Foreign competition.
It has been already pointed out that in England we have to contend against competition of two kinds—against the cheaper labour of the Continent on the one side, and against the superior natural resources of America on the other. While we occupy at the present time a highly favoured position, which has been attained not merely by the skill of our workmen, but by the administrative skill of their employers, and the gradual accumulation of an ample capital in their hands, the race with other great manufacturing countries is very close. The Swiss have entered into competition with our own manufacturers, both in the home and foreign trades. The exports of textile fabrics from Switzerland, as we learn from Mr. Gosling’s report, have risen from £12,485,000 in 1860, to £26,464,000 in 1871, an advance of 112½ per cent. In this total the exports to the United States have risen from £509,000 in 1862, to £2,159,000 in 1872, in other words, over 324 per cent. In cheap silks and ribbons the Swiss are able to compete with the British producer in the English market; and, to sum up the case in the words of Mr. Gosling, ‘The advantages of Switzerland in competition with Great Britain are the use of water power as a substitute for steam power to the extent of upwards of 80 per cent., low wages, long hours of labour, and a minimum expenditure for management.’ On the other hand, as an inland country, Switzerland has to pay heavy freights, the workmen are inferior in activity to our own, buildings for machinery are more costly, and from want of capital, production is on a smaller scale than here. The balance, however, seems to be greatly in favour of Switzerland, and cannot fail to become greater from day to day.
Such being the case as regards textile industry, Mr. Lothian Bell has recently pointed out, that, in ores of the finer descriptions, the resources of the United States are unlimited, while in coal our own wealth is, in comparison, poverty. There is but one bar to the boundless production of minerals in the New World, that is to say, the want of hands to manufacture them.