34 FIELDS, FACTORIES AND WORKSHOPS. 



is being undersold. This is the unavoidable conse- 

 quence of the development of manufactures all over the 

 world. (See Appendix G.) 



Great hopes are now laid in Australia as a market 

 for British goods ; but Australia will soon do what 

 Canada already does. She will manufacture. And the 

 last colonial exhibition, by showing to the " colonists " 

 what they are able to do, and how they must do, 

 will only have accelerated the day when each colony 

 fara da se in her turn. Canada and India already im- 

 pose protective duties on British goods. As to the 

 rnuch-spoken-of markets on the Congo, and Mr. Stanley's 

 calculations and promises of a trade amounting to 

 26,000,000 a year if the Lancashire people supply the 

 Africans with loin-cloths, such promises belong to the 

 same category of fancies' as the famous nightcaps of the 

 Chinese which were to enrich England after the 

 Chinese war. The Chinese prefer their own home-made 

 nightcaps ; and as to the Congo people, four countries 

 at least are already competing for supplying them with 

 their poor dress : Britain, Germany, the United States, 

 and, last but not least, India. 



There was a time when this country had almost the 

 monopoly in the cotton industries; but about 1880 she 

 possessed only 55 per cent, of all the spindles at work 

 in Europe, the United States and India (40,000,000 

 out of 72,000,000), and a little more than one-half of the 

 looms (550,000 out of 972,000). In 1893 the proportion 

 was still further reduced to 41 per cent of the spindles 

 (45,300,000 put of 91,340,000).* She was thus losing 

 ground while the others were winning. And the fact 

 is quite natural : it might have been foreseen. There 

 is no reason why Britain should always be the great 

 cotton manufactory of the world, when raw cotton has 

 to be imported into this country as elsewhere. It was 



* The Economist, i^th January, 1894 



