THE DEPRESSION OF TRADE 219 



world; and while we have been going on in this line, 

 utterly neglecting agriculture and the land, forbidding 

 people to use it, and driving them into the towns so as 

 to increase the numbers of the unemployed and thus keep 

 down wages, other nations have not been standing still, 

 and are now competing with us in all the chief markets 

 of the world. 



There is a great deal of talk about finding fresh 

 markets, but these would be open to all the competing 

 countries, and would not supply our increasing population 

 with fresh outlets for work; and therefore I maintain 

 that the only real and substantial mode of getting rid of 

 the depression of trade, is to utilise thoroughly that 

 enormous store of wealth which exists in our neglected 

 fields and our miserably cultivated soil. 



Summary of the Argument. 



I will now briefly summarise the points here brought 

 forward. First of all, the enormous foreign loans led 

 to an abnormal and unnatural increase of our trade, and 

 then to a depression which was exaggerated and increased 

 by the impoverishment of the people who had to pay the 

 interest on these loans, and it must be remembered that 

 they had to pay for millions which they never received, 

 that never came into their country but were absorbed by 

 the financiers in the cities — they had to pay and are 

 still paying all this with interest upon it. Then we have 

 the enormous increase of speculation in our cities, 

 favoured by every act of the legislature and by every 

 custom of the country, and as the result we have the 

 concentration of wealth into fcAver and fewer hands, and 

 consequently a proportionate diminution of wealth that 

 ought to be distributed among the people. We have also 

 the dreadful increase of war expenditure ; and lastly, the 

 evils directly produced by the system of landlordism in 

 this country — a system which gives a comparatively 

 small body of men power to determine whether the land 

 shall be used or abused, well cultivated or producing 



