74 THE DECENTRALISATION 



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 chemi- 

 cal 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 

 agglomeration of such a variety of industries 

 along the two estuaries, 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 multiplied at will. It is time to con- 

 clude, 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 integrated 

 variety, of trades grows, instead of specialisation. 

 Such are the prominent features of the times we 

 live in. Each nation becomes in its turn a 

 manufacturing nation ; and the time is not far 



