The War After the War by Isaac Frederick Marcosson
page 24 of 174 (13%)
page 24 of 174 (13%)
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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 |
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