Page:International Trade, An Application of Economic Theory.djvu/22

 in a normal condition of industrial development a smaller proportion of the real wealth of a nation, i.e. of the aggregate of goods and services, is capable of forming the material of international trade.

The actual volume of international trade, and its value, may continue to grow, and the fluctuations in this growth may be matter of serious concern, but external trade will not continue to keep pace with the growth of the wealth of the nation as a whole.

The truth of this generalisation is not impaired by adducing special abnormalities. The external trade of England during the middle decades of the nineteenth century, that of Germany and the United States during the last three decades, may possibly have grown at a more rapid rate than the internal trade and industry, though no proof of such a conjecture is attainable. The sudden quick adoption of new manufacturing methods with new facilities of transport by a few pioneer nations have opened up for them such vast possibilities of profit by trading with the ruck of backward nations as to engage in mining and crude manufacture large masses of industrial energy. Thus for a time the normal tendency may be checked. But since the chief result of the recent preponderating stress on railroad, steamship, and electric development over the whole surface of the globe will be to enable the backward nations to advance more rapidly in agriculture, mining, and manufactures, it is clear that this abnor-