Rensselaer Journal, Volume 10, Number 38, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 February 1901 — DANCER TO BRITISH TRADE. [ARTICLE]

DANCER TO BRITISH TRADE.

X*rd BoMbery O*Ha Atteatto* to •** Formidable Competition. At a meeting of the Wolverhampton Chamber of Commerce ex-Prime Minister Rosebery made a speech to which he dealt to a most serious strain with the Industrial and commercial competition by which Great Britain is faced. He declared that the future is dark and gloomy. .It Is difficulty, even unwise, to try to prophesy what It may have In store. He was not Alarmed, he said, by the constant piling up of Immense and costly armaments by Europe. They rather tended toward peace than otherwise, The war he feared was not military. It was that great war of trade that was Inevitably coming, and which, so far as he could see, would be one of the greatest and most serious with which Gerat Britain ever had to cope. While not putting other nations out of the category, it was from the United States and Germany that the British had the most to fear. America, with its almost incalculable resources and the acuteness and enterprising spirit of Its people, was the most formidable of all competitors. The Germans, although somewhat slow and unwieldly, were scarcely Inferior rivals owing to their silent and persistent methods and unconquerable spirit. Lord Rosebery said one striking feature of the American competition was that the great Individual fortunes being made in the United States were not employed, as they probably would be in England, to enable their makers to retire and enjoy social and other pleasures, but were Invested In great trusts and syndicates for concentrating attacks on British trade. The millions so invested could be wielded as engines of warfare in such Irresistible form as to constitute a danger which the British could not afford to Ignore. If one or two of the trusts combined for the purpose of competing with any branch of British trade by underselling they might obtain such a monopoly in that branch as to almost drive Great Britain out of the market. After a further reference to Germany Lord" Rosebery asked what Great Britain was going to do to avoid defeat He, as a layman, hesitated to attempt to answer, but if he did attempt to reply he would say that th? remedy lay In education. He believed that the British people were the best raw material In the world, but he was convinced that their commercial men required to be educated and trained scientifically from bottom to top. Their training now was both InsuflSclent and too Insular. For Instance, they did not send their young men abroad as others did to learn methods of business and manufacture. He suggested that the Chambers of Commerce consider the question of devoting a certain sum annually for traveling scholarships, which, he was inclined to believe, would yield fruit a hundredfold. An official report shows that the Imports of unwrought steel Into the United Kingdom tn 1900 amounted to 170,000 tons against 77,000 tons In 1890. The Increase was mainly from the United States, which sent 157,000 tons. The large Imports are attributed to the high price of coal in Great Britain. —New York Sun.