BEFORE proceeding to deal with the immediate subject of my lecture this evening, I would like to express my high sense of the importance of the movement inaugurated by the University of Birmingham in instituting the present series of lectures as a part of the course of the Faculty of Commerce. It has been made a reproach to England that her methods are antiquated, her ideas obsolete, her economic system exploded, and her whole business fabric permeated by principles as extinct, for all useful practical purposes, as the dodo or the megatherium. While far from subscribing to this view of the matter, I think it can hardly be gainsaid that in some matters we have fallen behind our rivals; and I can conceive of no means better calculated to redress the balance between us and them than that of a system of tuition or lectures which is designed to place before the students of to-day, and the business men of a few years hence, information as to the principles and

conditions of the industry and commerce of our own and other countries.

The iron and steel industries of this country, like other industries both here and elsewhere, depend for their success on certain conditions with which we are all familiar. The more fundamental of these conditions are, (1) the supply of suitable raw materials at a low cost; (2) The command of adequately skilled labour free from liability to exactions and restraint that are likely to interfere with its maximum efficiency; (3) a temperate climate, in which work can be carried on all through the year, practically unaffected by extremes of heat or cold; (4) a geographical position which facilitates easy and inexpensive access to the world's markets; (5) an energetic, enterprising, intelligent, and well-informed body of men in control of administrative arrangements; (6) an efficient system of economical transport; and (7) economic and fiscal systems that aid commercial expansion in all directions.

The iron industry of the British Isles held, for many years, an almost unchallenged position in regard to most of these conditions. Our industry is one of the oldest. Russia, Sweden, Germany, and France did, indeed, produce iron and steel in the earlier half of the eighteenth century in competition with ourselves. Some of these countries even exported iron to our own. The United States had also made a start with their iron manufacture in the latter half of the same century. To a large extent the leading countries of the world may be said to have had an even start about the year 1750. By the year 1800 our own country was a long way ahead of all the others. Fifty years later we were producing about one-half of all the iron and steel made throughout the world. From that time until about 1875 we practically continued to hold that paramount place.

But from 1875 other nations have rapidly come to the front. Germany may be said to have entered upon a new industrial career, in which the iron industry played a prominent part, after the Franco-German War. The United States were ten years later than Germany in achieving a really important position in the same race, and since 1885 our American cousins have made most of the running; until they now produce nearly one-half of both the iron and the steel manufactured throughout the globe, occupying, in this regard, the same relative position, but on a greatly extended scale of operations, that our own country did in the middle of the nineteenth century. France has made haste slowly, and now produces only one-third of the annual output of iron by Germany and our own country respectively. AustriaHungary and Russia, which came much later into the field on anything like an extensive scale, are somewhat behind France in their annual yield. Belgium only produces one-half of the quantity of iron produced by France, and less than one-seventh of our own annual production, while Sweden produces little more than one-half the annual output of Belgium.

From this short review of the statistical position of the leading countries of the world in relation to the production of iron, it will be noted that great changes have taken place in their relative circumstances as iron producers. For us, however, the most important of these changes consists in the fact that we had at one time acquired a predominating position, which we have since then been unable to maintain, and that other countries are making much more rapid absolute progress than ourselves. What, then, are the conditions that gave England the lead in the iron industry, and what are the circumstances that have caused us to lose that lead? These are the two fundamental questions which

control and influence all others, and on which I may now proceed to offer some observations.

The leading place was secured to Great Britain by various circumstances, among which I should be disposed to place the enterprise of her own sons in the first place; the greater forwardness of the mechanical arts, among which I would include the railway system, in the second place; the command of a higher grade of artisan labour and industrial experience in the third place; and the more fully developed character of her resources in the fourth place. We are not likely to forget, although I would only touch the subject here very lightly, that most of the greatest inventions and discoveries that have established the foundations of the great iron industry of to-day have been of British origin—that Dudley, Cort, Rogers, Neilson, Bessemer, Thomas, and others have been British, while Siemens, though of German origin, was a naturalized Englishman. I cannot stay to dwell on the multitude of minor lights that illuminated the comparative darkness in which our metallurgy was enshrouded when our iron industry was passing through its most progressive period. Their number is legion, and never before have we had more capable scientific men seeking to settle the unsolved problems of the metallurgy of iron and steel than we have to-day. But a fundamental difference distinguishes the earlier from the later developments of this matter. A century ago, and indeed up to 1860, few contributions were made to the available stock of inventions of the first rank by any other country than our own, and it was but natural that this country should reap the reward of such pre-eminence and priority as she did. Of later stages in that progress, I shall have occasion to speak presently.

One other influence rendered exceptional, if not