A Gloomy Picture.

Feilding Star, Volume XVI, Issue 12, 14 July 1894, Page 4

A Gloomy Picture.

In the House of Commons recently a bimetallist gave the following gloomy picture of the present condition of trade in England: — Never in the present century, he said, had the condition of the Lancashire cotton trade been so hopeless as it was in the last few years, never had the losses been so 'great, never had the profits so entirely disappeared. And do one acquainted with the trade could deny that it was moving from this country to the silver usin=; countries in* Asia mainly because of the depreciation of silver and enormous bounty thereby £iven to competitors in India, China, ami Japan. He found that in twenty years since the demonetisation o( silver commenced the consumption of cotton in Great Britain had increased by only 17 percent., whereas the increase on the Continent bad been 123 per cent., in the United ~ States 125 per cent., and in India 66 cent. In 1873 our consumption was 46 per cent of that of ibe whole world, and in 1803 it was only 29 per cent. In 1877 the shipment of yaru* from England to the Far East was ! 30,000,0001b5, and in 1893 it was j 28,000,Q001b5, while the shipment from India bad increased from six million pounds in the former year to 132,00U,0001bs in the latter That was one of the main results of the demonetisation of silver. As showing the unprofitable nature of the British trade, he mentioned that in Oldham, the largest spinning centre in Lancas liire, a hundred joint-stock companies, with a capital of £6,000,000, bad paid an average dividend during the last ton years of 2£ per cent., white the stock had fallen to about a third of its original value. The private manufacturers were practically in the same condition, and unless relief came within the next few years Lancashire was threatened with a positive catastrophe. He could say the same of the woollen, the iron, the coal, and other trades. They were all in a deplorable condition. Agriculture, also, the House knew, was in a very depressed state. The whole of the producing trades of the country were in a state of decay, and it was mainly through these trades that the mays of the people in all countries obtained a living." This sombre picture provod too much for the members. They fled from (he House, and the doleful orator's utterances came to an abrupt cloc-o.