Part 5

London stands as nearly as possible in the centre of the land surface of the globe. Its situation, therefore, eminently adapts it to be the great centre of the world's trade--the great distributing centre of the world's products. Its ships can go to the farthest parts of the earth, and, loading themselves with the natural products of these parts, can bring them to its docks without breaking bulk, deposit them there for assortment, and then take them away again to other parts of the earth, and do this more economically than the ships of almost any other port in the world. But a greater reason is to be found in the fact that for centuries the British people have pursued a definite policy of manufacture, trade, and commerce, and have had the good fortune to have had that policy interfered with in a less degree than any other nation in the world by commerce-destroying war, whether internal or external. And whenever Britain has been in external wars her navy has been able to protect her commercial interests. London, being the capital of the kingdom and its chief seat of trade, has naturally derived the principal benefit from these many years of peaceful industry and commerce. Then, again, London is favourably adapted to trade in respect to its own country. It is a seaport, sixty miles inland, and is connected by navigable canals with all the other chief manufacturing and commercial centres of the country. Its railway facilities, too, are so complete that there is not a manufacturing town in the whole island that is not within fifteen hours of freightage from it. Then, too, the peculiar configuration of the coast-line of Great Britain makes every point on the island within an hour or two of carriage from a seaport. Finally, all British seaports are in trade connection with London by a coasting service unequalled in the world for cheapness, completeness, and efficiency. In a word, London stands not only in the centre of the land surface of the globe, but also at the commercial centre of its own home territory--that is to say, within easy reach both by water and by land of all the trading and producing interests of a people that for centuries have been leaders in commercial and manufacturing industry and enterprise.

GREAT BRITAIN'S COMMERCIAL POLICY

But that which more than anything else has made London the great trade centre of the world has been the policy, now for many years adopted by the British people, of allowing the goods and products of all other nations to enter their ports untaxed. Every port in Britain is a free port of entry for all imported merchandise except spirits, tobacco, wine, tea, coffee, cocoa, and chicory; and ships of all nations are allowed to trade at British ports upon terms exactly the same as those laid down for British ships. The result is that Britain has become the entrepôt or distributing mart for the produce of the world. Ships of all nations are found at her wharves, and commodities from all parts of the world brought in those ships are found in her warehouses. Her mercantile navy numbers 21,000 vessels, and 8000 of these are steamships. The tonnage of these vessels amounts to over 8,750,000 tons, and of this nearly 8,000,000 is engaged in the foreign trade alone. Her mercantile sailors number over 250,000 men, and over 150,000 of these are engaged in the foreign trade. London is, of course, the chief gainer from this perfect unrestriction of trade. Twenty-seven per cent. of the whole trade of the country is in its hands. Its merchants do business in every seaport on the globe, and the trade of Great Britain with ports in Europe, the Levant, Egypt, India, the East Indies, China, Japan, and Australasia, is almost wholly controlled by them. Its shipping embraces the finest trading fleets known to commerce. Its docks and wharves extend on either side of the Thames for twenty-four miles from London Bridge down to Gravesend, and are the largest and finest in the world.

LONDON THE CLEARING-HOUSE OF THE WORLD

A similar explanation is to be given of the fact that London is the great financial centre of the world. The same policy which has made Britain a great trading country has also made her a great manufacturing country. The food products of all the world pour in upon her shores, and Britain has become a cheap place to live in. Her artisans are supplied with the best food that the world can produce, and this at prices that are practically what the British demand makes them to be. The British artisan is therefore both well fed and cheaply fed. As a consequence of this, British manufactures are produced more efficiently and more cheaply than those of most other nations, and they are therefore exported enormously to every quarter of the globe. London, from its accessibility with respect to the great manufacturing centres at home, and from its trade connections and facilities for trade abroad, is the great distributing centre of this enormous manufacture. London exporters have accounts for goods sold by them all the world over. There is, therefore, no quarter of the world where money is not constantly owing to London; or, if not to London, then to Manchester, Birmingham, Sheffield, Leeds, Glasgow, or some other manufacturing centre in close financial touch with London. In this, then, lies the explanation of the financial supremacy of London. No matter in what quarter of the world money is owed by any place, the final destination of that money is London; for in almost all cases it will be found that the locality to which the money is owed, if it be not London, will itself be a debtor to London. London, therefore, from necessity, and as a matter of custom and convenience, has become the great clearing-house of the world. The final adjustments of the indebtedness of all the commercial centres of the world are made there.

GREAT BRITAIN THE CREDITOR NATION OF THE WORLD

One other reason for the financial supremacy of London lies in the enormous wealth of Britain. For now almost half a century Britain has been importing far more than she has been exporting, and the total volume of her import and export trade is more than quadruple what it was in 1850. The consequence is that not only has Britain been accumulating wealth, but she has been accumulating it enormously. Her accumulated savings, therefore, have been at the world's disposal, and she has had so much money to invest that she has become the creditor nation of the world. The total investments of British capital in foreign countries (in loans, railways, manufacturing syndicates, etc.) is estimated to be the enormous sum of over $10,500,000,000. London, of course, is the investing, controlling, and supervising counting-house for all this capital. And as so much British capital finds in London its place of investment, it naturally follows that nearly all the remaining unemployed capital of the world, that seeks investment, either is sent to London as a market, or else assumes a price for investment elsewhere which the current price of capital in London warrants it to assume. The London market rate of capital, therefore, determines its market rate in every other commercial centre of the world.

GREAT BRITAIN A BEEHIVE OF MERCANTILE AND MANUFACTURING INDUSTRY

Britain like all other civilised countries, was originally an agricultural country. Although for some centuries she has been one of the chief manufacturing and mercantile countries of the world, it has been only during the past one hundred years, and especially during the past fifty years, that her development in manufactures and in commerce has been remarkable. Britain is still, in respect of quality, the foremost agricultural country on the globe. Her breeds of horses, cattle, sheep, and swine are the standard breeds from which almost all other breeds derive their origin, and by which from time to time they are improved. And nowhere is the raising of grains and roots for food of man and beast pursued with more skill and success than in Britain. But agriculture is fast ceasing to be an important industry of Britain. Two million acres less are under cultivation now than were cultivated fifty years ago. The total amount of wheat raised is sufficient only for three months' consumption of the people; the remaining quantity needed must be supplied by importation. Three fifths of the total population of the island live in towns, and only a small proportion of the population that live in the country is actually supported by agriculture. Agriculture, in fact, supports only fifteen per cent. of the population in all Britain, and in England only ten per cent. Three and a half times as many people are personally engaged in manufactures as in rural pursuits. For three quarters of a century the population in towns and cities has been growing four times faster than the population of the rural parts. At the same time the working power of the urban population has been constantly growing more effective. In fifty years, by the general adoption of machinery, the effective working power of the British workman has been increased sixfold. In England eighty-six per cent. of the total work of the country is done by steam, and in Scotland ninety per cent. Great Britain, therefore, has become practically one great beehive of mercantile and manufacturing industry. Agriculture as a general occupation of the people, except in the production of the finer food products, such as choice beef and mutton and high-grade dairy products, is no longer profitable. Indeed, during the last fifteen years the plant (including land) employed in agricultural industries has been depreciating in value at the rate of $150,000,000 yearly; that is, in these fifteen years the enormous sum of $2,250,000,000 of capital employed in agriculture has been obliterated. But the gain to capital employed in profitable mercantile and manufacturing pursuits has much more than compensated for this enormous loss in agriculture.

GREAT BRITAIN'S COAL-FIELDS AND IRON DEPOSITS

One reason for the great development which Britain has made as a manufacturing and trading nation lies in the fact that Britain was the first nation to utilise on a large scale the power of steam as a help to manufacture and trade. The steam-engine was a British invention. The first railways were built in Britain. The first steamship to cross the Atlantic was a British enterprise. A second reason lies in the fact that when Britain began to use steam as a motive power she found her supplies of coal so near her iron mines, and so near her clays and earths needed for her potteries, that from the very first she was able to manufacture cheaply and undersell most of her competitors. Her coal-fields have an area of over 12,000 square miles, and wherever her coal-beds are other natural products have been found near by, so that her manufacturing areas and her coal areas are almost identical. Taking Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, Wolverhampton, Sheffield, Leeds, Newcastle, Durham, Bristol, Stoke, Carlisle, Cardiff, Swansea, Glasgow, Paisley, and Dundee as centres, around each of these lies a coal area of such richness as amply sustains it in its commercial and manufacturing pre-eminence. London is almost the only great commercial centre of Britain that does not lie in the midst of or quite adjacent to a rich coal and other mineral region. But London is within easy distance, not only by rail, but also by canal and by coastwise sailing, of every coal-field and mineral deposit of Britain. London, however, is an importing and exporting centre rather than a manufacturing centre.

LONDON'S SPECIAL TRADE FEATURES

The commercial supremacy attained by many of the large cities of Britain is not wholly due to natural causes, or even to ordinary causes. Much of it is due to extraordinary enterprise and forethought on the part of their citizens. London, for example, is the centre of the wool trade of Britain. The woollen manufacturers of Britain use about 250,000 tons of wool annually, and three fourths of this is imported. Other cities that lie near the seats of the great woollen manufactures--Liverpool, for example--have tried to secure a share of this vast importation of wool, but London, because of the special attention it gives to this trade, manages to keep almost the whole of the trade in its own hands. Similarly, London almost wholly monopolises the trade of England with Arabia, India, the East Indies, China, and Japan. It is therefore the great emporium for tea, coffee, sugar, spices, indigo, and raw silk. It also enjoys the bulk of Britain's trade in fruits (oranges, lemons, currants, raisins, figs, dates, etc.) and in wines, olive oil, and madder, with the countries that lie about the Mediterranean. By virtue partly of its situation, but largely because of the enterprise of its merchants, it absorbs nearly the whole of Britain's French trade, and of England's trade with Germany, Belgium, Holland, and Denmark. This includes principally wines (from France), and butter, eggs, and vegetables. Another great branch of its trade is that with the ports of the Baltic, including those of Russia, the imports comprising, besides wheat and wool, tallow, timber, hemp, and linseed. The tobacco imported from Virginia into England goes almost wholly to London; so does almost the whole of the Central American and South American trade in fine woods, dye-stuffs, drugs, sugar, hides, india-rubber, coffee, and diamonds. Quite a large share of the trade of Britain with Canada is concentrated in London; also, more than one half of the trade of England with the West Indies, the imports from the latter country comprising principally sugar, molasses, fruit, rum, coffee, cocoa, fine woods, and ginger.

THE SPECIAL TRADE FEATURES OF GLASGOW, LIVERPOOL, AND MANCHESTER

The great commercial centres of Britain after London are GLASGOW (800,000), LIVERPOOL (700,000) and MANCHESTER (640,000, including SALFORD). All these cities have derived the greater portion of their size from the progress they have made during the present century. All, of course, owe their progress and their prosperity largely to their natural advantages of situation, etc. LIVERPOOL stands on the margin of the Atlantic, "the Mediterranean of the modern world," and thus enjoys the principal share of the trade with America, especially that with the United States. Great Britain's imports from the United States amount to over $500,000,000 per annum, and her exports to the United States (exclusive of bullion, etc.) to over $100,000,000. (Formerly the exports to the United States were twice this amount.) Of this vast trade, amounting to one fifth of Britain's total trade with the world, Liverpool enjoys the lion's share. Nearly all the cotton, not merely of the United States but of the world, that is used in Europe is sent to Liverpool for distribution. Similarly, GLASGOW, situated with its aspect directed toward the same maritime routes, enjoys also an immense transatlantic trade both north and south. And MANCHESTER, situated in the very heart of the richest coal districts of the kingdom, and within easy reach of the great cotton port, Liverpool, has built up a cotton-manufacturing industry surpassing that of all the rest of the world.

THE BUSINESS ENTERPRISE OF GLASGOW, LIVERPOOL, AND MANCHESTER

But the natural advantages of situation possessed by these great cities have been grandly supplemented by the enterprise of their inhabitants. GLASGOW is only a river port. For twenty miles below its site the Clyde is naturally narrow, shallow, and shoal-encumbered. In places it is naturally not more than fifteen inches deep. By the expenditure of no less a sum than $60,000,000 this shallow stream has been converted into a continuous harbour, lined on either side for miles with wharves and docks, and easily capable of accommodating the largest and finest merchant ships afloat. As a consequence of this enterprise Glasgow has become the greatest ship-building port in the world. No less than twenty shipyards--in efficiency and magnitude of the very highest class--are to be found along the banks of the once shallow, impassable Clyde, between Glasgow proper and the river's mouth.

Similarly, the enterprise of the ship merchants of LIVERPOOL has converted a port, that high tides and impassable bars would naturally render unfit for modern ships, into the greatest shipping port in the world. One hundred million dollars were spent in making the improvement, but $5,000,000 is the annual revenue derived therefrom in dock dues alone. And because of this enterprise Liverpool can now boast of controlling one fourth of all the imports of the kingdom, and two fifths of all the exports, and of handling three fourths of all the grain and provision trade of the kingdom, and of having the largest grain warehouses in the world.

But MANCHESTER, a wholly inland city, forty miles distant from Liverpool, its nearest port, has outdone even Glasgow and Liverpool in its endeavour to bring the sea to its own doors. It also has spent $100,000,000--not, however, in amounts spread over a number of years, and as occasion seemed to demand, but all at once, in one lump sum, in one huge enterprise. It has built a canal to the Mersey where it is navigable, thirty-five and one half miles in length, and sufficiently deep and wide, so that the whole of its vast importation of cotton, and the whole of its vast manufacture of cotton and other textile fabrics, and as much else as may be desired, may be brought in from the sea or taken to the sea in merchant vessels of the very largest size now afloat. And it has done this in the face of engineering difficulties, and of obstacles raised against it by jealous competing interests that were almost insurmountable.

GREAT BRITAIN'S SPECIALISATION OF HER INDUSTRIES IN DEFINITE CENTRES

In no part of the world are manufacture and trade carried on with such strict regard to the conditions of economic production and the economic handling of goods as in the British Isles. The free-trade policy of the empire permits everywhere within its borders not merely national but world-wide competition; and yet it is but truth to say that wherever Great Britain attempts to sell her goods abroad every nation and every community in the world rises against her. Even her colonies are against her. Her markets are open to every one's trade, and yet in almost every market in the world which she does not absolutely control barriers are raised against her trade. She is able to sell goods in foreign markets only because, despite these barriers, she is able to undersell all competitors in them, or to give better value for the same money than they. Even when she obtains the control of new markets, as she has in India, China, Egypt, West Africa, etc., she allows every nation to trade in these markets on precisely the same terms as she herself trades in them. In the face of this world-wide competition, therefore, the industries of Britain would cease to exist if every condition conducive to economy of production--climatic suitability, availability of cheap motive power, accessibility to cheap raw material, and accessibility to natural and cheap means of transportation--were not taken advantage of to the utmost. But this is just what Britain does. She does take advantage to the utmost of conditions conducive to economy of production; and this is why, to a degree nowhere else attempted in the world, she has specialised her industries in definite favouring localities.

THE NATURAL APTITUDES OF COMMUNITIES IN GREAT BRITAIN FOR SPECIAL INDUSTRIES

A result of this specialisation of industries in definite centres is that a natural aptitude for the industry specialised in a locality is developed among the inhabitants of the locality, and this, being stimulated by association, is transmitted from generation to generation with ever-increasing efficiency. Again, this inherited aptitude of the community for the industry historically associated with it is a prime element in the economic prosecution of the industry. Also, in turn, it acts as an important influence in continuing the industry in the locality where once it has been successfully specialised. In no country in the world, outside of Asia, have great industries had such long-continued successful existence in definite localities as in Britain. And therefore in no country in the world do the natural aptitudes of communities for special industries constitute such an important element of economic industrial production. A community of efficient "smiths," for example, has existed in and about Birmingham since the fifteenth century. As a consequence of this the Birmingham country has for several centuries been the greatest seat of the metal or hardware industries in the world. Again, the manufacture of woollen cloths has been an industry successfully specialised in West Yorkshire from the fourteenth century. It results that nowhere in the world is the woollen manufacture carried on more prosperously than in West Yorkshire to-day. The potteries of Staffordshire have been in existence time out of mind, and in the eighteenth century they took a pre-eminent place among the industries of the world. They hold that place of pre-eminence now, even though since then the methods of manufacture have been several times revolutionised.

THE COTTON MANUFACTURES OF GREAT BRITAIN

But the influence which more than anything else has determined the specialisation of industries in certain places in Britain rather than in others has been the presence of coal-fields. In only a very few instances have great industries been maintained in districts that are not coal-producing. The busiest industrial centre in all Britain is, perhaps, South Lancashire, the great seat of the COTTON MANUFACTURE. South Lancashire is one great coal-field. LIVERPOOL, the great cotton port of the world, is at one edge of this field. MANCHESTER, the cotton metropolis of the world, is at the other edge. Between and near these two chief towns is a whole nest of large towns and cities--PRESTON, BURNLEY, BLACKBURN, ROCHDALE, BOLTON, BURY, ASHTON, STOCKPORT, OLDHAM, etc.--every one of which is wholly devoted to the cotton interest. From their position all these towns obtain both their motive power and their raw material at the lowest possible cost. But, in addition to its advantages of cheap coal and cheap raw material, South Lancashire has one other great advantage in favour of its special industry--its climate is eminently suited to the industry. Its atmosphere is moist, and not too moist, and its temperature is not too cold. Cotton thread can be spun and woven in Lancashire which elsewhere would break. In scarcely any other place in England has cotton-weaving or cotton-spinning ever proved a success. The cotton industry of Scotland is not so localised as it is in England, but PAISLEY (65,000) is famous all the world over for its identification with the manufacture of cotton thread. Ireland has no important cotton manufactures except in BELFAST. One third of the cotton manufactured in the world is manufactured in the United Kingdom. The total product is about 14,000 miles of cloth daily. The number of separate mills is over 2500. The annual product is $500,000,000, which is one hundred times what it was one hundred years ago. The quantity of raw cotton imported annually to sustain this immense production is 1,750,000 pounds.

THE WOOLLEN MANUFACTURES OF GREAT BRITAIN