COMMERCIAL RECOVERIES IN 1880.

Globe, Volume XXIII, Issue 2202, 17 March 1881, Page 3

COMMERCIAL RECOVERIES IN 1880.

["Pall Mall Budget.”] It cannot be doubted that on a very large scale and in all parts of the country, the balance sheets which careful and prudent people will occupy themselves this week in making up will be (with exceptions, of course) the best they have had for six or seven years. At a future time, when it has become possible to take a true and unexcited retrospect of the seven years 1874 80, so far as relates to the commercial experience of this country, it will be admitted without cavil, that no stronger proof was ever afforded of the strength and soundness of our economic condition than the comparative ease, the absence of sedition and discontent, the perfect self-reliancs and faith in national resources with which we were carried through bad harvests, bad trade, hostile foreign tariffs, and, as some said, the overpowering competitiin of foreign countries. In 1878 9, when our difficulties were nt the worst, when prices were lowest, and eur imports, to the dismay of reciprocitarians, were at the highest, the small stammering tribe of surviving protectionists could not venture to call even a hole and-oornor public meeting, and could not find any public spokesman above the very humble capacity of Lord Bateman. It is still more to the purpose that the hankering after exploded opinions was confined almost wholly to the landlord and farming class. The middle and trading classes and the working population all over the country were wholly u.unoved and untouched, except in the way of laughter, by the attempt to revive the slain absurdities of the free trade ora. This is a great and a real triumph of the cause of truth, and be-

cause a great and of a real triumph that cause, a solid economic foundation on which to build our calculations regarding the future. The year 1880, now closing, opened with a degree of buoyancy and excitement too closely resembling the inflation of 1873 4. Almost everything was rising in price, and almost everywhere for the same insufficient reason ; namely, that something else had risen, and therefore something eise ought to rise and was sure to do so. No condition of mercantile affairs can be more perilous. Happily, before the first three months of 1880 were over, the violence of the excitement worked its own cure ; but it left behind many unpleasant legacies, to be exhibited very plainly in the sinister figures of positive loss or abated profit in no small number of balance-sheets now making up. Still, when all abatements are made, 1880 will be remembered os a good year—as a year of welcome release from a series of years almost the longest in recent times of defective harvests, cold and rainy seasons, disturbed foreign politics, and increasing rivalry of other countries. For the defective seasons there is no direct cure, but there are within our reach many indirect sources of mitigation. We can apply more science and skill to agriculture, and we can amend in the light of modern thought the system of land tenure set up in the days of landlord omnipotence and prolonged by the force of landlord ignorance and superstition. For disturbed foreign politics we can substitute juster views and conceptions of the duties and interests of this island abroad ; and regarding the rivalry of other countries, we can press forward with still greater ardour and knowledge along the ten thousand paths which present themselves to us, but all converging upon the same ultimate purpose of raising to a higher level of science and skill the industry and energy by which alone, under modern conditions of free labour and free competition, a community can holt and enlarge whatever pre-eminence it may possess. It is no small satisfaction to know that the closing cycle of years of bad trade has left most manifest and wholesome traces of auch advancement in nearly all the manufactures and arts, in which to the qualities of soundness and utility in the commodities produced we can now add taste, design, and simplicity of fabrication, and reduced oast of materials and labor. Technical education is now with us a reality and a power. We know what it means, and we know where to look for and to find the men and women who by its means earn handsome wages already ; and by the best use of technical aptitude and resources are satisfied that they can and will earn still better. We have ascertained by searching competitive examinations held all over the country that among the humblest classes of all, both male and female, there is no lack of natural ability, capable in a few years of raising to a level yet unheard of the industrial development of the nation. These are solid foots. Let Germany ruin itself by doubling its tariff in order to obtain money to be spent on forts and armies. Let France, if it pleases, muddle away a sensible percentage of its revenue in subsidizing sugarlakers and shipbuilders; And let America continue to be the patient slave of a scheme of protection so gross and oppressive that in a few years every sensible citizen of the Republic will look back npon it with shame and disgust. These are all violent and artificial interferences with the course of nature, and the growth of the only kinds of intrinsic strength which raise one people over another. They will have their day, their growth, their explosion, and their collapse, with the result of rendering helpless in the race the competitors who have wasted in befooling and pampering the jockey the resources which should have trained and fortified the horse.

The year 1880 leaves trade in this country sound. Bad debts have not been formidable nor many. Bad bills are not plentiful, and "finance paper” has not yet been largely created by new adventurers and new companies. Savings have begun to assume their usual dimensions, and there has been a sensible and happy curtailment of the vulgar and vicious expenditure on luxury and disolay which distinguished and disgraced the " Prosperity years.” 1881 brings with it: the obligation of guarding all these good symptoms and amended habits. It is plain that one of the first perils of 1881 will be the activity of the “ promoter,” and the display of bis indefatigable and ingenious handiwork in prospectuses relating to every object under the sun, and to many objects which cannot bo under tie sun at all without fearful mischief to somebody. The activity, and still more the success, of the “promoter” means the undue and baneful prominence of Stock Exchange dealing and speculation. Our system of credit and finance is so elastic and expansive, and our resources of capital in a ready form are so great, that a season of excited trade from any cause has become with us a national danger. 1880 bands over to 1881 trade which is sound but not excited ; prosperity which is real but not bewildering; and a working population well and contentedly employed. So far the winter of 1880 1 has been the most favorable for a dozen years, and if the harvest of the next autumn corresponds to the propitious character of its seed-time the coming year will be greater than the one passing awav.