Engineering Wonders of the World
Volume I

170 ENGINEERING WONDERS OF THE WORLD. factured £500,000 Immense Savings in the Cotton Trade. therefrom, been worth at least to the cotton trade alone.” There is no greater authority on the staple trade of Lancashire than Mr. Macara, and the conclusion at which he arrived is confirmed by Sir Frank Forbes Adam, formerly the President of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce, which has grain trade had developed between the years 1895 and 1907 ; and, in allusion to the fact that the port has already become an important fruit-distributing centre, pointed out that, of the bananas shipped to England from the West Indies and Costa Rica, two-thirds are landed in Manchester, the remainder going to Bristol. Mr. M‘Farlane frankly acknowledged that the port of Manchester is at present handi- A LONG SHOOT DREDGER. {Photo, Messrs. Lobnitz and Company, builders of the dredger.) two thousand members representative of the principal towns and trades in a radius of twenty miles round Manchester. In an interesting contribution published in the Journal oj the Royal Geo- Manchester graphical Society of November as an 1908, Mr. John MTarlane, importing and Export- Lecturer in Geography at the ing Centre. University of Manchester, gave an account of the position which that city now holds as an importing and exporting centre. He showed how the One of the Great Ports of the Future. capped by economic and commercial considera- tions, “ largely the result of the momentum which the older ports, and more especially Liverpool, have acquired.” But he did not believe that this state of things will be permanent. “ Man- chester,” he confidently predicted, “ will acquire a momentum of its own, which will enable it to overcome the difficulties with which it is surrounded, and transform it into one of the leading ports of the kingdom.”