The Stratford Evening Post WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER. FRIDAY, AUGUST 21, 1914. BRITISH TRADE RETURNS.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXX, Issue 3, 21 August 1914, Page 4

The Stratford Evening Post WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER. FRIDAY, AUGUST 21, 1914. BRITISH TRADE RETURNS.

The British trade returns issued at the beginning of July, illustrate irioto forcibly than any which have yet appeared the check in the full tide of trade boom. Imports are down by a trifle on tho month (owing, it is stated, to a very heavy decline in the import of food), and exports are shown to have fallen prodigiously as compared with last Juno (the fall being all but entirely in exported manufactures, only wool showing any increase which can be called important), and the rest, from cotton with its decline of £l,500,000, and iron with a fall of £BOO,000, down to tho £B2 less shown in the silk export figures, exhibiting various stages of pretty generally arrested development. 0»i the six months the figures are superficially more impressive still: for compared with 1913 both imports and exports show a very heavy collapse. But n corrective to undue pessimism is. the London News considers, supplied by merely casting tho eye back to the previous year. Imports are, it is true, nearly £3,000,000 less on the half-year than they were in 1913; but they are still £22,000,000 more than in 1912. Exports are about £1,500,000 less than last year; but they are a round £30,000,000 more than tho year before.