since the system of compensatory bounties came into existence, in millions of tons: 1901. 1902. 1903. 1904. 1905. 1906. 1907. 1908. 1909. 1910. 1911. 1912. From Germany 2.34 3:30 8:48 2.77 3.35 3.66 8.45 3.74 4.04 4.87 5.88 6:03 3:47 3.56 3.26 3.72 4.68 5.15 4:09 4.21 4.58 4.51 4.80 There are certain differences in classification, &c., which would slightly reduce the German totals; but the official figures are near enough for the present purpose. The whole story, from 1902 onward, indicates not only that the bounty system no longer puts the German user of steel material at a disadvantage in foreign markets, but also that the dumping policy, originally adopted in order to relieve the pressure on the home market and carry off a temporary surplus, has become the permanent policy of the German steel-producers. Confronted with these well-organised forces, what have the British iron and steel makers been doing? He would be singularly ignorant of the business world who supposed that Britain has remained hitherto a land of unlimited competition. In the days of wrought iron, prices were, most of the time, governed by more or less formal agreements, or by the tacit understandings rendered possible by personal intercourse in the local centres. Such understandings, however, commonly broke down just when they might have been most useful, that is, in times of depression. When iron was pushed into the background by steel; when the steel concerns were reduced by competition and amalgamation to a manageable number; when the increasing cost of an efficient equipment blocked the way to newcomers; and, finally, when attention had perforce to be turned to the German cartels, then a new period of more tenacious combination began in Britain. It was 1904, the year of the creation of the German Steel Syndicate, which saw the reconstruction, in what has proved to be a more permanent form, of the Scottish Steel Makers' Association, and of the North-East Coast Steel Makers' Association; and these entered into an agreement to divide the home market. There are separate associations for regulating prices in the Rail and Tube trades, in the South Wales Siemens' Steel trade, in the Galvanised Plate business, and in minor branches of the iron and steel industry. The details of the arrangements are treated as confidential; and, to satisfy public opinion, which has not yet come to realise the necessities of the situation, the associations have hitherto kept themselves very much in the background. But most of the significant facts soon get out, and find their way into the trade and professional journals. And some important conclusions seem to emerge. To begin with, there is at present no organisation exercising so wide a control over the bulk of the trade as the Steel Syndicate in Germany; Britain is still in the stage of sectional combinations, as Germany was two decades ago. Secondly, such combinations as there are seem to be little more than price agreements, with possibly, in some cases, a certain understanding as to output; in no case have they created a central selling office. This means that they are not in a position so to distribute orders among the members as to save in the cost of transport, or to secure the full advantage of continuous large-scale operation. For instance, it is reported that half-a-dozen steel works will sometimes be rolling the same sections at the same time, each in small lots. The use of combination to secure for each works 'a full rolling card' has apparently still to be learnt. And, while export prices are frequently lower than home prices, the device of bounties or rebates to home purchasers who work up the material into goods for export has, it would seem, not yet found acceptance. One method of meeting foreign competition has been adopted by an important combination, that of the Heavy Rail makers, which is of singular interest just now. It is the method of 'agreeing quickly with thine adversary while thou art in the way with him'-the policy of international agreement. The combined Railmakers had, some years before, a short-lived agreement with foreign combinations, each to retain the home market and to divide up the export trade in certain proportions. In the critical year 1904 the agreement was renewed with the railmakers of Germany and France; the United States and some other countries were soon afterwards admitted; and this agreement survived down to the beginning of the war. Though, in 1910, 1911 and 1912, the rail exports of British makers fell for the first time below those of their German competitors-being for Britain in those years 478,000, 370,000, and 408,000 tons respectively, and for Germany 515,000, 520,000, and 523,000-they picked up again in 1913, when each country exported about the same quantity, viz. half a million tons. We may interpret these figures as showing that our manufacturers made the best of a bad situation. However that may be, 'the net result,' as Mr Macrosty, the historian of the trust movement in British industry, has pertinently remarked, is that, by means of an international combine, British railmakers were for ten years 'protected from foreign competition.' In particular, as a competent foreign student of British conditions, Prof. Hermann Levy, has shown, the effect of the international agreement has been to prevent the English purchaser of rails from benefiting by America's occasional ability to supply more cheaply. It is, therefore, not without a smile that one sees, in the list of British concerns sharing in the compact, the name of the North-Eastern Steel Company, one of the companies amalgamated in the great undertaking associated with the name of Sir Hugh Bell. The fact is of happy augury; for it indicates that abstract principles have to give way to practical necessities. But international trade agreements to which Germany shall be a partner are not likely to be feasible for some years after the war. Other and better methods have now to be devised than have yet been practised in this country, if we are to make the best of our powers, and if we are to be reasonably confident that we can arm ourselves, if called upon, with the modern weapons of war. W. J. ASHLEY. Art. 17.-THE IRISH PROBLEM. THE Irish trouble smoulders on. The flames of rebellion have been quenched, but the hidden fires still glow, nay, spread, and are ready to blaze up again in field and factory and slum, if the match of a bye-election is struck or a spark of social trouble kindled. Meanwhile, in Parliament, a more conciliatory tone prevails in Irish debates; speeches generally are restrained, and Ulster Unionists less uncompromising; the House is stirred by Major Redmond's fine appeal; all parties yearn for a settlement, and even believe it is coming. There is some danger, perhaps, that this hopeful feeling may degenerate into that misguided impatience stigmatised by Lord Melbourne-'When people say something must be done, they are sure to do something foolish.' Hopes founded on ignorance are little better than counsels of despair, and tend to drive thinking men into sceptical reaction-Why can't you leave it alone?' The instinct of the general British public out of doors, rightly preoccupied with the war, would probably be to let the Irish question alone till its conclusion; and the instinct of politicians, even of Mr Redmond himself, was the same in August 1914. War demands promptitude of action-the hundred hands of Briareus; constitutionbuilding requires patience and deliberative thought-the hundred eyes of Argus. Moreover, the rapprochement that has undoubtedly developed on the battlefields of France between the Ulstermen and their Southern brethren in arms could hardly fail, when these men return to Ireland, to affect the civilian population and even the politicians. Still, the growing feeling of urgency in the House of Commons, culminating in Mr Bonar Law's reluctant admission, on March 22, that another attempt should be made now to effect a settlement, cannot be ignored. Indeed, it is well grounded from a parliamentary point of view, quite apart from any purely military considerations or calculations of man-power; for the present situation has arisen from the gradual recognition by both the great British parties that Pitt's Union cannot be maintained, and that the principle of Home Rule embodied in the Act of 1914 must be given effect, at any rate in those parts of Ireland which unmistakably demand it. Unfortunately, on the other hand, the mass of Irish Nationalists have lost the faith they had in England's honest intention to satisfy their claim of self-government, that faith which sent thousands to France and Gallipoli; and the result of this loss of faith has been, among extremists, rebellion; in the rank and file, cessation of recruiting; and among moderate and thinking Nationalists, a growing inclination to join hands with the extremists, in sheer despair. The feeling of urgency is also, no doubt, intensified by the analogy of Poland, which, though by no means close, tends to push the national conscience in the same direction. Now, the Home Rule Act being on the Statute Book but not in operation, it necessarily follows that Irish government must in the mean time be in the nature of a stopgap; nor would there be anything exceptional in a stopgap arrangement for the period of the war. In fact, most of the machinery of government, from the Cabinet downwards, is of a stopgap character at present. But all this machinery is working under parliamentary forms, and can only work efficiently if those forms are tempered by an absolute renunciation of party spirit. Such renunciation is unfortunately lacking in Ireland, though Mr Redmond steadily practised it in the House of Commons till March 7 last; and a condition of instability is produced which generates perpetual friction, and might at any moment, as Mr Bonar Law recently pointed out, precipitate a Government crisis or a general election. Such a state of affairs is intolerable during a great war, though it is only the outcome of the policy pursued by the Irish Parliamentary Party for the past thirty or forty years, and is indeed an inevitable result of parliamentary government and the party system. For this reason statesmen like Sir Horace Plunkett advocated, after the Rebellion last year, a provisional Irish Government, putting the Chief Secretaryship into commission, which, combined with an absolute pledge from the Coalition Government to put Home Rule into operation after the war, might have tided over the interval and relaxed the urgency of the whole question. Another urgent consideration is to be found in the terms both of the Act of 1914 and of the Suspensory Act. |