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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 85

Progress of Manufacture Abroad

Progress of Manufacture Abroad.

It will have been seen from the preceding pages of this report that we have attached considerable relative importance to that portion of our commission which directed us to inquire into the condition of industry in foreign countries; and it is our duty to state that, although the display of continental manufactures at the Paris International Exhibition in 1878 had led us to expect great progress, we were not prepared for so remarkable a development of their natural resources, nor for such perfection in their industrial establishments as we actually found in France, in Germany, in Belgium, and in Switzerland. Much machinery of all kinds is now produced abroad equal in finish and in efficiency to that of this country, and we found it in numerous instances applied to manufactures with as great skill and intelligence as with us.

In some branches of industry, more especially in those requiring an intimate acquaintance with organic chemistry, as, for instance, in the preparation of artificial colors from coal tar, Germany has unquestionably taken the lead.

The introduction by Solvay, of Brussels, of the ammonia process for the manufacture of soda and the German application of strontia in sugar refining constitute new departures in those arts. In the economical production of coke we are now only slowly following in the footsteps of our continental neighbors, while the experiments which have been carried on for nearly a quarter of a century in France for recovering the tar and ammonia in this process have only quite recently engaged our attention.

The ventilation of deep mines by means of exhausting fans was brought to perfection in Belgium earlierthan with us, and although our methods of sinking shafts served for many years as models for other countries, improvements thereon were made abroad which we are now adopting with advantage.

The abundant water power in Switzerland and in other mountainous districts is utilized for motive purposes by means of turbines perfect in design and execution.

The construction of the dynamo-machine by Gramme gave the first impulse to the general use of electricity for lighting and to the various new applications of that force which appear likely to exercise so great an influence upon the industry of the world; and in all these applications at least as much activity is exhibited on the continent as with us.

In the construction of roofs and bridges, more especially in Germany, accurate mathematical knowledge has been usefully applied to the attainment of the necessary stability with the least consumption of materials.

Certain printed cottons of the highest class, produced at Mulhouse from Parisian designs, are not excelled, and rarely equalled, in this or in any other country, although the distance between our general productions in this department and those of Alsace is no longer so great as it was ten or twenty years ago. The soft, all-wool fabrics of Rheims and Roubaix are scarcely equalled as yet on the average by those of Bradford, especially as respects the dyeing.

Silk dyeing and finishing is still as much the specialty of Lyons as is the production of the beautiful silk fabrics on its hand looms, for which it has so long been preeminent.

The export from Verviers to Scotland of woollen yarns, carded and spun by machinery made in England, from South American wool formerly purchased in Liverpool and London, but for which Antwerp is now becoming the chief market, is an instance of an intelligent, careful, and persevering attention to details having established a special trade which the cheaper labor of the Belgian factories now assists in preserving.

The ribbon trade of Basle, that in velvets and silks of every kind at Crefeld and in mixed fabrics at Chemnitz, arc examples of recently established or transformed industries which have rarely been excelled in boldness of enterprise and in success by anything of the same kind accomplished in our own country. And it may not be improper to mention here that in whatever degree the technical instruction of our continental rivals may have trained them for competition with ourselves in their own, in neutral, and to some extent in our home markets, much of their success is due to more painstaking, more pliancy, and greater thrift; and also to the general cultivation, the knowledge of modern languages, and of economic geography usually possessed by continental manufacturers.