Page:The Bank of England and the State, 1905.djvu/73

 only prevents me from enlarging on this topic, but, from personal experience, I could tell many a tale of trade being positively driven away through mere neglect and carelessness; also, of trade that had been lost, being actually recovered where the need for effort had been recognised and met. The company promoter has much to answer for; for it must be admitted that in many cases where private firms have been turned into limited companies, the personal interest previously taken by the partners, the pride of a business handed down from father to son, have disappeared. Where the personal element disappears, no undertaking is likely to prosper. There has been, during the last decade preceding the years of the war, a desire to grow rich too rapidly, and the slow but sure methods, constant attention and careful watching of opportunities, have, perhaps, been left too much out of sight.

Two points I have not yet touched upon; dumping, and retaliation. Dumping is the sale to a foreign purchaser by the producer in a protected country of an article below the cost of production, which he is enabled to effect by obtaining from the consumer in his own country the enhanced price which protection makes it possible for him to charge. This is certainly an undesirable and injurious proceeding, injurious principally to the consumers in the protected countries. Some of our own industries are certainly exposed to loss through the sales of these results of over-production, just as they are exposed to loss through over-production on the part of home competitors. It is difficult to know how to meet the evil, and it is one which must correct itself, for the total of such sales below cost price can only be a small proportion of the total output; and it will only occur when the producing country is passing through a period of depression, so that the home demand is not equal to the output. Such periods of depression occur, as we all know, from time to time; and it is certain that some of our industries have derived considerable benefit, through being able to procure