Dear Strs,—We have to thank you for your favour of 10th instant. The figures that you are good enough to put before us tell a tale with which we are unfortunately only too familiar, but we are glad to note that you, at any rate, among -British shipowners, begin to realise the gravity of the position, which we have all to face, in Tegard to this foreign competition—it has all but extinguished our Eastern trade in iron and steel, and substituted German and Belgian productions for what was, only
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.