THE DECENTRALISATION OF INDUSTRIES. 37 



domestic trades supply them at a price which would 

 starve the Lyons weavers. The trade has been decen- 

 tralised, and while Lyons is still a centre for the higher 

 artistic silks, it will never be again the chief centre for 

 the silk trade which it was thirty years ago. 



Like examples could be produced by the score. 

 Greenock no longer supplies Russia with sugar, because 

 Russia has plenty of her own at the same price as it 

 sells at in England The watch trade is no more a 

 speciality of Switzerland : watches are now made 

 everywhere. India extracts from her ninety collieries 

 two-thirds of her annual consumption of coal The 

 chemical trade which grew up on the banks of the 

 Clyde and Tyne owing to the special advantages offered 

 for the import of Spanish pyrites and the agglomera- 

 tion of such a variety of industries along the two estu- 

 aries is now in decay. Spain, with the help of English 

 capital, is beginning to utilise her own pyrites for 

 herself ; and Germany has become a great centre for the 

 manufacture of sulphuric acid and soda nay, she 

 already complains about over-production. 



But enough! I have before me so many figures, 

 all telling the same tale, that examples could be multi- 

 plied at will. It is time to conclude, and, for every 

 unprejudiced mind, the conclusion is self-evident. 

 Industries of all kinds decentralise and are scattered 

 all over the globe ; and everywhere a variety, an inte- 

 grated variety, of trades grows, instead of specialisa- 

 tion. Such are the prominent features of the times 

 we live in. Each nation becomes in its turn a manu- 

 facturing nation; and the time is not far off when 

 each nation of Europe, as well as the United States, 

 and even the most backward nations of Asia and 

 America, will themselves manufacture nearly every- 

 thing they are in need of. Wars and several accidental 

 causes may check for some time the scattering of in- 



