Germany -- Commerce -- Great Britain; Great Britain -- Commerce; Great Britain -- Commerce -- Germany
Here I must bring to an end my short, detailed criticism of the _Daily
Graphic_ correspondent’s attack, for I have already exceeded the space
offered to me by the editor, though I have perforce left untouched a
number of points on which I should have liked to enlarge my defence. I
have not touched the two concluding articles in the series. The last is
a statement (more lucidly and ably put than anything I remember ever to
have read) of the Free Trade position in general and the case against a
Customs Union in particular; but I have recently elsewhere stated my
views on those subjects at length. Regarding the penultimate article, I
should like to say a word in conclusion. That article attacks me by a
side wind. It does not contest the facts contained in my book; on the
contrary, it leads off with an airy dismissal of “Mr. Williams and his
fanciful forebodings,” and it shows, by much rhetorical writing and some
interesting illustrations, that England is a land flowing with milk and
honey and manufactures and money, and generally in a wonderful state of
millennial prosperity. My answer is two-fold. In the first place I must
congratulate the correspondent on the pleasant surroundings among which
alone his days can have been passed; but I should like to take him
through some awful wildernesses I know—deserts of “mean streets,”
where half-clothed, underfed children shiver for warmth and food at the
knees of women gaunt and haggard with the suffering which hopeless
poverty inflicts on them; and by way of explanation of these grisly
phenomena I would take him to the dock gates in the early morning, where
not unlikely he would see men literally fighting for entrance because
there is not work enough to go round. If that does not point him out the
cause with sufficient clearness I would suggest an examination of the
employment returns of the trade unions. There, by-the-by, he would see
the greatest want of employment to be in those trades where the pinch of
foreign competition—“the harmless growth of the German infant,” he
phrases it—is most in evidence.
A WARNING.
In the second place, I would point out to him that the initial object of
my book was to warn the nation in the day of its prosperity—such as it
is—that a grave danger was lurking in the way. The fact that the
easy-going man of business is surrounded by so many signs of industrial
prosperity, such as those which the correspondent details, only made it
the more important that he should be aroused to a knowledge of the
forces that were undermining the foundations.
Printed by CASSELL & COMPANY, LIMITED, La Belle Sauvage, London, E.C.
BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
“LAND NATIONALIZATION.”
Being an Examination of various Schemes for
Nationalizing and Taxing Land.
LONDON: METHUEN & Co.
_Price 2s. 6d._
_COBDEN CLUB LEAFLETS._
_Supplied by Cassell & Company, Limited, in Packets of 100, price 1s.
Those marked [*] 2s. Those marked [+] 4s. Those marked [++] 8s._
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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