FOREIGN COMPETITION.
Sir John Brown, of the well-known firm of John Brown & Co., has said that he ‘feared England had almost, if not altogether reached the summit of her prosperity, and that she must not again look for any material prosperity such as the last thirty or forty years had displayed.’ English trade was being nibbled right and left by Germany, Austria, Prussia, and the United States. Illustrating this, Sir John stated that his large ship-building Company at Hull had recently taken their supplies of steel plates from Germany at prices varying from ten shillings to twenty shillings per ton below the prices at which Sheffield could supply the material. The same was true of ship-building firms at Newcastle and other places. Notwithstanding the cost of carriage, rails were sent more cheaply from Germany, by Antwerp and the German Ocean, to Hull and Newcastle than they could be made in England. A process of cold-rolling is known only to certain French and American houses; and it is curious, but not altogether creditable to ourselves, that steel is sent to Paris to be cold-rolled, and is afterwards returned to this country.