CARNEGIE ON THE INDUSTRIAL LOOKOUT

Greymouth Evening Star, Volume XXXI, 20 July 1901, Page 4

CARNEGIE ON THE INDUSTRIAL LOOKOUT

In the current number of the “Nine teenth Century’’ Mr Carnegie adds his voice to those who for years have been warning England that unless she wakes up her position as an industrial power will depart. The position is sufficiently serious to have attracted wide attention, and Mr Carnegie gives full force to its seriousness in his early pages, writing as pessimistically as any of those who have freely predicted the decline and fall of England from tho ranks of the great Powers. He points out that England’s percentage of the world’s shipping is decreasing every year, she has none of the fast monster steamship which carry the German flag, she stands still in iron-mak-ing, though Germany has rapidly advanced the output of the United States has now reached 13,500,000 tons a year, and will be greater this year, England’s will be less than last. The same may be said of steel industry, and in textiles England is yearly importing more and exporting less. The daily operations of tho New York Stock Exchange exceed those of London. America instead of being England’s greatest debtor is becoming one of her chief creditors. Of far less importance is the fact that Greater New York is growingko much faster than London, that before another twenty years have passed, London will have to surrender its position as the largest city in the world. Other items to which Mr Carnegie draws attention arc the equipment of British tramways and subways with American devices and machinery, the use on English railways and in the colonies of American rails, bridges, and locomotives, and tho importation by Belfast and Glasgow of thousands of tons of American ship-plates. Having, as he thinks, sufficiently depressed the Britisher Mr Carnegie goes on to show that matters are not so bad as they look. The Englishman must realise his limitations, he must cease tojmeasurehis one country, with its forty-one million people, on 127,000 square miles, with the forty-five countries of the American Union, with their seventy-one million inhabitants on throe and a half million square miles Great Britain can still claim supremacy in some things—in aggregate wealth, for one, in which the Stales do not approach her, in weaving, in foreign commerce, in foreign commerce, in foreign shipping (in which her lead is so great that no man living is likely to see it surpassed) and in ship-building, concerning wh’ch ho remarks that when Britain burds 866.000 tons in a year, America 249,000 and Germany probably not' ha f it is premature to take alarm.

Mr Carnegie holds that all may yet be well with Great Britain if she learns in time the necessity of changing her policy. She must stop seeking increased responsibilities throughout the world, she must provoke no wars and no longer antagonise not only the Governments but the people of other countries, she must, in short, drop the policy which has led to the increased expenditure by which she has already lost “her proud boast of supremacy in credit—a loss of genuine prestige. No irretrievable disaster has yet occurred, but the danger signal is up.’’ Mr Carnegie emphasises later on his disbelief in the extension of the Empire, voluntary or enforced, as a means of extending British trade. He deplores the sacrifice of' so many lives and so much money “in pursuit of shadowy dominion over banon territory in far-off, sparsely populated lands, ostensibly to secure new markets for British products. The markets of uncivilised lands amount to so little, and Britain has no advantages for her nominal sway under the policy of freetrade ; for trade does not follow the flag —it follows the lowest price current. . . Conquering new territory for markets abroad is dropping the sub-tance for the sUadow chasing rainbows. ” He apparently does not take into consideration the possible effects upon the Empire and British prestige as it existed if this new territory had not been conqnered, nor the other reaaons which have influenced England in taking up the “ white man’s burden. ” As for the British Army, it has gained from its easy victories oth 1 savageraces the “ dangerous impression that 25,000 British troops could march anywhere and do anything. ’’ That is an impression at any rate, which has been jolted out of us during the last year or so, though we still have the belief in the material of our Army and our face, which Mr Carnegie apparently holds with

us. Concerning this question he speaks with no uncertain voice. “Our industrial and military Armies,” he says, have been playing at work ” ; but that is not the end of the matter, the qualities of the race lie dormant, and are still there; the dogged endurance, the ambition to excel, the will to do or die, are all there; but it has not been necessary to drill them into disciplined action. Let serious disaster come in industry or war; let British trade really be captured by others, and decline to the point of closing mills and bringing home to the employer and employed that it is change nr ruin ; or let the sceptred isle be invaded. . . . and the world will then see—but perhaps not till then—what wonders the race can still perform when it fights, not for shadow}' paramountcy over others, but home and country.” If this is indeed so, and our present seeming decline is but the effect of long years of peaceful supremacy, we need but the lesson we are now learning to prove that, as Mr Carnegie says, “The blood has not deteriorated.”