THE Balfour Committee on Industry and Trade, appointed by Ramsay MacDonald in

British Business Investigations

1924, has issued in a large volume its third survey, which deals with facts influencing industrial efficiency. The two earlier reports, which contain

respectively a survey of overseas markets and of industrial relations, are not directly integrated with the new volume. A fourth volume, to deal with the eight great exporting industries, is still in prospect, after which a final report, containing, it is presumed, a synthesis of the preceding surveys and the conclusions and recommendations of the Committee, will be forthcoming. According to the London Times: "The present report is divided under four heads. In the first chapter the Committee discusses factors affecting industrial structure, including the scale on which modern business is conducted, the growth of joint-stock enterprise, the development of combinations by different forms of agreements, and the changes which have taken place in the internal structure of businesses. Something is also said about the coöperative movement. Under the second head fall the factors affecting the quality of production, and these include industrial recruitment, workshop training, technical and scientific research, industrial art, and standardization. The relation of the State and of public authorities to industry and trade — including financial and other assistance, Customs tariffs, import prohibitions, and the marking of goods-forms the third branch of the subject; and last come certain aspects of the questions of industrial profits, burdens, and costs, and their bearings on national savings.' Our papers have already given us the substance of the conclusion reached by the Commission which the British Government sent to our country and Canada last autumn to 'study industrial conditions with special reference to the relations between employers and employed in their bearing upon industrial conditions in Great Britain.' The five members, who included important employers, labor leaders, and public officials, were not in full accord as to their findings. Mr. Bevin, General Secretary of the Transport and General Workers Union of Great Britain, was skeptical as to the permanence of our prosperity. He attributed our high wages primarily to a boom, likely to be punctured at any time. On the other hand, the employer

members saw America's advantage principally in the fact that 'the principal labor organizations have made it their declared policy to encourage production, provided the worker receives his share of the benefit.'

Empire Economics

Broad-visioned business men in Great Britain are giving more attention than ever to the economic possibilities of the Dominions, now that the Empire seems to be thrown upon its own resources more than hitherto, that America has become a formidable competitor in the world market, and that even Asia is struggling to gain industrial independence. Yet the Dominions will afford homes for Britain's surplus population, which is one of the country's chief concerns at present, only by themselves becoming more like England than they are at present and by offering fields of employment similar to those to which the immigrants were accustomed in their native land. At the invitation of Premier Bruce, a British Commission of four of England's greatest captains of industry and finance is to visit Australia to cooperate with a similar commission there to plan a grandiose and systematic development of the Commonwealth. In the next five years fifteen million pounds are to be spent on roads alone. New railways are to be built across the continent, and colossal schemes of agricultural development are contemplated. Queensland, for instance, proposes to 'create' seven thousand new farms. To quote an enthusiastic forecast in the London Morning Post, the Great Eight,' as it denominates the Joint Commission, will have a blank outline map of the continent, and they will have to fill in the roads, the railways, the great cities of the future, in the places that seem best to them. Nothing like it has ever been attempted before. New countries have developed on haphazard lines, and some of them have had to pay for it. Australia is determined to plan her own growth and to get the best brains in the world to do it for her.' This is not the first time that similar schemes for goose-step colonization have been attempted in Australia. If they did not attain the hopes of their promoters, at least they were not utter failures. All this costs money, however.

An analysis of the direction of British foreign commerce, in the Board of Trade Journal, indicates that imports from foreign countries declined slightly between 1913 and 1926, while

exports from the British Empire increased. Exports of British goods to foreign countries fell off still more markedly, - about seven and one-half per cent, while those to the British Empire rose in approximately equal ratio. This movement, of course, is in percentages of Great Britain's total foreign commerce.

Despite the paralyzing effect of the coal strike, Great Britain's output of motor cars rose from British

133,500 in 1925 to 158,699 in 1926. Meanwhile, however, the average

Business value per car fell from something

over fifteen hundred dollars to the vicinity of thirteen hundred and fifty. Consequently, while the number of cars produced rose by nineteen per cent, their aggregate value increased by but four per cent. Retail trade has also been well maintained. The net trading profits of Selfridge and Company, Ltd., made a new high record in 1926 of approximately two and one-half million dollars. Even in North England retail trade has been booming. Lewis's, Ltd., one of the important merchandising companies of that region, made large additions to their capital in 1926, and record profits of four hundred and forty thousand pounds sterling. Under the misleading title - at least to cis-Atlantic readers

- of the American Cotton Yarn Association, Ltd., Lancashire spinners, representing nearly twenty-one million spindles, have organized to control production. The new body takes its name from the fact that its members use principally Southern cotton. A vote of four hundred and fifty thousand pounds addition to Britain's previous appropriations for the sugar beet subsidy, due to a rise of one ton per acre in crops and one per cent in sugar content, records progress in that industry during the last two years. In 1924 the beet area harvested was less than twenty-three thousand acres; last year it had increased to about one hundred and twenty-five thousand acres. During the same interval the crop rose from twentyfour thousand to nearly one hundred and thirty thousand tons. This development is not likely to deprive cane planters immediately of a fair share of the British market, for the present product represents less than one tenth of the country's home consumption. The New Statesman has this gloomy comment on the British railway situation: 'The railway reports and dividends are as grim reading as the bank reports a week or two ago were gay and insouciant. The Midland has to draw over £7,000,000 from reserve in order to make up a dividend of 3 per cent on the ordinary shares. This is the worst; but the other big companies have also had an exceedingly bad time. Reserves, indeed, are still large, thanks to the huge sums paid out by the Government on cessation of war-time control. But even huge

reserves will not last forever at this rate. The coal stoppage is, of course, largely responsible for last year's figures. But it is by no means wholly so; for even without the abnormal losses which it caused it seems clear that the railways would have run at a loss. Raising freights is no remedy. It would cause the traffic to shrink, or take to the roads; and, in so far as it did not, the trouble would only be shifted elsewhere. Lower wages are no remedy; for neither are wages too high, nor would any possible fall in them balance the account. And a fall in wages would reduce purchasing power, and so react on general prosperity. Clearly, the only remedy is increased traffic.'

Measured quantitatively, France's imports last year were almost exactly the same as in 1913. A slight decline of less than one half France a million tons occurred in food imports, a still smaller decrease in imports of manufactures, and an addition of nearly two million tons in imports of raw materials. In none of these cases did the change represent a marked percentage of the totals. The country's exports of food products were practically the same the two years in question; but those of raw materials increased between forty and fifty per cent, and those of manufactures more than doubled. The United States ranks fourth as a purchaser of French products, coming immediately after Germany. France also maintained her favorable trade balance throughout January, although monetary measurements are a rather unstable stnadard by which to judge, since prices are falling rapidly. A decline of about fourteen per cent occurred in exports of manufactured goods and an increase in imports of foodstuffs. Unemployment continues to increase, though not alarmingly, the total number of persons in receipt of relief in February being less than sixty-five thousand. Some popular estimates, however, place the true number of idle workers as high as one quarter of a million. Despite the socalled buyers' strike, due to the maintenance of high prices in spite of the rising value of the franc, receipts from the sales tax actually increased during January. Meanwhile general business is looking up somewhat after the temporary depression that accompanied the restoration of the franc to approximately a fourcent basis. People have begun to acquire confidence in its stability, and fear of either another collapse or of undue appreciation is decidedly less than at the end of last year. Nevertheless, conditions are not yet normal. Where there has been a revival of buying, it is mostly of raw materials to complete unfilled contracts for finished goods. In general, a sharp decline has occurred in both foreign and domestic demand, the former because competition with other

countries is now on a more equal basis, the latter because of the buyers' strike. Hope that the crisis will be a brief one helps to explain the action of many large manufacturers in shortening their working hours rather than dismissing a portion of their staff. Coal mining is still fairly active with the holdover from the British strike, but prices were lowered on the first of February. Quotations for iron and steel and their manufactures were more speedily accommodated to the new situation, and are now considerably below those of a few months ago. In fact, most establishments in this industry are said to be working at a loss, and several furnaces and steel mills have shut down. Automobile manufacturers were probably the hardest hit by the rise of the franc, and will be forced to cut prices by at least one fifth in order to hold foreign markets. Moreover, domestic buyers are holding off in an expectation of this reduction. Citroën has already lowered the price of his cars, which are the Fords of France, from 23,500 francs to 20,700 francs for the cheapest and from 30,000 francs to 24,600 francs for de luxe models. In advertising these cuts he says: 'In spite of the present crisis we have retained our twenty thousand workers. We have not stopped turning out two hundred and fifty cars a day, and all our cars have been sold. The present reductions are in contemplation of increasing the daily output to four hundred cars.' Woolen and worsted mills are feeling keenly Belgian and German competition, but are still carrying on with unfilled contracts. Carpet factories have shut down two days a week. At Lyon silk manufacturers, after being confined for a period to filling uncompleted contracts, are now beginning to receive further orders from abroad, though these are not large enough to exhaust their stocks on hand. France, in contrast to Italy, seems to have a money surplus, for the Government is offered more funds than it needs, or than it is entitled to borrow, without the necessity of exercising pressure, moral or otherwise, upon its citizens to get it.

Belgium appears to be well satisfied with the results of the stabilization she achieved three months ago. Prosperity has continued, and the four years of financial penance through which business men were told they would have to pass are not yet in evidence. Industry and commerce are reasonably active. Partly, to be sure, this is due to the troubles of others. The British coal strike was a boon to the mining, metallurgical, and transport trades, and the rise of the franc across the border has stimulated sales in France and lessened competition from that quarter. During the last three months of 1926 Belgium had the novel experience of shipping more goods abroad than she imported.

Competition between railways and waterways in Germany is apparently repeating the exGermany perience of the United States. With the introduction of larger cars, — the twenty-ton car having already replaced the tenor fifteen-ton car common before the war, heavier locomotives, and modern brakes, land transportation has been cheapened until expensive waterways are no longer remunerative. Experts recently testified before an investigating committee in that country that several of the waterway projects under construction or in contemplation were destined to be unprofitable. In substance: 'The experience of industrialists with Rhine transportation shows that inland waterways are profitable only if we write off the entire investment for wharves and loading and unloading machinery. Where it is necessary to construct these anew, inland waterways cannot pay a profit on the investment.' Germany's five-percent Federal loan for one half of a billion marks was taken up at the issue price of ninety-two. Approximately three fifths was subscribed by the general public and the remaining two fifths by public corporations. Unemployment is gradually declining, despite the fact that the number of idle workers usually rises during the late winter months.

At the Luxemburg meeting on the fourth of February the Czechoslovakian-Austrian-Hungarian group was admitted to the European Steel Cartel, with a quota of 2.1 million tons. Although neither England nor Poland was represented, both countries are negotiating to enter the organization. The British are standing out for a quota of nine and one-half million tons, and the Cartel is offering eight and one-half million tons. The difficulties over the original quotas allotted to the steel makers of different countries, due to changed market conditions resulting from the British coal strike and its cessation, the restoration of the franc, and other conditions only partly or imperfectly foreseen, seem in a fair way to be adjusted. It is dawning upon the managers of the trust that this quota problem is far more complex than was originally assumed. Separate provisions will probably have to be made eventually for the domestic and the foreign market of each member's producers, and also for separate quotas for certain specific products like wire, rods, and plates. There is already an international steel rail pool, of which England is a member, and where one of the troublesome issues is Germany's protest against preferential treatment of British rails in the customs regulations of the Dominions.

The McNary-Haugen Bill added to Europe's ill-will toward America. Vossische Zeitung stigmatized it as a ‘dumping scheme,' adding: ‘Other exporting countries, above all Argentina, Uru