitary-souled creature, with never a friend of either sex, until, just as he had entered upon his sixtieth year, he was stricken down by an illness from which he arose with a shattered frame and enfeebled brain. The world no longer seemed to hold any place for him, and he would have been content to sit day after day in utter lethargy of body and mind, had it not been necessary that he should give place to his successor in the little school-house; so the Board to whom he had rendered years of faithful service had found for him the post of librarian at Llan Awstin.

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