Hence, the relentless energy of her throbbing mills; the searching appraisal of her resources; the marshalling of all her genius of trade conquest. Dominating all this is the kindling idea of a self-contained empire, linked with the slogan: "Home Patronage of Home Product." The war found her unprepared to fight; she is determined that peace shall see her fit for economic battle.
This is what she is doing and every act has a meaning all its own for us. Take Industry: Forty-eight hundred government-controlled factories, working day and night, are sending out a ceaseless flood of war supplies. The old bars of restricted output are down; the old s.e.x discrimination has faded away. Women are doing men"s work, getting men"s pay, making themselves useful and necessary cogs in the productive machine. They will neither quit nor lose their cunning when peace comes.
I have watched the inspiring spectacle of some of these factories, have walked through their forest of American-made automatics, heard the hum of American tools as they pounded and drilled and ground the instruments of death. What does it signify? This: that quant.i.ty output of shot and sh.e.l.l for war means quant.i.ty output of motors and many other products for peace. You may say that quant.i.ty output is a matter of temperament and that the British nature cannot be adapted to it; but speeded-up munitions making has proved the contrary. The British workman has learned to his profit that it pays to step lively. High war wages have accustomed him to luxuries he never enjoyed before, and he will not give them up. Unrestricted output has come to stay.
Five years ago the efficiency expert was regarded in England as an intruder and a quack; to use a stop watch on production was high crime and treason. To-day there are thousands of students of business science and factory management. In the spinning district girls in clogs sit alongside their foremen listening to lectures on how to save time and energy in work. Scores of old establishments are being reborn productively. There is the case of a famous chocolate works that before the war rebuffed an instructor in factory reorganisation. Last year it saw the light, hired an American expert, and to-day the output has been increased by twenty-five per cent.
The infant industries, growing out of the needs of war and the desire of self-sufficiency, are resting on the foundations of the new creed.
"Speed up!" is the industrial cry, and with it goes a whole new scheme of national industrial education. The British youth will be taught a trade almost with his A-B-C"s.
Formerly in England the standardisation of plan and product was almost unknown. For example, no matter how closely ships resembled each other in tonnage, structure or design, a separate drawing was made for each.
Now on the Clyde the same specifications serve for twenty vessels.
England has gone into the wholesale production; and what is true of ships in the stress of hungry war demand will be true of scores of articles for trade afterward. The old rule-of-thumb traditions that hampered expansion have gone into the discard, along with voluntary military service and the fetish of free trade.
Typical of the new methods is the standardisation of exports, which have increased steadily during the past year. In a room of the Building of the Board of Trade, down in Whitehall, and where the whole trade strategy of the war is worked out, I saw a significant diagram, streaked with purple and red lines, which shows the way it is done. The purple indicated the rosters of the great industries; the red, the number of men recruited from them for military service. No matter how the battle lines yearn for men, the workers in the factories that send goods across the sea are kept at their task. This diagram is the barometer. For exports keep up the rate of exchange and husband gold.
England is creating a whole new line of industrial defence. The manufacture of dyestuffs will ill.u.s.trate: This process, which originated in England, was permitted to pa.s.s to the Germans, who practically got a world monopoly in it. Now England is determined that this and similar dependence must cease.
For dyemaking she has established a systematic co-operation among state, education and trade. In the University of Leeds a department in colour chemistry and dyeing has been established, to make researches and to give special facilities to firms entering the industry, all in the national interest. A huge, subsidised mother concern, known as British Dyes, Limited, has been formed, and it will take the place of the great dye trust of Germany, in which the government was a partner.
This procedure is being repeated in the launching of an optical-gla.s.s industry; this trade has also been in Teutonic hands. I could cite many other instances, but these will show the new spirit of British commercial enterprise and protection.
Everywhere nationalisation is the keynote of trade activity. Coal furnishes an instance: The collieries of the kingdom not only stoke the fires of myriad furnaces but drive the ships of a mighty marine. Through her control of coal England has one whip hand over her allies, for many of the French mines are in the occupied districts, and Italy"s supply from Germany has stopped. Coal means life in war or peace. Now England proposes a state control of coal similar to that of railroads.
It spells fresh power over the neutral shipping that coals at British ports. If the government controls the coal it will be in a position to stipulate the use that the consumer shall make of it, and require him to call for his return cargo at specified ports. Such supervision in war may mean similar domination in peace--another bulwark for British control of the sea.
Throughout England all trade facilities are being broadened and bettered. The local Chambers of Commerce, whose chief function for years was solemnly to pa.s.s resolutions, have stirred out of their slumbers.
The Birmingham body has formed a House of Commerce to stimulate and develop the commerce of the capital of the Midlands.
This stimulation at home is accompanied by a programme of trade extension abroad. The Board of Trade has granted a licence to the Latin-American Chamber of Commerce in Great Britain, formed to promote British trade in Central and South America and Mexico. Sections of the chamber are being organised for each of the important trades and industries in the kingdom, and committees named to enter into negotiations with every one of the Latin-American republics, where offices will be established in all important towns.
The Board of Trade has also learned the lesson of co-operation for foreign trade. As one result, British syndicates, composed of small manufacturers, who share the overhead cost, are forming to open up new markets the world over. These syndicates correspond with the familiar German Cartel, which did so much to plant German products wherever the sun shone.
England, too, has wiped out one other block to her trade expansion: For years many of her consuls were naturalised Germans. Many of them were trustworthy public servants. Others, true to the promptings of birth, diverted trade to their Fatherland. To-day the Consular Service is purged of Teutonic blood. It is one more evidence of the gospel of "England for the English!"
All this new trade expansion cannot be achieved without the real sinew of war, which is capital. Here, too, England is awake to the emergency.
Typical of her plan of campaign is the projected British Trade Bank, which will provide facilities for oversea commercial development, and which will not conflict with the work ordinarily done by the joint-stock, colonial and British foreign banks. It will do for British foreign trade what the huge German combinations of capital did so long and so effectively for Teuton commerce. Furthermore, it will make a close corporation of finance and trade, with the government sitting in the board of directors and lending all the aid that imperial support can bestow.
The bank will be capitalised at fifty million dollars. It will not accept deposits subject to call at short notice, which means constant mobilisation of resources; it will open accounts only with those who propose to make use of its oversea machinery; it will specialise in credits for clients abroad, and it will become the centre of syndicate operations. One of its chief purposes, I might add, will be to enable the British manufacturer and exporter to a.s.sume profitably the long credits so much desired in foreign trade.
From the confidential report of its organisation let me quote one illuminating paragraph which is full of suggestion for American banking, for it shows the new idea of British preparedness for world business.
Here it is:
"Nearly as important as the Board would be the General Staff. It is fair to a.s.sume that women will in the future take a considerable share in purely clerical work, and this fact will enable the inst.i.tution to take fuller advantage of the qualifications of its male staff to push its affairs in every quarter of the globe. Youths should not be engaged without a language qualification, and after a few years" training they should be sent abroad. It could probably be arranged that a.s.sociated banks abroad would agree to employ at each of their princ.i.p.al branches one of the Inst.i.tution"s clerks, not necessarily to remain there for an indefinite period, but to get a knowledge of the trade and characteristics of the country. Such clerks might in many cases sever their connection with the banks to which they were appointed and start in business on their own account. They would, however, probably look upon the inst.i.tution as their "Alma Mater," Every endeavour should be made to promote _esprit de corps_; and where exceptional ability is developed it should be ungrudgingly rewarded. If industry is to be extended it is essential that British products should be _pushed_; and manufacturers, merchants and bankers must combine to push them. It is believed that this pushing could be a.s.sisted by the creation of a body of young business men in the way above described."
The scope and purpose of this British Trade Bank suggest another East India Company with all the possibilities of gold and glory which attended that romantic eighteenth-century enterprise. Perhaps another Clive or a second Hastings is somewhere in the making.
That the British Government proposes to follow the German lead and definitely go into business--thus reversing its tradition of aloofness from financial enterprise--is shown in the new British and Italian Corporation, formed to establish close economic relations between Britain and Italy. It starts a whole era in British banking, for it means the subsidising of a private undertaking out of national funds.
It embodies a meaning that goes deeper and travels much farther than this. Up to the outbreak of the great war Germany was the banker of Italy. Cities like Milan and Rome were almost completely in the grip of the Teutonic lender, and his country cashed in strong on this surest and hardest of all dominations. This was the one big reason why the Italian declaration of war against Germany was so long delayed. With this new banking corporation England not only supplants the German influence but forges the economic irons that will bind Italy to her.
The capital of the British and Italian Corporation is nominally only five million dollars. The government, however, agrees to contribute during each of the first ten years of its existence the sum of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Though imperial stimulation of trade is one of its main objects, this inst.i.tution is not without its larger political value. As this and many other similar enterprises show, politics and world trade, so far as Great Britain is concerned, will hereafter be closely interwoven.
Throughout all this British organisation runs the increasing purpose of an Empire Self-Contained. Whether that phase of the Paris Pact which calls for development and mobilisation of natural resources sees the light of reality or not, Britain is determined to take no chances for her own. She is scouring and searching the world for new fields and new supplies. She is planning to increase her tea and coffee growing in Ceylon and make cotton plantations of huge tracts in India and Africa.
The control of the metal fields of Australia has reverted to her hands; she will get tungsten and oil from Burma. It took the war to make her realise that, with the exception of the United States, Cuba and Hawaii, all the sugar-cane areas of the world are within the imperial confines.
They will now become part of the Empire of Self-Supply. Even a partial carrying out of this far-flung plan is bound seriously to affect our whole export business.
You have seen how this self-contained idea may work abroad. Go back to England and you find it forecasting an agricultural revolution that may be one of the after-war miracles.
For many years England has raised about twenty per cent of her wheat supplies. One reason was her dependence on gra.s.s instead of arable land; another was the inherent objection of the British farmer to adopt scientific methods of soil cultivation or engage in co-operative marketing. The old way was the best way; he wanted to go "on his own."
The war has opened his eyes, and likewise the eyes and purse of the ultimate consumer. Denmark did some of this awakening. England depended upon her for enormous supplies of bacon, cheese, b.u.t.ter and eggs. When the war broke out and the ring of steel hemmed Germany in, the speculative prices offered by the Fatherland were too much for the little domain. Holland also "let down" her old customer, poured her food into Germany, and fattened on immense profits. Norway and Sweden, which were also important sources of more or less perishable British food supplies, have done the same thing. When peace comes you may be sure that England will have a reckoning.
This scarcity of food, coupled with the incessant sinking of supply ships by enemy submarines, the rigid censorship of imports, and all those other factors that bring about the high cost of war, has made the Englishman sit up and take notice of his agricultural plight.
"We must grow more of our food," is the new determination. To achieve it plans for collective marketing, for intensive farming, for co-operative land-credit banks, are being made. The gentleman farmer will become a working farmer.
England"s gospel of self-sufficiency has a significance for us that extends far beyond her growing independence in foodstuffs and raw materials. It is fashioning a weapon aimed straight at the heart of our overseas industrial development.
Most people who read the newspapers know that many articles of American make, ranging from bathtubs to motor cars, have been excluded from England. The reasons for this--which are all logical--are the necessity for cutting down imports to protect the trade balance and keep the gold at home; the need of ship tonnage for food and war supplies; and the campaign to curtail luxury.
Admirable as are these reasons, there is a growing feeling among Americans doing business in England that this wartime prohibition, which is part of the programme of military necessity, is the prelude to a more permanent, if less drastic, exclusion when peace comes.
Habit is strong with Englishmen, and the shrewd insular manufacturer has been quick to see the opportunities for advancement that lie in this closed-door campaign.
"Get the consumer out of the habit of using a certain American product during the war," he argues, "and when the war is over--even before--he will be a good "prospect" for the English subst.i.tute."
Here is a concrete story that will ill.u.s.trate how the exclusion works and what lies behind:
Last summer a certain well-known American machine, whose gross annual business in Great Britain alone amounts to more than half a million dollars a year, was suddenly denied entrance into the kingdom. When the managing director protested that it was a necessity in hundreds of British ships he was told that it made no difference.
"But what are the reasons for exclusion?" he asked.
"We don"t want English money to go out of England," was the reply.
"Then we shall not only bank all our receipts here but will bring over one hundred thousand pounds more," came from the director.
It had no effect.
"Is it tonnage?" was the next query.
"Yes," said the official.
"Then we shall ship machines in our president"s yacht," was the ready response.
This staggered the official. After a long discussion the director received permission to bring in what machines were on the way; and, also, he got a date for a second hearing.
Meantime he adapted a type of machine to the needs of a certain department in the Board of Trade, sold two, and got them installed and working before he next appeared before the Trade Censors, who, by the way, knew absolutely nothing at all about the article they were prohibiting. The first question popped to him was: