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416 ECONOMIC INQUIRIES AND STUDlES
food and raw materials as accounting for'2 3 per cent.
of our exports does not take away in any degree
from our quality as a nation manufacturing for export,
yet the fact of our having so much to export of articles
of this sort indicates that we obtain easily much of
what we want from abroad. ~vv e are not labouring ex-
clusively in things where we :ompete under difficulties
with all the world, but we ha: e something to sell, coal,
which is in the nature of a monopoly, and for which
all nations now come to us. This proceeding may
raise all sorts of questions as to our parting with capital
and so on, which are no doubt most important from
the point of view first discussed by Mr. J evons, but,
for the present at least, and in an economic view, the
community of the United Kingdom appears to occupy
a most advantageous position in relation to other com-
munities. With regard to the other groups of our ex-
ports also, the" manufactures," it may also be pointed
out that we have to do here not simply with the net
produce of "manufacturing," after deducting foreign
raw material imported; but that the amounts must in-
clude coal and other raw material obtained at home and
used up in the articles we export, so that not even the
total of £ I 65,000,000 constitutes our" manufacturing"
for export. In other words, ou t of the aggregate income of
the community estimated at more than £ 1,750,000,000,
we are only dependent on manufacturing for export to
the extent of less than £ 165,000,000, or at the outside
about 8 per cent. of the whole. We obtain the re-
mainder by exporting something more easily procured
of which we have a practical monopoly.
I t must not be considered, moreover, that the whole
of our net manufacturing for export is produced with
" difficulty," so that we are maintaining an uphill fight
for our economic independence. On the contrary, there
are lines of manufactures where skip and experience
and previous possession of markets give a practical
monopoly, and where the high duties imposed by
foreign countries are not in the nature of a tariff wall