ENGLAND'S INDUSTRY.

Waikato Times, Volume XXXIV, Issue 2766, 5 April 1890, Page 6 (Supplement)

ENGLAND'S INDUSTRY.

The English correspondent of a Melbourne contemporary thus contrasts London and Birmingham : —The secret of England's greatness is, I take it, in her untiring industry, Her sons are always turning shillings into pounds, and are never satisfied with any product whatever until they have given it additional value by the expenditure of labour. But the stranger does not see these processes in action when he arrives in London, and even after much research in that mighty city, he is puzzled what the inhabitants live upon. The proportion of the shopkeepers to the population is so large in London that it is impossible to conjecture where they all find customers, and the manufactories are so enormously outnumbered by the great mercantile houses that it seems as though nearly everything sold in England must come from abroad. Everybody seems to be trading, and no one seems to make anything to trade with, and the consequence is that the observer feels as though the vast machinery moved with an artificial impulse, which must some day stop and ruin it. But he gets behind the scenes when he visits tho great manufacturing cities, and begins, instead, to wonder where on earth all the products of their industry can be stowed away. Here in Birmingham they mako everything that the world requires, excepting ships, which are not conveniently built remote from the sea ; and what they do with it all, and where it all goes to, no human being could tell, unless we wore endowed with more statistical power than Mr Hayter himself. But though the list of Birmingham manufactures inclndo very nearly the whole catalogue of human industries, yet it is specially distinguished by its metal work, and iu this department its labour actually covers the whole field, taking in everything between spangles and steam engines, bestowing the most delicate finish ou the minutest watch work in one corner, and in another welding with mighty blows the ponderous armour plates for the sides of the ship of war. The air is literally charged with industry, and a lazy man is an anomaly.