The house of Industry : a new estate of the realm

CONSUMPTION AND CO-OPERATION 63

there actually, it is always there potentially) is a portent of almost our greatest economic danger. Itis our staple industries that have been immeasurably the greatest factors in our world trade. If they shrink, our foreign trade shrinks. In every part of the world, civilised or even semi-civilised, British goods are to be found. Sometimes they are bridges or railways; they may be shirts or pocket-handkerchiefs. And nearly always they have been carried in British ships, financed by British capital, insured at British risk. It is this foreign trade that has made London the financial centre of the world. Nor has it stopped there. It has been by extended credit to the consumers that we have maintained that trade. We have, in fact, created effective demand in all parts of the world. (Incidentally, it is curious that we have vitalised natural demand from China to Peru but cannot do it at home because the wage-system mustnotbe tampered with.) Itiscommon ground that our economic structure, the creation of our insular life, depends upon the continuance of our foreign trade. Not only because of the profits we derive from that trade, but also—and mainlybecause we require food and raw material. Imagine the posture in which we should find ourselves, deprived of the food and raw material which we exchange abroad for our manufactured goods! I have elsewhere argued that we might be compelled to exchange many of these goods, if not at an actual loss, at least without profits, to secure a greater economic end. That would