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Show The Industrial Effect tif War The dally papers and weekly Journals Jour-nals are compelling us to wallow In a' sea of many colored opinions'' as to the effect of the European war on cur Industries, The surmises run tho range from gold to black. Taken Tak-en all in all, the colors are bright, but the writers give few facts as the basis ot their statements and guesses. Two editorials in this column have pointed out the vast needs of' the; world outside of Europe for machinery. machin-ery. In machine tooth this is yearly some 17,760,000. In otlier machinery It is about 1130,000,000. These figures fig-ures are based on United States, Great Britain and German exports. Some machinery is sent abroad from Belgium and France, thus the totals given above are conservative. These show in most forcible fashion fash-ion the world's need for machinery, a need that has not been .interfered with by war, but If anything, will be, Increased In volume and made more . Insistent In demand,. Before America Ameri-ca Is a great1 duty to supply machinery machin-ery to- all the, world outside ot Europeand Eu-ropeand a great opportunity to gain a .share -of, the trade from foreign markets that heretofore have not looked with much favor on our products. pro-ducts. , - What are the chances that this duty and opportunity will be met? What does history tell us about the Industrial conditions of neutral na tlons when a great war was In pro gressf If our belief is true that a great opportunity now faces us, a similar opportunity must have faced some other nation at some time in the past. i The natural place to turn for al parallel is to England during the Franco Prussian war. Parliamentary Parliamen-tary reports, give most striking facts in this connection. In these documents, docu-ments, in every case the years Immediately Imme-diately preceding 187S .are referred, to as banner years, in English Industry. Indus-try. There was an unexampled trade expansion. The national Income Jumped from $5,600,000,000 in 1870 to 16,700,000,000 In 1874, an Increase of 11,200,000,000, The average yearly 'total of wages for the same years were: ,12,200,000,000 and $2,700,000,-000, $2,700,000,-000, respectively. The wage rate lit the machinery business increased during this period as shown by the following figures. These are arranged arrang-ed according to a scale In which the rate for 1860 Is taken as 100. 1860 1866 1870 1874 1877 100 108 110 124 123 What a tremendous record I From 1870 to 1874' England's yearly. national nation-al Income from.the sale of manufactured manufac-tured products Increased $1,200,000,-COO. $1,200,000,-COO. . , In 1870-1874 there was an enormous demand for workmen in England's Industry, as shown by the rise In ,wage rates and by the increase by the total aunt paid .to labor. "History repeats 'Itself." In 18704874 England was manufacturing manu-facturing for the world. In 1914 the United States must manufacture for the 'world. It Is the duty of American manufacturers manufac-turers to prepare for what la just before us an enormous foreign demand de-mand for our manufactured products. Manufactured prodcts are made by machine and machinery Is built with machine tools and small tools. American Am-erican Machinist. |