pay subsequently 30 per cent more for the raw cotton imported, notwithstanding a decline of 10 per cent in the quality received. An apt illustration this of the characteristic defect in our national position. That our profits in cotton are comparatively low is therefore due partly to our difficulties in buying the raw material, and in selling the finished product at an adequate pricelevel to the impoverished East. Add to this that over twenty foreign countries now manufacture cotton, thus preventing us from attempting, in any case, to raise our charges against the consumer. Even Lancashire, then, as a whole, can expect, on present lines, no more than a modest remuneration, earned at the cost of severe and ceaseless effort.
If we turn from the most salient of our organised, to the most important of our unorganised, industries, agriculture, there is the same story to be told.
Our agriculture would appear at first sight to have several advantages over our cotton trade. The latter has to draw its raw materials from distant continents, and thus depends permanently, or at least will do so for many years to come, on the foreign grower; whereas agriculture has its raw material, the soil, under its feet. Then again, whereas Lancashire sells the main proportion of its output abroad to consumers of the poorest class, or else must struggle over the walls of high tariffs, agriculture has no such
