1 6 Mr. E. J Elliott on 



of the world, but after a period of twenty-five years things began 

 to change, and instead of foreign countries sending us raw 

 material and manufactured goods that we could not very well 

 make ourselves they began to manufacture all classes of com- 

 modities, with the result that our manufacturing position had been 

 seriously imperilled and large numbers of our workers unemployed. 

 In fact, the predictions of the early free traders had been falsified, 

 and instead of paying for our imports of food and raw material 

 by manufactured goods we had been paying more and more for 

 foreign-manufactured goods by raw material, such as coal. During 

 the year 1907 our unemployed showed a percentage of 4.2 against 

 1.5 in Germany, and for the six months of 1908 our percentage 

 was 7.2, against 2.6 in Germany. In the United States in 1906 

 it was stated in Whittaker's Almanac that there were no unem- 

 ployed among the native population that were capable or willing 

 to work, and that a million and a quarter of immigrants were 

 received into the country and given work. In 1907 there was a 

 financial panic, and it was said that the number of unemployed 

 was large, but this large percentage was arrived at owing to the 

 fact that work was stopped in consequence of the state of the 

 money market acting on various industries ; and, further, in 

 estimating the amount of unemployed all persons of both sexes 

 over ten years of age were counted. At present they had not the 

 figures for 1908, but all the evidence went to show that employ- 

 ment was good at present, and that the country had recovered 

 rapidly, and is in a prosperous state. In this country not only 

 were there a large number of unemployed, but in the year 1907 

 250,000 emigrants embarked for foreign countries to improve 

 their condition, and all the countries they went to were in pos- 

 session of general tariffs. At the same time only 25,000 emigrants 

 left Germany, a country which, according to free trade predictions, 

 should have been ruined long ago. 



Mr. Elliott then referred to the decline of some of our 

 industries, notably the iron and steel industry, in which we had 

 lost the pre eminence, and now only stood third, the United 

 States being first, and Germany second. It was also shown that 



