Tons
1890 4,277,000 2,127,000 3,679,000
1906 23,246,000 11,135,000 6,462,000

Great Britain, which formerly produced nine-tenths of the world's
steel, produces now little more than one-tenth of the world's steel.

As Great Britain has to buy vast quantities of food and raw material
from foreign countries, she must sell to foreign countries vast
quantities of manufactured goods. However, market after market is
being closed to her industries by ever-rising tariff walls, and the
profits from her exports have been greatly diminished through foreign
competition. Her home market has been reduced through the decay of her
agriculture and the shrinkage of her agricultural population, and it
is systematically spoiled by combinations of foreign manufacturers.
Foreign syndicates determine not only the price of British wheat and
meat, but of British iron and other manufactures too, and they
endeavour to ruin the British industries completely. Great Britain,
far from being the world's manufacturer, has become the world's
dumping ground. From the richest country in the world she is rapidly
becoming one of the poorer countries of the world. Her industries are
suffering, and the result is bad times, low wages, irregular
employment, unemployment, poverty, and distress. It is noteworthy
that, on an average, unemployment among the skilled workers in
free-trade Great Britain is always five times greater than it is in
protectionist Germany;[1279] that British emigration per million is
eleven times larger than German emigration; that German savings-banks
deposits are four times larger than British savings-banks deposits,
and that the former increase ten times faster than the latter.[1280]

What can be done to improve the position of the British workers?
Emigration on the largest scale has proved a palliative, but no
remedy. During the last twenty years almost five million people have
left Great Britain. Yet the labour market is as over-stocked, and
unemployment and poverty are as great, as ever. Besides, the United
States and the British colonies may not always be able to absorb the
vast and ever-growing numbers of British unemployed workers.
Employment and wages depend upon the prosperity of industries, and the
prosperity of industries depends on a sufficiency of markets. The
British industries have not a sufficiency of markets. Therefore the
British population suffers from irregular employment, unemploy