Endeavor to find examples, in this book or in others, of the different uses of the word; apply it in different uses to different countries.
2. Treat the statistics in sect. 418 as suggested previously, by graphic representation. How did British commerce compare in growth with world commerce? Did England keep her share in the world’s trade? Try to find in English history reasons for the ups and downs of trade, and for its gains and losses in comparison with the world’s trade. Beware, however, of hasty conclusions; many pitfalls are concealed in commercial statistics. In the table in the text, for example, the early figures are those of total exports and imports of merchandise, including wares simply passing through English hands to foreign customers; the figures for 1816 and the following years show only exports of British produce and manufacture, and imports retained in the country. This change in the method of measurement, rather than the crisis following the Napoleonic wars, explains the drop in the figures. This last method of measurement will be followed in later tables.
3. The following list gives the value, in millions of pounds, of all items over 1.0, in total exports of 71.3. Coal, etc., 1.2, cotton yarn, 6.3, cotton manufactures 21.8, haberdashery and millinery 1.4, hardware and cutlery 2.6, linen manufactures 3.9, iron and steel 5.3, woolen yarn 1.4, woolen manufactures 8.5. (If various other items were grouped we could add: copper about 2., silk about 1.)
Arrange these items and represent them by spaces on a line, for help in realizing their relative importance, and for comparison with earlier and later conditions. [See Statesman’s Year-Book for present trade. Note that these items include only home produce and manufactures, so foreign produce, such as colonial wares, should be excluded in making the comparison with another period. Statistics of this period give only quantities, not values, of foreign and colonial merchandise exported. Values of foreign and colonial merchandise exported are available for 1854 and the following years. In 1854 the items over one million pounds were: cotton 2.3, indigo 1.2, wool 1.4. Among the items under one million were: coffee .7, wine .7, raw silk .7, tea .5, rice .5, guano .5, raw sugar .3, unstemmed tobacco .3. What changes are suggested by these figures, in comparison with those of about 1800?]
4. Review the substance of sections 245 ff., or read the account of the great inventions and their effects in Rand, Ec. hist., chap. 2.
5. Mining and metal production up to 1846. [Traill, Soc. England, 6: 194-199.]
6. Coal mining. [Same, 6: 367-379.]
7. Development of the English transportation system. [Same, 6: 199-211; McCarthy, Hist. vol. 1, chap. 4; Ward, Reign, 2: 83-111.]
8. Development of the textile manufactures. [Soc. England, 6: 69-75.]
9. Study the items in sect. 424 in the way suggested for sect. 419.