The trade and navigation returns for 1907 were issued by the Board of Trade on Tuesday, and they reveal, as was foreshadowed by the monthly returns, that the world's record established in 1908 has been substantially boston. In that year the aggregate of our imports and exports from over the seas for the first time exceeded thousand millions. Last they exceeded eleven hundred millions, showing an excess of ninety-five and a-half millions over the figares of 1906. Traly the Tariff Reforms have been unfortunate in their prognostications. Four years ago Mr. Chamberlain pointed out that in the thirty years from 1872 to 1902 our exports bad increased by only about twenty-two millions, and he described most of our dustries.
1907 our exports ha wards of £150,000,000. The only disquieting feature th boom is evidently beginning to pass away. The rate of increase in our exports fell from 15.3 per cent in October to 4.2 per cent in December the financial troubles in America have, of course, largely contributed to this result, and the bad harvests of 1907 in nearly all parts of the world must have had considerable effect in reducing the purchasing power of consumers every way. Probably we are now in for " more or less serious and prolonged slum and then the preachings of the Tariff Reformers are more likely to produce an effect.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.