Page:The Annual Register 1899.djvu/248

240], was regarded as having been to a large extent promoted by the persistent efforts of the Glasgow Corporation to emancipate that city from the monopoly enjoyed by the company. The same energetic municipality was able to present a balance-sheet showing a profit of over 50,000l. on the working of the city tram-lines for the year ending May 31, 1899.

The most steadily prominent feature of the year's life in Scotland was, as in England, a general commercial prosperity. The "record" output attained by the Clyde shipyards, with 466,832 tons in 1898, was surpassed by nearly 25,000 tons in the same district in 1899; and this was only one instance of the state of industry in South-west Scotland, where the iron and steel trade generally, and the production of engines and machinery in particular, were in a most flourishing condition. The textile trades of Dundee, whether dealing with flax or jute, specially the former, had a prosperous year. With the marked activity of all the great metal industries it was inevitable that the prices of coal should rise largely. Happily, the sharing of profit in that and other industries between masters and men was arranged with remarkable smoothness, and in the coal trade a conciliation board was formed on the model of that in operation for several years past in the majority of the English mining districts. At the same time there was a considerable revival in the whaling fishery, and the venturers in it were rewarded by most satisfactory results.

Ecclesiastically the year was marked by the continued progress of the movement for the union of the Free Church and the United Presbyterian Church. The opposition to this step seemed steadily declining, and the realisation of a proposal tending towards economy and the concentration of religious effort was pretty confidently anticipated before the close of the century.

II. IRELAND.

Two important events marked the annals of Ireland in 1899; the coming into operation of the Local Government Act of 1898, establishing democratically elected County and District Councils throughout Ireland, and a drawing together of hitherto mutually jealous and hostile sections of Nationalists. The results shown under the new act were neither uniform nor complete enough to warrant any very confident conclusions as to the future working of the great experiment inaugurated by the Unionist Government and Parliament. The landed proprietors did not as a class stand aside from the elections for the new councils, but as a class they were, where they offered themselves, rejected by the electors. In Connaught and Munster together only about a dozen country gentlemen were chosen, the fatal objection to their candidature being more probably their Unionist politics than their possession of land. The elements of administrative experience and