Industry and Trade

Industry and Trade - The present urgency of the allied problems of industry and trade. AS INDICATED ON the title page, the present work is designed to make a small contribution to the study of the progress of industrial technique, and of business organisation; as well as of the distribution of the benefits thence arising among various sections of the people and various nations. No previous age has had such large opportunities as the present for applying material resources in the elevation of human life. The forces of Nature are being turned back upon her to compel her to render ever larger returns to man's efforts in every branch of industry; any resistance that she may offer to the agriculturist and the miner being quickly reduced by the incessant development of fresh sources f rich supply, and by easy and rapid communication between distant places. New countries are quickly falling into line with old. Some of them are making greater advances in economic organisation and industrial technique in a decade, than Europe as a whole has made in any century except the last: and, though this progress is continually depriving old countries of favourable markets for familiar wares; yet the very causes, to which it is due, are meanwhile opening up larger and more various markets in the same countries, or in others. Thus material wealth has rolled in on the populations of old countries with unprecedented rapidity, and on new countries faster still.