HKB
The development of the cotton industry in 1888 in the chief industrial countries, as indicated by the consumption of raw cotton, is expressed in the accompanying diagram.
Lastly, the national trade policy of England was of signal advantage in her machine development. Her early protective system had, by the enlargement of her carrying trade and the increase of her colonial possessions, laid the foundation of a large complex trade with the more distant parts of the world, though for a time it crippled our European commerce. While we doubtless sacrificed other interests by this course of policy, it must be generally admitted that "English industries would not have advanced so rapidly without Protection."[94] But as we built up our manufacturing industries by Protection, so we undoubtedly conserved and strengthened them by Free Trade--first, by the remission of tariffs upon the raw materials of manufacture and machine-making, and later on by the free admission of food stuffs, which were a prime essential to a nation destined to specialise in manufacture. France, our chief national competitor, weakened her position by a double protective policy, not merely refusing admittance to foreign manufactures in her markets, but retaining heavy duties upon the importation of foreign coal and iron, the foundational constituents of machine-production. This protective policy, adopted by nations whose skill, industry, and natural resources would have rendered them formidable competitors to English manufacturers, has hindered considerably the operation of those economic forces which impel old and thickly-peopled countries to specialise in manufacture and trade, and so has retarded the general development of modern machine-production. But while protective tariffs indisputably operate in this way, it is not possible to determine the extent of their influence. In a large country of rich resources a high degree of specialisation in manufacture is possible in spite of a protective policy. The pressure of high wages is an economic force more powerfully operative than any other in stimulating the adoption of elaborate machinery.[95] Both in the textile and the iron industries the United States present examples of factory development more advanced even than those of England. Certain processes of warping and winding are done by machinery in America which are still done by hand labour in England.[96] The chain and nail-making trades, which employ large numbers of women in South Staffordshire and Worcestershire, are made more cheaply by machinery in America.[97] Moreover, the high standard of living and the greater skill of the American operatives enables them to tend more machines. In German factories a weaver tends two, or rarely three looms; in Lancashire women weavers undertake four, and in Massachusetts often six looms, and sometimes eight.[98]
Thus we see how the new industrial forces were determined in the order of their operation by the character and conditions of the several countries, their geographical position and physical resources, the elements of racial character, political and industrial institutions, deliberate economic policies, and, above all, by the absorbing nature of the military and political events contemporary with the outburst of inventive ingenuity. The composition of these forces determined the several lines of less resistance along which the new industry moved.
The exact measurement of so multiform a force is impossible. The appended tables and diagrams may, however, serve to indicate the progress of the several industrial nations as measured by (i.) development of railway and merchant shipping; (ii.) consumption of coal and iron; (iii.) application of steam-power; (iv.) estimated annual value of manufactures:--
I. COMPARATIVE MILEAGE OF RAILWAYS, 1840 TO 1890.
United Kingdom 800 6,600 10,400 15,500 17,900 19,800
Continent of Europe 800 7,800 21,400 47,800 83,800 110,200
United States 2,800 9,000 30,600 53,400 93,600 156,000
India -- -- 800 4,800 9,300 16,000
Australia -- -- 200 1,200 5,400 10,100
Rest of the World -- -- 2,800 5,500 18,400 42,300
RAILWAY MILEAGE IN RELATION TO AREA AND POPULATION.