THE NAUTICAL MAGAZINE FOR 1880. NEW SERIES. A JOURNAL OF PAPERS ÓN SUBJECTS CONNECTED WITH MARITIME AFFAIRS. VOLUME XLIX, London: SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, & CO., STATIONERS' HALL COURT; J. D. POTTER, 31, POULTRY; KENT & CO., PATERNOSTER ROW; AND THE PRINCIPAL NAUTICAL PUBLISHERS AT ALL SEAPORTS. THE NAUTICAL MAGAZINE FORTY-NINTH YEAR. VOLUME XLIX.-No. I. JANUARY, 1880. THE SHIPPING TRADE AND INDUSTRY. HE attention of all classes has been attracted to the depression of trade, a depression which affected not one alone but all branches of commerce, those dependent upon one another having more especially suffered. The bad grain and hop harvests probably represented an absolute loss of thirty millions of pounds sterling. The cause of the late depression could be traced and satisfactorily explained by a Senate or Council composed of representatives of persons and bodies engaged in the separate branches of commerce involved. Failing the report of such a representative body, explanations far from satisfactory or comprehensive have been given; and at the present time, on the broad question of the general depression, little beyond the fact that it has been universal can be said. It would be a great help, therefore, at the present time, when everybody is hoping "things are better," if leading men would dispassionately, through the press, give their opinion as to the causes of the depression in their own business, whatever it may be. The manufacturers of iron and steel, and the brokers in the metal, the colonial, and the corn trades, for instance, could give their views of the causes of the late stagnation and dulness in their businesses, VOL. XLIX. B |