366

A.—s

about iron. Yes, in the finished product, machinery and ships, the product that employs not merely most labour, but the best kind of labour, the most highly paid labour, we beaten the United States out of the market, and we do that in spite of the fact that they have all these products at their feet, and advantages that no other country in the world has got, and certainly not Britain. We have not those great petroleum wells, we have not those great resources of natural gas which can be turned on to the works by pipes and enable two men to look after engines which would employ probably 100 men to look after here. In spite of that we have beaten the United States completely out of the field. Mr. DEAKIN : Have you in iron '( Mr. LLOYD GEORGE : l'es, in all the finished products—machinery. There is another fact which I wish to impress upon the Conference in that connection. The ingenuity of the United States in the matter of invention is certainly greater than ours. That has been explained to me by reason of the fact that they are forced to resort to labour-saving appliances which may not be necessary here. I frankly admit that in the United States of America, as in all new countries, labour is more expensive than it is in an old country like ours —and lam coming to the question of labour. Therefore they are forced to use all their ingenuity and mental resource for the purpose of finding out some means of saving labour. Mr. DEAKIN : Their patent laws help them. Mr. LLOYD GEORGE : No doubt, the patent laws of both America and Germany help them immensely. But although they have all this inventiveness, we beat them in the export of machinery; and the same thingapplies to Germany. Dr. JAMESON : I think your words were " beaten out of the field." You do not mean that, surely. They have a market, and they are catching us up. It is quite true they are not catching us up so mu«h, but they are not going back in their exports. Mr. LLOYD GEORGE : I am very glad Dr. Jameson has called my attention to it. That really does not accurately represent what I wished to convey because I had already given the figures. They cannot be beaten out of the field because they were selling 127,000,000/. of manufactured goods in 1905, and Germany, at the same time, was selling 191,000,000/., so I agree that the phrase is exaggerated in its form. Dr. JAMESON : But my point is, we are in the position of a man with a large capital who expects a very much larger interest than a man with a small capital who expects a smaller interest. Surely, we are getting such a very large interest for our capital. Ido not mean money capital, but after having the markets of the world in our hands qua capital, these younger States are coming in and getting a larger interest considering the capital in the form of the markets of the world—they are getting more than we are now. Mr. LLOYD GEORGE : lam afraid Ido not quite follow that. If Dr. Jameson means they are catching us up in actual fact— Dr. JAMESON : Yes, I do.

Eleventh Day. : 0 May 1907.

Preferential Trade. (Mr. Lloyd George.)