TRANSACTIONS Olf SECTION F. 819 



into the expenditure of richer classes to a smaller extent, the difference on the 

 whole income of a community made by their living where the staff of life would 

 he cheaper would be less than 2 per cent. — too small to tell against other advan- 

 tages which may be credited to them. What is true of wheat is even more true 

 of meat and other more valuable articles of food where the cost of conveyance 

 makes a less difference in the proportionate value of the food in situ and its value 

 at a distant point. The same more and more with raw materials. Cotton and 

 such articles cost so little to transport that the manufacturing may as well go on 

 in Lancashire or any other part of the Old World as in situ or nearly in situ ; and 

 even as regards metals or minerals, except coal and perhaps iron, the same rule 

 applies, the cost of conveyance being as nothing in proportion to the value of the 

 raw material itself. As regards coal and iron, moreover, there are many places 

 where they are not in absolute juxtaposition, and if they have to be conveyed at all 

 they may as well be conveyed to a common centre. Iron ore and iron at any rate 

 are beginning to be articles of import into the old countries of Europe to which 

 the cost, in fact, offers very little difficulty. The additional cost to the miscella- 

 neous manufacturing of a country through its having to bring iron and coal from 

 a distance may thus be quite inconsiderable, and apparently is becoming more and 

 more inconsiderable. As regards raw materials generally it has also to be con- 

 sidered that, owing to their immense variety, there is an undoubted convenience 

 in a common manufacturing centre to which they can be brought. Hitherto they 

 may have come to England and other old countries of Europe in part because coal 

 and iron were abundant there in juxtaposition; but the habit once set up, there 

 seems no reason why they should not concentrate themselves on the old manu- 

 facturing centres. The ruder parts of the coal and iron industry may be attracted 

 to other places, but the higher branches of manufacturing will be at no disadvan- 

 tage if carried on at the old centres. 



On the other hand, the old centres will retain the advantages, which are 

 obviously very great, of climate, accumulated wealth, acquired skill, and con- 

 centration of population. That population under the new conditions is to go 

 from them merely because they do not grow food which can be transported to 

 them at the cost of a mere fraction of the aggregate income, and because they 

 have not coal and iron in abundance and in juxtaposition, that abundance and. 

 juxtaposition, owing again to the diminished cost of conveyance, being no longer 

 so indispensable as it was to the higher branches of manufacturing, appears 

 certainly to be a 'large order.' What I have to suggest most strongly at any rate 

 is that the advantages I have spoken of as possessed by old manufacturing centres 

 are not unlikely to tell more and more under the new conditions, and that the in- 

 dispensabUity of coal and iron is no longer to be spoken of as what it has been in 

 the last century, during which apparently England owed so much of its precedence 

 in manufacturing power to these causes. 



To the same effect we may urge the specially great increase of the efficiency of 

 coal in recent years. Cheap coal in situ cannot be relatively so important as it 

 was in days when five or ten tons of coal were required to do the work which can 

 now be done by one. 



The truth is that the whole change that has been occurring is only a con- 

 tinuation of much larger historical changes. There has almost always in English 

 history been some one industry that was .supposed to be king. In the middle ages 

 it was the growth and export of raw wool ; last century it was the woollen 

 manufacture itself; early in this century and down to a very late date cotton was 

 king ; more lately, since the beginning of the railway and steamship era, it has 

 been coal and iron. How do we know, how can we know, that coal and iron are 

 to reign indefinitely, any more than wool, or the woollen manufacture, or cotton 

 themselves have done ? Changes are always going on, and for that reason I 

 believe we should attach the more importance to the increasing signs that it is no 

 longer necessary or indispensable for prosperous communities to live where their 

 food and raw materials are grown — that there may be advantages of climate, of 

 accumulated wealth, of acquired skill, of concentration of population which are 

 now, under the new conditions, overwhelmingly more important. It would be 



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