F.— ECONOMIC SCIENCE AND STATISTICS 121 



troubles left by the war years is a further factor which is held to have 

 retarded recovery. No doubt the multiplication of customs tariffs, the 

 enforcement of prohibitions and of trading by restrictive licences, the 

 presence of special privileges in trade to particular industries such as 

 national shipping, the use of state control and social monopoly by govern- 

 ments to avoid the ordinary liabilities of commercial trading, all exercised 

 a limiting influence upon international trade, but by 1925 great progress 

 had been made in removing the most serious obstacles, and the actual level 

 of European tariffs was relatively little higher than that of 1913.^ 



The years after 1925 represent the second phase of recovery from 

 war dislocations — namely, the growth of production, trade and general 

 material well-being throughout the world ; they were distinguished by 

 rapid technological advance in agriculture and in certain new manu- 

 facturing industries, such as wireless apparatus, electrical goods, auto- 

 mobilism, and artificial silk. This somewhat unbalanced development 

 led among other effects to a great cheapness of foodstuffs and raw materials. 

 Britain benefited in so far as her exports fell relatively slowly in price 

 while her imports of food and raw material fell severely ; she herself had 

 no significant agricultural output of this type which was specially injured 

 by falling prices, but many of her chief markets were found in regions of 

 primary production to which her industrial output was mainly comple- 

 mentary, and in this direction she was subjected to losses. 



The return of Britain to the gold standard in April 1925 made the 

 exchange position prominent and was held to have imposed a special 

 handicap on the British export trades. The General Strike of 1926 and 

 the inflationary movements in France, Belgium and Italy followed in 

 turn ; each administering its special short-period shock to the business 

 system. 



The list of unfavourable events leading on to the crisis which began in 

 1929 could be made more comprehensive, and it could be argued that 

 Britain has been compelled through the pressure of events to recognise 

 that her traditional dependence on a large overseas market to assist in the 

 full employment of her people at relatively high standards of living is no 

 longer feasible, and that her struggle to a new equilibrium position in 

 world trade will involve an increased dependence on the home market 

 and on those overseas markets where her special characteristic products 

 hold their own at remunerative price levels, and the products of which 

 are mainly complementary to the chief British industries. Britain might 

 be held to be tending to an international position more like that of France, 

 where the home and empire markets form the centre block of the foreign 

 trade structure. 



The difficulty with this form of interpretation of post-war development 

 is that it does not make clear why Britain is in this special position of 

 retreat or at least of slow advance as compared with countries whose 

 resources seem less than her own. Mr. Loveday and others have stressed 

 this point, and the following sentence from his essay on Britain and World 

 Trade may be quoted : ' The evidence is, it may be hoped, adequate 

 at least to suggest that the difficulties [of Britain] are confined to no 

 - Cf. Tariff Level Indices. League of Nations Publication, 1927. 



