76 THE DECENTRALISATION 



foreign customers ! As to the African half- 

 savages, their misery is no foundation for the 

 well-being of a civilised nation. 



Progress must be looked for in another 

 direction. It is in producing for home use. The 

 customers for the Lancashire cottons and the 

 Sheffield cutlery, the Lyons silks and the Hun- 

 garian flour-mills, are not in India, nor in Africa. 

 The true consumers of the produce of our 

 factories must be our own populations. And 

 they can be that, once we organise our economical 

 life so that they might issue from their present 

 destitution. No use to send floating shops to 

 New Guinea with British or German millinery, 

 when there are plenty of would-be customers 

 for British millinery in these very islands, and 

 for German goods in Germany. Instead of 

 worrying our brains by schemes for getting 

 customers abroad, it would be better to 

 try to answer the following questions : Why 

 the British worker, whose industrial capacities 

 are so highly praised in political speeches ; 

 why the Scotch crofter and the Irish peasant, 

 whose obstinate labours in creating new produc- 

 tive soil out of peat bogs are occasionally so much 

 spoken of, are no customers to the Lancashire 

 weavers, the Sheffield cutlers and the North- 

 umbrian and Welsh pitmen ? Why the Lyons 

 weavers not only do not wear silks, but sometimes 



