Food, Drink 

 & Tobacco 



Raw 



Material 



Manufactured 

 Articles 



2,902 



2,818 



1,930 



326 



699 



4,114 



8 F. T. Lloyd-Dodd on 



The matter is more complicated in the case of nations. In 

 any individual pair of trading nations, there are at any time 

 hundreds of individuals buying and selling commodities and 

 services, which it is difficult to record. It is this very difficulty 

 of tracing the exchange of goods and services which is part of the 

 fascination of the study of foreign exchange. The most carefully 

 compiled records of a nation's income and expenditure always 

 leaves a margin of what must be, at the best, estimated statistics. 

 The monthly returns of the Board of Trade give us the figures of 

 our exports and imports, and these figures, though as accurate as 

 they possibly can be made, yet for various causes leave a margin 

 of error. These figures, in hundreds of thousands, for 1913. 



1913. 



Imports 



Exports 



Taking the totals, and allowing for the re-export of foreign 

 and colonial produce, we find that for that year our imports, 

 which are much larger in the case of England than in that of any 

 other country, exceeded our exports by £133,900,000. This 

 huge excess of imports is at first sight alarming. It forms what 

 the older economists would have called an adverse balance of 

 trade, and in their view would indicate that the country was 

 rapidly approaching bankruptcy. Two explanations at once 

 present themselves. In 1913, we either received goods worth 

 roughly 134 millions more in value than the goods we gave in 

 exchange — the difference being clear profit — or we paid for the 

 diff"erence in gold. The first explanation, if true, would be very 

 comforting, but unfortunately the other countries have not con- 

 spired to kill us with kindness and to give us ,£134,000,000 

 worth of goods for nothing. Nor did we pay this difference in 

 gold, for the Board of Trade returns show that we imported 

 rather more bullion than we exported. A third and more serious 

 explanation then i)resents itself — that the balance was not paid 



