ABSTRACT
During the twenty years ended with 1880, Great Britain rapidly built up a very large and important trade in the exportation of her iron and steel manufactures. In the four years ended with 1882 we shipped about four and a half million tons of iron and steel to the United States alone. If we deduct these shipments from our total exports, we find that our American trade is almost alone responsible for what is now the difference in our total iron and steel shipments, compared with earlier periods. During the last five years our imports of iron and steel have considerably more than doubled. In the earlier history of the trade relatively large quantities of iron and steel were imported from Russia, Sweden, France, and Spain, and in some years our imports exceeded our exports. In 1903 our exports of iron and steel were about three times the volume of our imports, and more than three times their value.
