Page:The Bank of England and the State, 1905.djvu/62

 same time a variety of other causes, such as the plague and famine in India, the disturbed condition of China, drought in Australia, rinderpest in South Africa, added to the political unrest there, and the consequent unsatisfactory condition of the gold-mining industry, political disturbances in the South American states, and war between Turkey and Greece, contributed to closing some of our best markets, or at least greatly affected our exports to them.

The year 1898 brought a revival, which showed itself in the returns for 1899 marking a rise in our exports from 294 millions to 330 millions. In those years the output of every branch of the engineering and shipbuilding trades, and iron and steel manufactures, exceeded all records, but unfortunately the engineering, and subsequently the dock strike, lost us a great deal of business which would otherwise have come here. The year 1899 promised better still, and was a year of all-round activity and prosperity; the output of the above-mentioned trades and others again surpassed previous records, and our exports for 1900 show a further increase of 24 millions, raising them to 354 millions. It must be observed that the result of great activity often only shows itself in the returns for the following year. But the end of 1899 is the date of the outbreak of the South African war, and that war must naturally have had such a disturbing effect on the whole of our trade that no conclusion can possibly be drawn from the variations place since that period. It is evident that the purchases of war material of all sorts must have swelled our imports to a very large degree, that Government purchases abroad of foodstuffs, animals, and a variety of articles which were shipped direct to South Africa without appearing in our trade returns, must have naturally turned all the exchanges against us, and that all this vast expenditure resulted in keeping the value of money at a higher level here than in other centres. Until the outbreak of the war, there is nothing in the indications of the exchanges to warrant the assumption that our commercial condition had resulted in affecting our position as the cheapest money market, which is so essential for the maintenance of our supremacy as the bankers of the world. But I think the