732 



REPORT — 1901. 



the premises is a question that might easily lead us too far on an occasion like this, 

 but the facts should be ever present to the minds of our public men. We may be 

 quite_ certain that they are quite well known and understood in the councils of' the 

 liussian, German, French, and other Continental Governments. 



Netv Population and New Markets. 



Another idea suggested by the facts appears to he an answer to the question as 

 to how new markets are to be found for the products of an increasing population — 

 a question which vexes the mind of many who see in nothing but foreign trade an 

 outlet for new energies. The point was mentioned in my address at Manchester 

 a year ago, but it deserves, perhaps, a more elaborate treatment than it was possible 

 then to give it. ^ What we see then is that not only in this country, but in Germany 

 and other Continental countries, millions of new people are, in "fact, provided for 

 in every ten years, although the resources of the country in food and raw materials 

 are generally used to the full extent, and not capable of farther expansion, so that 

 increasing supplies of food and raw material have to be imported from abroad. 

 How is the thing done? Obviously the main provision for the wants of the new 

 people is effected by themselves. They exchange services with each other, and .so 

 procure the major part of the comforts and luxuries of life which they require. 

 The butcher, the baker, the tailor, the dressmaker, the milliner, the shoemaker, the 

 builder, the teacher, the doctor, the lawyer, and so on, are all working for each 

 other the most part of their lives, and the proportion of exchanges with foreign 

 countries necessary to procure some things required in the general economy may be 

 very small. These exchanges may also very largely take the form of a remittance 

 of goods by foreign countries in payment of interest on debts which they owe, so 

 that the conimunities in question obtain much of what they want from abroad by 

 levying a kind of rent or annuity which the foreigner has to pay. If more is 

 required, it may he obtained by special means, as, for instance, by the working of 

 coal for export, which gives employment in this country to about 200,000 miners, 

 by the employment of shipping in the carrying trade, by the mauufticture of special 

 lines of goods, and so on. But the main exchanges of any country are, and must 

 be, as a rule, at home, and the foreign trade, however" important, will always 

 remain within limits, and bearing some proportion to the total exchanges of the 

 country. Plence, when additions to the population, and how they are to live, are 

 eon.sidered, the answer is that the additions will till up proportionately the frame- 

 work of the various industries already in existence, or the ever-changing new 

 industries for home consumption which are always starting into being. The.sc 

 are the primary outlets for new population even in old countries like the United 

 Kingdom and Germany. Of course, active traders and manufacturers, each in his 

 own way, are not to take things for granted. They must strive to spread their 

 activities over foreign as well as over home markets. But looking at the matter 

 from the outside, and scientifically, it is the home and not the foreign market 

 which is always the most important. 



• -«The same may be said of a country in a somewhat different economic condition 

 from England and Germany, viz., the United States. I can only refer to it, 

 however, in passing, as the facts here are not so clearly on the surface. Contrary 

 to J^ngland and Germany, which have no food resources and resources of raw 

 material capable of indefinite expansion, the United States is still to a large 

 extent a virgin country. Its increasing population is therefore provided for in a 

 diflierent way for the most part from the increase in England and Germany. But 

 even in the United States it has been noticeable at each of the last census returns 

 that the increasing population finds an outlet more and more largely, not in agri- 

 culture and the extraction of raw materials, but in the miscellaneous pursuits of 

 industry and manufacture. The town population increases disproportionately. In 

 the last census especially it was found that the overflow of population over the 

 far Western States seemed to have heen checked, the increase of population being 



