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of the better machinery and methods or the greater intensity of labour in the American shops? The American underselling would harm our industry just as much as the German underselling; shall we be guided by cosmopolitan philanthropy to discriminate against the German, imposing duties in order to teach the German Government its duties to German labour?

In fact, the policy would be more difficult than this. We should find that American mills were underselling us, partly by using better machinery and method, partly by working longer hours and securing greater intensity of labour; in other words, by "sweating." Could we distinguish how much was due to one, how much to the other cause? Proceeding further, we should find that almost every country from which goods entered our ports to compete with our own products had lower rates of wages and longer hours, etc., than prevailed in Great Britain; if we apply our standard of wages and hours, all foreign goods are sweated; if we do not apply our standard, what other standard is justified by the logic of protection of labour?

The notion of a "scientific tariff" directed to equalise the cost of labour in foreign countries with our own by imposing import duties equivalent to the lower foreign costs, though taken as the formal basis of tariff policy in America, has never been seriously applied, and is incapable of application. It would

involve, if logically carried out, an absolute prohibition of all foreign competition on the part of the nations furthest advanced in conditions of labour. In practice it would require an impossibly accurate knowledge of the ever-changing conditions of all parts of the various trades in different nations of the world, and a continual readjustment of import duties, to accord with the changes. Nothing short of this could be designated a scientific tariff for protection.

"Sweating" and "unfair trading" are difficult terms to define when exclusive regard is paid to internal industry. How impossible, if they involved a detailed comparison of the standard of life and the methods of production in the case respectively of the United States, Germany, China, and West Africa!

§ 3. There are two plain reasons why a protective tariff imposed on "sweated" or cheaply produced foreign goods is no true pendant or supplement to the industrial legislation in "protection" of labour in home industries.

The first is that it is not in accordance with our national interest to stop cheap goods from coming into this country, when that cheapness is durable; the second is that we have no duty and no power to control the legislation affecting the conditions of production in foreign countries.

To the first reason it may, perhaps, be objected: "But the importation of sweated goods affects injuriously our nation regarded as 'producers.'" The

answer here is a flat denial. The irregular or casual dumping of such goods does injure certain British trades, and it has been admitted that, under certain circumstances, protection might be applicable, if it could be properly safeguarded. But the regular admission of foreign goods which, whether products of a sweating system or of superior technical economies, undersell our goods in our own market, is a benefit and not an injury to British industry. It is to the real advantage of the British nation, not merely in its capacity of consumers, but of producers, to permit freely the displacement of the capital and labour in a trade which can be systematically undersold by foreign goods; the temporary loss and waste will be more than compensated by the diversion of industrial energy to other employments. The fact that this argument fails to convince the practical man is due to the absence of any governmental policy of compensation for the capital and labour thus displaced and cancelled in the interest of the larger public. Such compensation for displacement is a logical implication of a sound social policy. far as capital is concerned, it would be very difficult of application; so far as labour is concerned, it forms a powerful basis of appeal for a scheme of public relief for "the unemployed," not as a charitable measure, but as a plain demand of social justice and public expediency. The failure of Government hitherto to recognise adequately this duty of easing

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industrial displacements of capital and labour, desirable in the general interest of commerce, must not drive us to the expedient of an artificial prevention of these displacements, which are the very conditions of progress in our industrial life. If every British trade in danger of being undersold by foreigners in the home market could call upon our Government to stop that competition (for this is what protection against foreign sweated goods signifies), industry would pro tanto be stereotyped in this country, and progress, alike in methods of production and in selection of employment for capital and labour, would be grievously impaired. So much for the first point. The regular admission of "sweated goods" from foreign countries is not detrimental but beneficial to British industry.

§4. Now, in answer to the second objection, we should urge that our legislative interference with conditions of production in British industries is not designed to prevent goods from being sold cheap, though it may have that effect, but to safeguard the welfare of certain classes of labour in the interest of the nation. It is part of the duty of our Government as representing the nation to insist that the conditions of production in this country shall conform to a certain standard of security and decency. We have no corresponding duty with regard to processes of production in other countries, nor have we any power of undertaking such a task; we have no machinery

for the ascertainment or the repression of foreign "sweating." A purely national legislative body is competent to deal with "sweating" and with other conditions of industry within the nation; it is not competent to deal with foreign sweating. If there existed an international legislature, it might fitly deal with it. Each nation can only insist that the industries conducted within its area shall be sanitary and otherwise socially sound; it is brought into contact, not with the production, but only with the products of foreign industry, and the fact that such products are cheap when they reach our consumers is regarded by our Government as a good and not an evil to our nation, which wants to consume them or to utilise them for further production.

It is open to any private association of British citizens, such as a trade union, recognising the international solidarity of the interests of labour, to support a strike instituted by foreign workers to put down "sweating" or otherwise to improve their condition, but such an association cannot legitimately call upon the British Government to assist them by tariff legislation. It is, of course, true that free importation of foreign goods makes it more difficult for trade-union action to secure conditions of labour entailing higher expenses of production than are incurred by foreign competition, and our Government is naturally influenced by such considerations in devising further expensive restrictions upon

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