reading of their import and export accounts.
The United States is a conspicuous instance of a country which in the first
decade of the 20th century was still in the position of a borrower and had
a large excess of exports, though there were signs of a change in the
opposite direction. New countries generally, such as Canada, Australia and
the South American countries, resemble the United States. Comparisons are
made difficult by the want of uniformity in the methods of stating the
figures, but that different countries have to be grouped according as they
are indebted or creditor countries is undeniable, and no study of the trade
statistics is possible without recognition of the underlying economic
circumstances.

In conclusion it may be useful to repeat the main propositions laid down as
to the balance of trade, (1) A "balance of trade" to the individual trader,
from whose experience the phrase comes, is not necessarily, as is supposed,
a balance received or receivable in the precious metals. It may be invested
as it accrues--in machinery, or warehouses, or stock-in-trade, or in book
debts, or in stocks and shares or other property outside the trader's
business, as well as in cash. (2) What is true of the individual trader is
also true of the aggregate of individuals engaged in the foreign trade of a
country. Cash is only one of the forms in which they may elect to be paid.
(3) The imports and exports recorded in the statistical returns of a
country do not correspond with the purchases and sales of individual
traders, as the sales especially may be set off by loans, while the
so-called imports may include remittances of interest and of capital
repaid. (4) When capital is repaid the country receiving it need not be
living on it, but may be investing it at home. (5) The foreign trading of
countries may also comprise many transactions, such as the earning of
freights and commissions, which ought to appear in a proper account showing
a balance of trade, as similar transactions appear in an individual
trader's account, but which are not treated as imports or exports in the
statistical returns of a nation's foreign trade. (6) Import and export
returns themselves are not the same as accounts of purchases and sales; the
values are only estimates, and must not be relied on literally without
study of the actual facts. (7) Import and export returns in different
countries are not in all cases taken at the same point, there being
im