64 FOREIGN TRADING THEN AND NOW 



of modern shipping. In the year 1907 British 

 shipping amounted to eleven and a half millions 

 of tons. The shipping of other nations, excluding 

 the United States of North America, amounted 

 to a somewhat greater tonnage. The States are 

 reported as having, in addition, some six millions 

 of tons, but most of this tonnage is used coast- 

 wise, or on the great lakes. Thus, the British 

 share of the world's tonnage is now less than 

 one half; only ten years earlier that share was 

 much more than one half; for of a total of 

 seventeen million tons, excluding, as before, the 

 United States, Great Britain claimed nine millions. 



In a similar way, if we examine the tables of 

 foreign trade, we shall find that in the year 1897 

 the British share of that trade, imports and 

 exports, was a little over one-fourth. Eleven 

 years later, in 1908, the British share was no 

 longer one-fourth, it had sunk to two-ninths. 



The British foreign trade and shipping, once 

 supreme, have relatively much shrunk in im- 

 portance, because the conditions now surround- 

 ing that trade are totally different from the 

 conditions surrounding it seventy or eighty years 

 ago, when the foreign trade became first the 

 really important trade of the United Kingdom. 

 Trade has not only somewhat shifted its point 

 of application ; it has changed its methods. The 

 trade traveller is now everywhere. Even Japan 

 has its emissaries in the United States, charged 

 to ascertain on the spot, and report to the firms 

 they represent, the style of their specialities most 

 likely to suit the American taste. Every country 



