| 1881 | 1882 | 1883 | 1884 | 1885 | 1886 | 1887 | 1888 | 1889 | 1890 | 1891 | 1892 | 1893 | 1894 | 1895 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Quantities—thousd. cwts. | 354 | 409 | 392 | 476 | 402 | 427 | 453 | 500 | 493 | 497 | 524 | 541 | 605 | 577 | 728 |
| Values—thousd. £’s. | 398 | 458 | 450 | 548 | 472 | 447 | 452 | 482 | 503 | 534 | 571 | 586 | 644 | 621 | 757 |
The following diagram illustrates the almost continuous increase in the value of our soap exports during the last ten years:—
Looking at the above figures, it will be seen that in the last six years alone we have added to our exports a sum greater than the total yet attained by Germany. Is it necessary to say more? What pessimistic madness could have led Mr. Williams to “black-list” such a splendidly-thriving and notoriously profitable industry as this, just because he finds a few thousand hundredweight of foreign soap creeping into the country?
CHAPTER IV.
More Misrepresentations.
Attention was called in the last chapter to some of the picturesque exaggerations—to use the mildest possible term—in which Mr. Williams had indulged in dealing with the chemical trades. We now pass to the two chapters which he devotes to the iron and steel and their “daughter trades.” And at the outset let it be clearly understood that I do not for a moment deny that in some of these trades the progress of Germany has been relatively more rapid than our own. A child, if it is to grow at all, must move faster than an adult. An infant four weeks old doubles its age in a month; an adult takes thirty or forty years to double his. Nor can we expect that the whole world will stand still while Great Britain goes on every year adding to her strength. All that I do argue is that the shooting-up of the German infant does us on the whole no harm, and that there is nothing whatever in the figures of our trade to suggest that full-grown England is approaching senile decay.
“ICHABOD! OUR TRADE HAS GONE.”
With this general prelude let us turn to what Mr. Williams has to say about the industries connected with iron and steel. He opens by referring to a visit of the English Iron and Steel Institute to Düsseldorf in 1880:—
“And when the time of feasting and talk and sight-seeing was over, they returned to their native land, and there, in the fulness of time, they perused the fatuous reports of the British Iron Trade Association, which bade them sleep on, sleep ever. And they did as they were bid, until the other day, when they awoke to the fact that their trade was gone.”
Another paragraph, headed “Ichabod!” begins:—