Page:The Bank of England and the State, 1905.djvu/72

 development of the country, and to reform her system of weights and measures; she adopted the metric system, and this step alone assisted her materially in her export trade. Of German scientific methods, as adapted to her industries, I cannot do more than make a passing mention, but it is well known that the applications of science to industry, and not tariffs, enabled her to wrest many trades away from us which we ought to have retained. I give at the end of this paper quotations from remarks by Sir Henry Roscoe, Lord Kelvin and Sir Norman Lockyer, men prominent in the scientific field on this point. And from other eminent scientific experts I have obtained information which I regret space does not admit of doing justice to on the present occasion, and the clearest evidence that it is not so much due to the lack of means of obtaining the very best scientific training that so many of our industries have fallen behind, but to the unwillingness of employers to avail themselves of the services of scientific experts. The student on leaving college, fully equipped, has the greatest difficulty in obtaining employment in our industrial establishments, where a system of apprenticeship based on the payment of premiums prevails. In the United States and Germany, industrial establishments are constantly on the look-out for the most promising students as they leave the university.

The possible and necessary improvements in the methods of carrying on our trade, and making it attractive to those whom we wish to be our customers might well form the subject of a separate paper, but nothing could be more emphatic on this point than the Blue Book published in 1898, called Foreign Trade Competition, and embodying the opinion of H.M. Diplomatic and Consular Officers on British trade methods. It is interesting and melancholy reading. I wonder what the circulation of this Report has amounted to, and whether its lessons have gone home. There is also a useful publication, issued weekly, at the price of one penny, by the Board of Trade called the Board of Trade Journal, which gives most useful information about Foreign and Colonial Trade. I am informed, on very good authority, that the demand for this journal from Germany is much greater than the home demand. Space