NATIONAL IDEALS IN IRON TRADE 123 



ceedcd in training men fitted for some of the learned profes- 

 sions, but as regards commerce, or most of the practical affairs 

 of life, our young men have left the universities quite unfitted, 

 and with the necessity forced upon them of learning all that 

 was essential after their education was completed! 



Given a state of luxury and ease, and a premium of social 

 esteem upon members of any and all professions which did not 

 obtain with the participants in manufactures and commerce, 

 it is obvious to any sociological student that there must be 

 loss of place in any struggle for world or social supremacy. 

 When to this condition there is added a lulling sense of ease 

 and comfort and an induced belief in the permanency of pride 

 of place and power, a sense of individualism, and an ample 

 supply of workers, it is not difficult to account for the present 

 position of England. 



Since the consolidation of Germany and something like 

 an equal balance of military power in Europe the prevailing 

 conditions of peace have permitted a steady and continuous 

 growth of industrialism. 



Nations, like men, first supply the wants of their own 

 household before supplying others. 



During the past twenty five years England has suffered 

 a relative decadence of trade, and has not such a proportion- 

 ately large share of the world's trade as she had at one time. 

 Competition from without did not seriously disturb the mass 

 of Englishmen, while the national sporting instinct says in 

 effect, let all have a try and let the best man win. 



It is no new thing for England to have competition in her 

 iron and steel, and allied manufactures. Hitherto it has been 

 called foreign competition, and the success of foreign competi- 

 tion is popularly explained by the brute force element in com- 

 merce, low prices. The reasons for successful foreign competi- 

 tion have been placed under the heads of cheap transport, low 

 wages, long hours of work, and peculiarities possible under a 

 protective duty system. Now that the competition from 

 without is American competition, coming from our own kins- 

 folk, coming from such a quarter, it excites amongst English 

 people in general quite a. different state of feeling from that 

 which obtained in regard to European competition. The prev- 



