IRELAND EXPORT TRADE.

Hokitika Guardian, 25 February 1920, Page 4

IRELAND EXPORT TRADE.

A general export boom,

(A Belfast Correspondent.)

Ireland at the present time is enjoying her golden age of trade. Happily too, her people are beginning to discard their parochial outlook, and while they find that Sinn Fein (“ourselves alone”) may ibe pleasant enough as a theory, there is much more satisfaction in the practical financial results through having commercial and trade relations with the great open world market rather than with their neighbours in the village square. As a matter of fact, Ireland’s foreign export trade was never more prosperous and never more hopeful. There is, of course, the traditional exception, since the linen trade, owing to the lack of raw material, finds the outlook not too optimistic. However, what it loses in quantity is made up in quality—the pleasing quality that speaks in terms of £ s. d.—since buyers all the world over are clamouring for linen goods and eager to pay more than fourfold their pre-war values if they can procure them. But linen’s temporary depression is the exception proving the rule of the general prosperity of Ireland’s other export industries.

j THE-WORLD AS MARKET. I What is really remarkable nowadays i is that, if you chat to the director of ! even a minor third-rate factory, situat- ; ed, mayhap in a village probably a | score of miles distant from the near- ! est railway station, lie will astonish you by the information that he has orders in hand for Melbourne, Los Angeles, ißio Janieri, Calcutta, or maybe for distant Vancouver. So there is a very great deal of truth in the statement made by “The Times” Special Commissioner, who said: “Of Ireland a s a manufacturing country (as, indeed, it is essentially an agricultural one), few people have ever considered the peculiarly high reputation which Irish goods have won for .themselves in a variety of lines. Irish ships, Irish linens, Irish whiskey, Irish' stout, Irish mineral waters, Irish embroidery, Irish knitted gloves, and coats, Irish lace, Irish tweeds—the names of all these are as familiar to the public outside Ireland as arc the names of Irish hunters and Irish bacon.

“This is a remarkable list for a people whose total industrial output is no larger than that of Ireland, and it is perhaps the more remarkable as several of the commodities the reputation does not depend on a large volume of production. The work is largely home or cottage work' and owes its reputation to nothing but its excellence, which must also be the basis of the success in the larger establishments.’’ NEW' TRANSIT facilities. Now, if this statement was true a decade ago, when it was written, it is infinitely more so to-day. In fact, so great within recent months lias this desire for foreign trade been developed that direct lines of steamers have been established between Ireland and Spain, Ghent, Antwerp and Gothenburg, the Traus-atlantic trade is carried directly on by two separate companies between Baltimore and New York on the other side, and Dublin, Belfast and Cork on this side. Moreover, it is also intended that there shall be other lines between Italy and other Continental countries direct with Irish ports.

It is possible that the observer who takes up the Board of Trade returns, just issued for 1918 will nevertheless experience some disappointment when he sees that, while the direct import foreign trade from abroad, was £15,031,000, the export trade was only £559,000 This last-mentioned figure (i.e. of exports) is only representative of direct exports. It must be understood that Irish export goods are in a multiplicity of forms and so diversified in regard to their destinations that it is not possible to h.i.l . p entire cargoes of any one eon... i ity direct for any foreign port, ;;>:iness’s stout can be obtained r” ~ r the globe, and though 893,778 ..cads represented the export-, in the depth of war (1916), no .ete cargo was shipped overseas. , five pairs of Bailgriggan stock- ~, might coat £4, yet their postage

. U.S.A., would be merely about the same as that of a letter. Hence it might ‘be safe to presume that a very, great bulk of the £41,606,872 which represented the value of the goods exported from Ireland to Great Britain during 1917 was intended for export overseas from Liverpool or other ports. In this connection does it ever occur to the average Englishman that while the goods imported into Great Britain during 1914, from the United States were valued, at £51,283,674, Ireland simultaneously sent John Bull goods valued at as much as £41,606,872? DEVELOPING EXPOIIT TRADE. Another proof of the vast development of Irish export trade is furnished in the fact that during the past month the Coast Lines Steamship Company, Ltd.—a company largely owned by Lord Pirrie and Sir Owen Phillips —has acquired most of the steamers tradfng between (Ireland and Great Britain, with the object ostensibly that they may act as contributory feeders to the great overseas lines which trade to ail parts of the world, and with which they are connected. That so shrewd leaders of commerce deem the Irish export trade worth, developing is shown by the fact that for one of these acquired companies the purchase price was over 13 millions sterling—the shareholders being paid nine times the face value of their holdings. Yet this acquired concern’s trading is only between Liverpool and two northern Irish ports—Belfast and Londonderry. So assuredly prospects for Irish export trade must bo deemed very hopeful. ■Sr.**#