IO FIELDS, FACTORIES AND WORKSHOPS. 



while her imports of the same consist chiefly of the finer 

 sorts of cotton and woollen yarn partly re-exported 

 as stuffs and a small quantity of woollen goods. For 

 her own consumption France shows a decided tendency 

 towards becoming entirely a self-supporting country, 

 and for the sale of her manufactured goods she is tend- 

 ing to rely, not on her colonies, but especially on her 

 own wealthy home market* 



Germany follows the same lines. During the last 

 twenty-five years, and especially since the last war, her 

 industry has undergone a thorough reorganisation. 

 Her machinery has been thoroughly improved, and her 

 new-born manufactures are supplied with a machinery 

 which mostly represents the last word of technical pro- 

 gress ; she has plenty of workmen and technologists 

 endowed with a superior technical and scientific educa- 

 tion ; and in an army of learned chemists, physicists and 

 engineers her industry has a most powerful and intelli- 

 gent aid. As a whole, Germany offers now the spectacle 

 of a nation in a period of Aufschwung, with all the 

 forces of a new start in every domain of life. Thirty 

 years ago she was a customer to England. Now she is 

 already a competitor in the markets of the south and 

 east, and at the present speedy rate of growth of her 

 industries her competition will be soon yet more acute 

 than it is. 



The wave of industrial production, after having had 

 its origin in the north-west of Europe, spreads towards 

 the east and south-east, always covering a wider circle. 

 And, in proportion as it advances east, and penetrates 

 into younger countries, it implants there all the improve- 

 ments due to a century of mechanical and chemical in- 

 ventions ; it borrows from science all the help that 

 science can give to industry; and it finds populations 

 eager to grasp the last results of modern knowledge. 



* See Appendix A. 



