For wool last year Britain paid £26,000,000; for raw cotton £40,000,000; wood £14,000,000; metals £23,000,000; flax, hemp, and jute £10,000,000; and so on. But even what has been said of food and raw material of manufacture exhibits but one side of the national position. To be the workshop of the world {109} implies access to the markets of the world. I say nothing of the vast centres of commerce abroad which serve as the main points of distribution. But go to the loneliest Australian or New Zealand bush; to the backwoods and remote prairies of Canada; to distant South African gold and diamond diggings, and we find the shelves of the humblest shop filled with the products of the looms of Yorkshire, Lancashire, or Paisley, of the factories everywhere scattered throughout the United Kingdom where the vast inflow of raw material is worked up. To foreign countries, as well as to those inhabited by British people, to every civilized or uncivilized continent, district, or island, however remote, these manufactures penetrate, and must continue to penetrate, if the vast fabric of British industry is to be maintained. Once more, the figures which represent the annual aggregate of export trade are immense: cotton goods £70,000,000; woollen goods £26,000,000; iron and steel £28,000,000; machinery £ 13,000,000. Between this great inflow of raw material and food, and the equally great output of manufactured goods, has sprung up yet another prime factor in Britain's industrial position, her shipping interests. She has become by far the greatest of ocean carriers. It is not merely that scores of millions of capital are invested in ships alone; that 60 per cent. of all the steam tonnage of the world and a large proportion of its sailing tonnage are under the British flag; that tens of thousands of men find employment {110} upon the seas, and tens of thousands more in the immediate handling of ships and their cargoes around British harbours and docks. The mere construction of ships and their equipment for this vast carrying trade gives an impulse to almost every form of British industry. The shipyards of the Clyde alone turn out at times a thousand tons or more of iron or steel shipping for every working day of the year. The vast aggregate for the whole country forms a large element in the industrial life of the nation. Here, then, in roughest outline, is a picture of the unique position which the British Islands hold in the world today. Let us remind ourselves once more that the extreme singularity of this situation has been created well within the span of an ordinary life, for the sea-borne commerce of the United Kingdom, which today has an annual value of more than £740,000,000, was, when the Queen came to the throne in 1837, only £155,000,000. The difference between these figures fairly measures the increased dependence of the country upon its imports, exports, and the carrying trade.