THE “COLONYS FOREIGN TRADE. 
A TEN YEARS’ REVIEW. 
By J. VAN SERTIMA. 
The importance of statistics, more especially those having reference 
to the industrial organism, does not seem to come home sufficiently to 
those bodies here the like of which in other countries would feel as if 
chaos had come again if they were as poorly equipped as we are with 
the material through the agency of which useful data can be collected. 
This is to be regretted. The proper function of statistics is to enlarge 
individual experience. There are several public questions which cannot 
be fairly or adequately discussed without those particulars which statis- 
tics alone can furnish. In their absence recourse is had to theorising ; 
personal bias intervenes ; and subjective impressions cannot be driven 
off. This is undesirable in the interests of truth, at any rate. Moreover, 
there is the temptation sometimes for the uninitiated to intrude with all 
the dogmatism which bewrays the ignorant. When predilections are in 
play it is unlikely that the information at hand will be put in the right 
perspective, and if relativity of importance is lost, it is no wonder. “In 
the circumstances the student, say. of the economics of local industry, 
does not find his task go smoothly. To him statistics are the straw out 
of which he must make his bricks. He has to tread warily, make most 
careful use of what figures he may lay his hands upon, and at times be 
compelled to call indirect evidence to his aid. The less skilled the 
investigator the more cautious he must needs be, lest his generalisations 
be misleading and his findings worthless. Of statistics of our home 
trade there are none, but the anomaly involved in the fact that we know 
more of our foreign than our home trade is not peculiar to this colony. 
Says Mr. Andrew Carnegie somewhere: “ The home market of America 
takes 96 per cent. of all manufactured articles, only four per cent. going 
to foreign markets. Even Britain’s home market takes four-fifths of her 
manufactures, only one-fifth going abroad. Politicians give far too much 
importance to distant foreign markets which can never amount to much, 
and far too little to measures for improving conditions at home, which 
would increase the infinitely more important home market. If the people 
of the United Kingdom would spend even £1 per head more per year her 
home commerce would be increased by more than the total value of her 
exports to all of Australasia, British North America and China combined. 
Truly foreign commerce is a braggart always in evidence ; home com- 
merce is the true King.” This dictum may be applicable to a large coun- 
try like the United States which has within its confines climate of so 
various a character that it is largely independent of the products and 
manufactures of other countries; but Mr. Carnegie’s statement loses 
nearly all its foree when applied to a colony such as British Guiana, 
