when he gives
weights as a set-off against money figures, and I cannot, of course,
take exception to the use of those statistics. But I do take exception
to their abuse; and when he attempts to draw from them the inference
that the British manufacturer has nothing to complain of in the matter
of falling prices, I suggest that there is an abuse. Of course, in some
industries the decrease in the price of raw material has made it
possible to manufacture for a lower price, but your correspondent goes
much farther than the facts warrant when he assumes that the difference
in price is balanced by an all-round difference in raw material. He
forgets, for example, that coal, which in most manufactures is an item
of prime importance in the cost of production, is not cheaper than it
used to be in his favourite year 1886. Then the average price was 8.45s.
per ton, in 1894 it was 10.50s. per ton. Wages, too, are an even more
important item, and these are on the upward grade. So also are rent,
rates and taxes. Take his champion instance of the cotton trade. Men
used to make fortunes at it. Whoever hears of fortunes being made to-day
in cotton manufacture? What we do learn is that recently fifty-two out
of ninety-three spinning companies were paying no dividend at all.
Prices are cut because of foreign competition. The foreigners have to
cut their prices too, but that does not make the fact of foreign
competition any the less disagreeable. I still think, therefore, that I
followed the right method in laying more stress on money than on weights
and measures, and anyway no harm could be done by it, because I used
money figures for comparison in both the English and the German tables.
To read your correspondent one would imagine that I had confined myself
to money figures when tabulating English trade, and to weights when
giving the corresponding instances from Germany. Your correspondent was
so preoccupied with my skilful conveyance of false impressions that he
apparently overlooked the misleading nature of many of his own
impressions.

EXCESS OF IMPORTS OVER EXPORTS.

This anxiety has also seemingly taken his attention away from
consistency in his own statements. In the first article he rejoices over
the fact that our imports exceed our exports, regarding that
circumstance as a sign of prosperity; in his second article (when he has
another sort of article in hand) he writes as follows:--"When two
tradesmen have mutual transactions,