As an economic principle, this of self-supply is altogether sound, and its extension to the utmost is advisable and beneficial. It will help to eliminate waste; it will perhaps work against over-production and over-competition, both wasteful forces; it will tend to conserve the native resources of the globe, especially in fuel and raw material, which, during the "factory age," have been severely drawn upon and in many instances ruthlessly wasted. To produce a thing where it is to be consumed, we may repeat, rather than carrying it over seas and continents from distant producer to consumer, is a sound economic and sociological principle, so far little recognised. The growth of such conditions, however, is not likely to be of benefit to trade in general. One of the first branches of manufacture to be affected thereby is the textile industry of Britain and other lands as regards the export trade. It has been shown in these pages that the Latin American countries, in some instances, have now set up their own mills and are manufacturing their own textiles. This is specially true of such countries as Brazil, Mexico, Argentina and others, where the production of "piece goods" and other textiles and articles of clothing is being extensively carried out with marked success, and with a corresponding limitation of import. These mills are often worked by water-power, and so are free from the difficult and expensive element of fuel. Labour, moreover, is much cheaper, even if less efficient, than abroad. The same condition is growing as regards other manufactured articles, and there is no physical reason why the whole of the Latin American States should not manufacture many articles for their own requirements which at present they import. They possess within their own shores all the necessary raw material, except in some few instances. But do they possess the skill to make these articles? There is little doubt that the Latin American folk, the artisan, the mechanic, the craftsman, are learning the methods of manufacture in many fields. They may not be an inventive folk, but they are an imitative folk, and possessed withal of great patience and painstaking ingenuity.