“And now all that is changed. The world’s consumption (of iron) is greater than ever before. Yet our contribution in the years since 1882 has dropped at a rate well nigh unknown in the history of any trade in any land. From the 8,493,287 tons of 1882 pig iron has gone hustling down to the 7,364,745 tons of 1894.”
Truly Mr. Williams is an ingenious person. By picking out the two years 1882 and 1894 he has cunningly obscured the fact that the production of pig iron, as of everything else, is subject to fluctuations, and that 1894, following worse years than itself, will in all probability be followed by better. Here are all the figures for the last fifteen years for which statistics are available, with the German figures set beside them:—
Production of Pig Iron.
In Millions of Tons.
| 1880 | 1881 | 1882 | 1883 | 1884 | 1885 | 1886 | 1887 | 1888 | 1889 | 1890 | 1891 | 1892 | 1893 | 1894 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| In the United Kingdom | 7·7 | 8·1 | 8·6 | 8·5 | 7·8 | 7·4 | 7·0 | 7·6 | 8·0 | 8·3 | 7·9 | 7·4 | 6·7 | 7·0 | 7·4 |
| In Germany | 2·7 | 2·9 | 3·4 | 3·5 | 3·6 | 3·7 | 3·5 | 4·0 | 4·3 | 4·5 | 4·7 | 4·6 | 4·9 | 5·0 | 5·4 |
These figures show that Germany has without doubt been rapidly gaining upon us, but it is the grossest exaggeration to say that our trade “has gone.” As a matter of fact the output of pig iron in the United Kingdom rose to 7·9 million tons in 1895, and—according to the Economist of November 11th—the estimated output for the present year (1896) is 8·7 million tons. If that figure is realised it will be the largest on record. So much for Mr. Williams’s “Ichabods,” and all his talk of departed glory!
COMPARISONS SAID TO BE “ODIOUS.”
Turning to another paragraph headed “Odious Comparisons,” we find—
“Under the general heading of iron, wrought and unwrought, the returns of our German exports exhibit a fall from 374,234 tons in 1890 to 295,510 tons in 1895.... Of unenumerated iron manufactures Germany supplied us with 219,841 cwt. in 1890 and with 311,904 cwt. in 1895.”
Had Mr. Williams taken the trouble to convert the German figures from cwts. into tons he might have found this comparison somewhat less “odious.” If we send Germany 295 thousand tons against 15 thousand tons she sends us, our iron manufacturers have not much to grumble at. But, as a matter of fact, no reliance can be placed upon these particular figures, because, as was pointed out in a previous chapter, much of the stuff that we get from Germany is credited in our Blue Books to Holland and Belgium, and these countries in the same way are debited with a large amount of British stuff that ultimately finds its way to Germany. Exactly the same causes of error vitiate the figures published in the German Green Books, and it may safely be asserted that there is no means of ascertaining with even approximate accuracy how much British iron and steel goes to Germany and how much German steel and iron comes to Great Britain. What can be ascertained is the total export of German iron from Germany to all parts of the world, and the total export of British iron from the United Kingdom to all parts of the world. This comparison, which is one of the best means of testing the relative progress of Great Britain and Germany, is worked out in the following table:—