20 FIELDS, FACTORIES AND WORKSHOPS. 



factured goods into Germany are in decline. The 

 aggregate imports of textiles (inclusive of yarn) stand so 

 low as to be compensated by nearly equal values of 

 exports. And there is no doubt that not only the 

 German markets for textiles will be soon lost for other 

 manufacturing countries, but that German competition 

 will be felt stronger and stronger both in the neutral! 

 markets and those of Western Europe ! One can easily 

 win applause from uninformed auditories by exclaiming 

 with more or less pathos that German produce can 

 never equal the English! The fact is that it competes 

 in cheapness, and sometimes also where it is needed 

 in an equally good workmanship ; and this circumstance 

 is due to many causes. 



The " cheap labour " cause, so often alluded to in 

 discussions about " German competition " which take 

 place in this country and in France, must be dismissed 

 by this time, since it has been well proved by so many 

 recent investigations that low wages and long hours do 

 not necessarily mean cheap produce. Cheap labour 

 and protection simply mean the possibility for a number 

 of employers to continue working with obsolete and: 

 bad machinery ; but in highly developed staple indus- 

 tries, such as the cotton and the iron industries, the 

 cheapest produce is obtained with high wages, short 

 hours and the best machinery. When the number of 

 operatives which is required for each 1000 spindles can 

 vary from seventeen (in many Russian factories) to 

 three (in England), no reduction of wages can possibly 

 compensate for that immense difference. Consequently, 

 in the best German cotton-mills and iron-works the 

 wages of the worker (we know it directly for the iron- 

 works from the above-mentioned inquiry of the British 

 Iron Trade Association) are not lower than they are in 

 Great Britain. All that can be said is, that the worker 

 in Germany gets more for his wages than he gets in this 

 country the paradise of the middleman a paradise 



