The War After the War | Page 8

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 illustrate: This process, which originated in England, was permitted to pass 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-glass 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 pass 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,