The Unity of Western Civilization Part 12

It is not pleasant to contemplate England as one vast factory, an enlarged Manchester, manufacturing in semi-darkness, continual uproar, and at intense pressure for the rest of the world. Nor would the Continent of America, divided into square, numbered fields, and cultivated from a central station by electricity, be an enn.o.bling spectacle.'[30]

This is a picturesque expression of the objections to the unity of mankind if carried too far through the process of specialization. While admitting their force, it is not necessary to admit that the specialization process need go quite to that length. Even if England became one vast factory, it need not necessarily follow that it must work in semi-darkness, continual uproar, or at intense pressure, but it is all to the good that a specialist of Dr. Bowley's eminence should call our attention to certain things which have to be guarded against.

On the other hand, we may contend that if England became one vast factory, it would only do so because it paid it so well to do so, that that vast factory might be made more in accordance with William Morris's ideal than the picture of Inferno drawn by Dr. Bowley. We might imagine England one vast Garden City, dotted over with factories, each of which might be as beautiful as a cathedral, embowered and surrounded by fruit trees and gardens, in which a highly educated and technically trained population would work for five or six hours a day, and spend the rest of their time in intellectual leisure and healthy exercise and home life under ideally happy conditions.

It is interesting to note that the result of the present war is likely, if anything, to check the export of capital for a time, not only owing to the very obvious reason that for the present all our available capital is going into the war and for some time to come will have to go into expenses connected with the war, but also because this war has set a new precedent with regard to the duty of belligerents in the matter of making payments to one another. In olden times, when war was a gentlemanly business, trade and finance were very little interrupted by it. At the time of the Crimean War the Russian Government punctually paid the interest due on Russian loans to English holders and thereby established a prestige amongst English investors which was cherished for several decades. Now that nations have taken to going to war with tooth and nail, throwing their whole available population into the field and using every possible device, military, commercial, and financial, to beat their enemies, any such pleasant decencies as paying money due from one country to another in the shape of interest or otherwise have been abandoned. When the war is over it is possible that investors will remember this fact to a certain extent and will be more chary than they were before of investing their money abroad, at any rate in any country with which there is the remotest possibility of our being involved in war.

War has also shown the great inconvenience that arises when the mutual dependence of nations one on another for certain products leaves them crippled because international exchange is interrupted. International trade and finance, in their full and free development, have been shown to depend on the a.s.sumption that peace is secure. Unless the present war should be so ended as to secure peace for all time, it seems likely that all nations will aim at being able to rely, at least for the essentials of life and of defence, on home production or on a supply from countries with which war may be regarded as impossible. If this be so, then unity through trade and finance will be less universal, but more close-knit in its narrower scope.

BOOKS FOR REFERENCE

A.L. Bowley, _England's Foreign Trade_. Swan Sonnenschein.

C.K. Hobson, _The Export of Capital_. Constable.

W.S. Jevons, _Money and the Mechanism of Exchange_. Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co.

Smith's _Wealth of Nations_, chs. i-iv.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 24: _Wealth of Nations_, Bk. I, ch. ii.]

[Footnote 25: 1 Kings ix.]

[Footnote 26: Rawlinson's translation.]

[Footnote 27: Jevons, _Money as Mechanism of Exchange_, p. 1.]

[Footnote 28: Motley, _United Netherlands_, ch. x.x.xiii.]

[Footnote 29: Thorold Rogers, _Economic Interpretation of History_, ch.

xx.]

[Footnote 30: _England's Foreign Trade in the Nineteenth Century_, by A.L. Bowley.]

X

INTERNATIONAL INDUSTRIAL LEGISLATION

We have learned to look upon the doctrine of interdependence of cla.s.ses within the nation as a truth self-evident to all eyes unblinded by wilful prejudice or ignorance of that disabling kind charitably defined by the Roman Catholic Church as invincible. To say that unemployment in the mills of Lancashire or the shipyards of the Clyde not only affects the happiness and well-being of cotton operatives and boiler-makers and the great businesses which are carried on by their means, but depresses the national vitality and puts a drag on the national energy throughout the kingdom--to a.s.sert that no people can be wholly strong and vigorous while any corner of its territory or any layer in its social strata remains in the possession of a group physically weak, mentally undeveloped, and morally below the standard of ethics which, as a people, it has tacitly agreed to accept as necessary, seems to many of us in these days to state truisms. Yet it is not so long ago that facts which we now presume to be familiar, at least to every undergraduate, were the dangerous discovery of the few who, in an age when people said 'Socialist' as Mr. Pecksniff said 'Pagan', had the temerity to point out, that in things human and political as in mechanics, a chain was and could be no stronger than its weakest link. Even now, in the reaction, often only half conscious, of the employing cla.s.s against any force which tends to raise the employed to a social plane less removed from that on which they themselves move, in the genuine dislike of education, concealed under ceremonial phrases in days of peace but breaking into fire and fury when the natural man is roused by a touch of excitement, we can see how skin-deep in many cases is the general belief in the widely proclaimed creed that economically as well as spiritually, we are all members one of another. And if the truth of our interdependence as citizens has won acceptance slowly and grudgingly, because the facts that prove it lie other-where than on the surface, it is easy to understand that the interdependence which is international, resulting as it does from the meeting, and crossing, and twining in the web of national life of innumerable fine threads drawn from the utmost corners of the civilized world, has scarcely yet come within the consideration of the ordinary man as an influence from which he cannot escape, and with which, therefore, he is bound to reckon. That, doubtless, is why international movements in general arouse so little interest in the mind of the average reader of newspapers. He does not regard them as practical. The persons engaged in promoting them he defines as cranks, dividing them into two cla.s.ses, of whom one may be dismissed as harmlessly absurd, while the other ought probably to be suppressed as dangerous.

The events of the first week of August 1914, where the interdependence of countries is concerned, might and did throw some light on the journalistic mirror into which civilized man looks morning by morning, but it was light of the crudest kind. The result of the illumination, in numerous instances, was only to make a great number of people reflect with astonishment on the number of things which this country is in the habit of purchasing from abroad, comment with indignation on her folly in not having made them all at home, and, when pa.s.sion rose sufficiently high, express a resolution that, however deeply they might need the enemy's products, they would never buy any of them again. To do them justice, this was not the att.i.tude of the men confronted with the actual difficulty of inventing subst.i.tutes for raw materials of which the source had suddenly dried up. Those who sat in factory offices ruefully contemplating models of goods to the making of which Germany, Belgium, and Austria had hitherto sent some indispensable contribution, did not, even while they set about inventing something that should replace this contribution, belittle what they had lost. They knew, and said, that while they were confident of producing a working subst.i.tute, they did not pretend to offer in every case the precise quality which seemed to be the special gift of the German, or Belgian, or Austrian trader.

Perhaps it was not after all only sheer laziness on the part of the British manufacturer, and sheer lack of patriotism on the part of British governments which induced our commercial leaders to concentrate on one field of production and abandon another. To each nation, as to each man, his gift. Some realization of this law may have come instinctively to practical workers engaged in practical tasks.

If the organizers of production among us have not been forward in the past to promote international action in the matter of labour legislation, this is not from any failure to realize the effect of inequality of industrial conditions upon nations competing in the markets of the world. This effect was naturally greatest in cases where the countries concerned were geographically contiguous and engaged in direct rivalry with one another in respect of manufactures falling under the same trade category. Here is the perfect case of compet.i.tion, in which any circ.u.mstance tending to lessen production on the one side is immediately counted as an advantage to the other. But the pressure is felt even where the territory of the rival is situated at the other side of the world, even where the article produced belongs to a different cla.s.s of manufacture. In normal times long distance transport is easy and long distance freight rates cheap, so that the question of distance, although still to be reckoned with, is no longer a determining factor in the sum of consideration. Again, the network of prices which controls the ultimate cost of production of any finished article is so complex that it is difficult in many cases to rule out this or that set of industrial conditions in one country as being without importance for a given factory in another. The price of a pair of corsets sold retail in Paris may have been subtly influenced by a strike of smelters of iron ore in Silesia; and your china tea-set may be dearer to-morrow by reason of a sudden outbreak of foot and mouth disease among the herds of the Argentine. Quite naturally, therefore, it has come about that manufacturers, in opposing proposals to make existing labour legislation either more stringent in detail or wider-reaching in scope, have put forward, as their princ.i.p.al objection, the plea that such reforms in favour of the worker would place British industry at a disadvantage with that of countries where the action of the manufacturer remained comparatively unfettered. The distrust, as well as the dislike of long hours as a means of increasing production, together with the belief that healthy and pleasant surroundings conduce to the development of the worker's powers as well as to the satisfactory maintenance of his physical condition, has made remarkable progress among the more intelligent of the employing cla.s.s since the twentieth century began.

But there is still, in nearly every trade, a considerable ma.s.s of masters who rarely think and never experiment, who turn a deaf ear to the representations of their managers and foremen when these, coming into direct personal contact with the employed, take note of results due to over-strain which are invisible to the head of the business in his office, and who continue to suppose, with their fathers, that limitation of the working period necessarily restricts output and spells commercial loss. Such men, hearing that their own manufacture is produced, let us say in Russia, by men working twelve hours a day to their men's nine, and paid at a considerably lower rate than that which obtains in their own works, would certainly not dream of drawing any other conclusion than the, to them, obvious one that the result of this difference must be a lowered cost of production. Inquiries which should prove, as did those of Sir Alfred Mond's firm when confronted with such a case, that the cost of production per ton was actually higher under the long hour and low wage system would never be inst.i.tuted by them, and their results, when made by others, leave them sceptical if not suspicious.

Recognizing this mental att.i.tude in a large section of the business men of every country, and bearing in mind that, in order to secure the efficient administration of labour laws, the legislator must be able to carry with him at least the general consent of the majority of those employers to whose trades they apply, it becomes clear that if we would remove all objection to complete and adequate protective law for the workers we must first dispel the fear of the manufacturer that such law would handicap him unfairly in the international market. And what way so apt to this end as the bringing of his compet.i.tors under a law similar in character and as far as possible uniform in its provisions?

It is a proof of the prescience of Robert Owen that, even before he had succeeded in planting the first small seed which was to grow into the flourishing tree of British industrial legislation, he had grasped the necessity and formulated the demand for international action in the matter of Factory Laws. Owen's labours at home have, naturally enough, bulked so large in the estimation of historians and publicists in their writings on this subject, that the continental side of his activities has received comparatively little attention at their hands.

Nevertheless his correspondence with European governments on the abuses and needs of industrialism as it existed in the early years of the nineteenth century are among the most remarkable he ever wrote; and his appeal to the Congress of the Holy Alliance in 1818 shows how thoroughly prepared he was to treat national reform as the first step to a system which should be international. Had the statesmen of his time, too busy in their making and unmaking of kingdoms to heed his arguments and appeals, turned their attention from those high matters (in which, after all, their achievement was for the most part neither brilliant nor beneficial) to the homelier details of their people's lives, social progress would have been indefinitely hastened, and we might have been spared the sorry spectacle of one industrial nation after another committing the blunders and painfully learning the lesson of its predecessors at the cost of much avoidable human suffering. For, in this matter of industrial legislation, as in many others, men are astonishingly slow to learn by example. Perhaps the most remarkable case in point that has occurred is that of j.a.pan, at this hour still in course of being worked out before our eyes. Here we have a nation brimful of intelligence, quick of apprehension, with a genius for selecting from the polity and procedure of other States exactly those features best fitted to promote prosperity and efficiency and an unmatched power for a.s.similating and reproducing them in the form suitable to its own tradition of development, following the Western Powers along the crooked path of their early dealings with industrialism and allowing the very conditions which stunted and degraded the Lancashire cotton operative of the 'thirties to be created in the mills of Osaka.

Since the days of Owen ideals of industrial conditions have mightily grown and developed. This was inevitable, since the standards of social comfort and hygiene have undergone complete transformation during the last century. But the important points to note are, first, that it is not only 'reformers' who put forward these ideals, but that they have become to a large extent common to all cla.s.ses of the people, and, secondly, that the raising of the standard which proceeded at a slow, irregular rate for, roughly speaking, a hundred years, quickening in one decade and remaining almost stationary during the next, is now proceeding with comparative rapidity. Already such a rate of mortality and sickness as was common in the trades technically called dangerous twenty years ago has come to be regarded as monstrous and would no longer be tolerated with patience. This acceleration in the raising of industrial standards is doubtless largely due to the conscious partic.i.p.ation of the workers themselves in the business of providing for their own protection; but it may also be referred in some degree to a quickened conscience and a more intelligent appreciation of the importance of the manual worker in the national economy on the part of the public as a whole. The same movement has been taking place, in different degrees according to their differing circ.u.mstances, among the other industrial peoples of the Old World and the New. The quicker this advance on the part of some nations the more keenly was the failure of others to make progress in the same _ratio_ felt by those belonging to the first group. An uneasy consciousness that the backward nations were beginning to const.i.tute an obstacle to progressive domestic legislation on the part of the advanced nations began to manifest itself. It appeared that the lame ducks were setting the pace for the whole fleet, and it was seen that self-defence no less than concern for the welfare of the human race at large demanded the devising of some machinery by which the movements of these laggards should be quickened.

Thus, seventy years after Owen had appealed in vain to the Powers in session at Aix-la-Chapelle, a definite step was taken towards an international agreement directed to the benefit of the working cla.s.ses of Europe. It must not be supposed that during this interval no inheritor of Owen's tradition had been found or that his doctrine had been altogether forgotten for want of a preacher. Now and again prophets arose who, if they did not share Owen's genius, were at least his equals in sincerity and energy. Dr. Ernst Francke, in the article reprinted from the _Economic Journal_ of June 1909, which I have recommended for reference at the end of this chapter, names one of these devoted pioneers, Daniel Legrand, an Alsatian manufacturer who for thirty years did his best to induce France, Great Britain, Prussia, and Switzerland to agree on a minimum of industrial legislation. Some very useful work in the same direction was done, during the years following the Franco-German War, by a Belgian publicist; and in 1876 Colonel Frey, President of the Swiss Federal Council, took the first official step in the direction of international labour treaties, by a speech in the Council recommending that Switzerland should take the lead in an endeavour to establish them. To the Swiss Government belongs the honour of addressing the first circular note to the governments of Europe proposing the calling of a conference as a first step towards this end.

This conference never met. The idea of international labour legislation was in the air, and voluntary societies composed of social reformers were beginning not only to discuss but to support it. The international meetings of organized workmen, such as the miners and cotton operatives, in different countries had familiarized the continental mind with the possibility of common action between peoples in respect of labour questions. Nowhere did the proposal for the conference arouse more general interest than in Germany, where the present German Emperor, then at the beginning of his career, was showing an active interest in German conditions of industry. It seemed that he too desired to call a conference, and on his request that he should be given precedence in the matter, the Swiss Government gracefully gave way. So it fell out that the first conference on workmen's protection met in Berlin, at the invitation of the German Government, in March 1890. There were fifteen delegates, all the governments of Europe, except those of Russia and the Balkan States, being represented. The chair was occupied by the then Minister of Commerce, Freiherr von Berlepsch, a man of broad and enlightened views and singularly sympathetic character, who subsequently became one of the founders of the International a.s.sociation for Labour Legislation, and has probably, more than any other individual, secured the success of its biennial meetings.

At this conference, which the German Emperor stated in precise terms to have been called in view of the problems raised by international compet.i.tion, a wide range of subjects was discussed by the delegates of the different States, including employment in mines, Sunday work, child labour, the employment of women and young persons, and administrative measures. While on many points agreement was found to be possible, and the general principles which should underlie industrial legislation were accorded ready acceptance, there was enough of objection, reservation, and allegation of const.i.tutional difficulty to prevent the conclusion of anything in the nature of an international treaty. At the time the conference appeared to have failed of its object. Subsequent events have, however, shown that this was not the case. The failure to frame an official agreement probably showed that the ground had not yet been sufficiently laboured, and that further action in the direction of inquiry and discussion was necessary before the taking of so novel a step could be justified to the official mind; but it is certain that the recognition by the representatives of all the Western States that international action in labour questions was desirable in itself, and a goal at which governments should aim, not only laid the foundation for future State action, but gave to the voluntary work of obtaining the materials for building on that foundation an impetus and a sanction which it could have obtained in no other way.

That work was speedily set on foot and continued during the next ten years. It was greatly aided by the action of the International Labour Congress held at Zurich in 1897, when the trade unionists who composed the gathering pa.s.sed resolutions in favour of the establishment of an International Labour Office, and by the Congress of Brussels which a.s.sembled at the invitation of Freiherr von Berlepsch, soon afterwards.

At the latter gathering, which included a number of distinguished members of parliament, men of science, lawyers, and economists from France, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Holland, and Belgium, the view that for the present progress must be made by the way of private initiative prevailed, and the creation of three national committees, having for their object the foundation of an international a.s.sociation for labour legislation, quickly followed. These committees, which had their head-quarters in Brussels, Berlin, and Vienna respectively, were by the good offices of Professors Cauwes and Jay enabled to call an international congress in Paris in the year of the Great Exhibition, and at this congress the a.s.sociation was actually founded, and its statutes, provisionally drafted by Professor Mahaim and presented by the Belgian committee, were adopted. A president, a general secretary, and an international committee were provisionally appointed. The functions of the a.s.sociation were also defined. It was designed to serve as a bond between all those who, in industrial countries, are convinced supporters of the principle of protective legislation; to facilitate the study of labour legislation by the publication of the labour laws of the different States, and of reports on their administration; to a.s.sist in the compilation of international statistics of labour and of all studies tending to bring into harmony the existing national industrial codes; and finally, it was charged with the duty of organizing the meetings of international congresses in which labour legislation should be considered. A very important part of its business was to consist in the publication in German, French, and English of a periodical collection of all labour laws newly in force in different countries.

This has been, from the first, the work of the International Labour Office, the fixed head-quarters of the a.s.sociation, which serves as an exchange and clearing-house for all information pertinent to the a.s.sociation's work. It is in perpetual session at Basle, and to it all reports and inquiries are addressed by the national sections, while from it issue circulars for the sections' consideration and requests for national investigation of problems which appear ripe for international treaty. The spade work of the a.s.sociation is done by the national sections in their own countries, all action of the a.s.sociation being necessarily based in the first instance on the reports received from them at head-quarters. There are now fifteen[31] such national sections--an increase of eight on the original group of seven formed in 1901. The actual membership of the a.s.sociation has trebled in ten years.

The seven sections to which belongs the place of honour at the head of the roll, are those of Germany, Austria, Hungary, Holland, Belgium, France, and Switzerland. Great Britain did not form a section till 1904, and it was not till 1910 that the British Government sent official representatives to the biennial meetings. The official representatives const.i.tute a very important element at those gatherings. They attend the plenary meetings and take part in discussions, often contributing hints on their governments' att.i.tude towards a given reform which are invaluable to those who are framing or modifying proposals with a view to government acceptance; and are also frequently present at the sitting of commissions charged with the consideration of detail, where they can hear the opinions and arguments of experts on every important point in debate. When resolutions are before the conference they do not vote--although in respect of voting right they stand on the same footing as other delegates. But on occasion they are not afraid to express opinions on the merits and tendencies of those resolutions which may have a determining effect on the votes of their fellow members, and I have known a few weighty words from such a man as M. Arthur Fontaine,[32] commending a proposal on which feeling was largely divided, to turn the scale at once in its favour.

The delegates of a section are elected by the section itself. They may be either men or women, and their number is in proportion to the size of the section, the maximum figure being eight, as far as voting delegates are concerned, but subst.i.tute members and experts may be present in addition. The following is a list of the fifteen sections represented at Zurich in 1912: Austria, France, Germany, Great Britain, Hungary, Italy, the United States, Belgium, Holland, Switzerland, Denmark, Spain, Sweden, Norway, and Finland. In addition the following countries and dominions sent government representatives only: Russia, Rumania, Greece, Turkey, Portugal, Brazil, Mexico, and the Australian Commonwealth.

A brief account of the a.s.sociation's method of doing business may be interesting. Meetings are held once in two years, in the month of September, different towns in Switzerland being selected in turn for the place of a.s.sembly. The four conferences which I personally attended as British delegate took place in Geneva, Lucerne, Lugano, and Zurich.

There are two plenary a.s.semblies, the first having as chief business, apart from the hearing of introductory addresses, the appointment of the five commissions into which the conference splits up for actual work; the second meeting to receive the reports of these commissions and their recommendations, and decide upon the adoption or rejection of the latter. The trilingual rule is followed, delegates addressing the a.s.sembly either in French, German, or English, as they prefer, each speech being followed by a brief _resume_ in the other two languages from the interpreter. In the commissions, by an unwritten but generally accepted custom, French and German are the only languages used.

(Latterly the representatives of the United States of America, with the individualistic courage that becomes them, have shown a disposition to rebel against this custom and defy it; but the close of the Zurich meeting left it uncertain whether in this particular the New World will be able to prevail over the Old.) In the dignified speech-making of the General a.s.sembly the recurrent changes of language, if a little disconcerting at first, can be faced with tolerable equanimity; but when it is a question of the quicker verbal sword-play which goes on in the commissions, the member imperfect in the tongues finds his position occasionally difficult. The sympathies of every humane person must go out to the expert who, having just made a telling _expose_ of his case in French well practised for the occasion, encounters a crushing rejoinder in German of which he can barely follow the general drift.

The composition of these commissions--in which all the real work of the conferences is done--is truly heterogeneous. A commission may represent a dozen nationalities; it will certainly contain specimens of every social cla.s.s, members of the most varied shades of thought in politics, religion, and sociology. I can still remember the const.i.tuents of my first commission at Geneva in 1906. Our subject was the night-work of young persons. At the head of the table was a professor of Civil Law in the University of Louvain. On either side of him sat a Catholic clerical member of the German Reichstag; a German Protestant pastor from Bavaria; a distinguished Parisian engineer; an Austrian n.o.bleman interested in social reform; a Hungarian man of science; a Dutch factory inspector; a Swiss Trade Union secretary; and myself. We were a motley crew, but the strange 'pattern' which we must have presented to the observation of any higher intelligences interested in our deliberations had no effect on the goodwill and good humour with which they were conducted.

The range of subjects considered at international meetings is very wide.

It includes all questions relating to the labour of women, young persons and children; matters of health and hygiene, with special reference to the use of poisonous material in industry, and the regulation of dangerous trades; workmen's insurance; the establishment of wages boards and minimum rates as preventives against sweating; the extension of the ten-hours' day and the Sat.u.r.day half-holiday to be the legal rule in all industrial countries; and the introduction of the three-shift system and the eight-hour working day in continuous industries. As it is obvious that questions so large, touching so deeply the domestic life and habits of every people, cannot possibly be settled either out of hand or all at once, the a.s.sociation's study of each separate problem is always prolonged and, according to the circ.u.mstances and the difficulty of the case, more prolonged in one instance than in another. Like the old pioneers of National Factory legislation, the a.s.sociation has proceeded along the line of least resistance: not because it lacks courage, but for reasons of sheer prudence. If it was to become, in the words of M.

Millerand, the present French Minister of War, one of its oldest and staunchest members, 'the laboratory in which international treaties are made', it was clear that it must not propose for international acceptance reforms which even among the most progressive peoples were looked upon as doubtful or dangerous. Accordingly it chose for the subject of its first great efforts two reforms in relation to which it could count with certainty upon a considerable amount of sympathy, and proposed international legislation prohibiting the night-work of women in factories, and the manufacture, importation, and sale of matches made with white phosphorus. Information on both these subjects was collected by means of the national sections; the a.s.sociation in conference drew up proposals and recommendations to the governments concerned; the governments consented to a diplomatic conference at Berne, and the conventions concluded in 1906 were the happy result of their meeting.

But it must not be supposed that these results were reached without difficulty. Even as regards so comparatively simple a reform as the abolition of the night-work of women--to be carried out, after considerable 'delays' in favour of those countries in which night-work by women had hitherto been an accepted industrial custom--the adjustment of the change to the varying circ.u.mstances of each State proved a delicate business, and agreement could never have been reached but for the willingness of the more backward States to make substantial sacrifices and encounter possible risks. For this reason, the allowance of some years of grace before adherence to the treaty should become practically binding was a measure almost of necessity. It would have been unreasonable and might have been cruel to insist on Belgium and Hungary a.s.similating their practice in such a matter to that of Great Britain without ample time to prepare for the change. Thirteen States adhered to this treaty.

The difficulties in the white phosphorus case were at first sight even more striking, and, to begin with, only seven States--Germany, France, Denmark, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Luxemburg--were signatories of this convention. Of these, the first five had previously prohibited the use of white phosphorus within their own frontiers. Room was, however, left for the entry of other States into the convention at a subsequent date, with the result that the scope of the treaty has been gradually extended, and that we now find ourselves fairly within sight of the banishment from manufacture of one of the most deadly of all industrial poisons, and the consequent disappearance of an industrial disease peculiarly dreadful in its nature and symptoms. The tardy adhesion of the United Kingdom to this treaty remains a matter of regret; but the procedure of the Indian Government and of all the British self-governing dominions in following the mother country when at last she determined to take action has done much to redeem that tardiness. Obviously, it was the prohibition of the importation and sale of phosphorus matches in India and the Dominions which has forced the Scandinavian and Belgian manufacturers who were opposing complete prohibition to seek for subst.i.tutes for white phosphorus. At the present moment only j.a.pan and Sweden among manufacturing countries stand outside the convention, the United States, whose const.i.tution forbade her to impose prohibition by direct legislation, having brought about the desired result by the imposition of a prohibitive tax.

Is this all? it may be asked. If the question be of treaties signed, sealed, and ratified, the answer must be 'Yes'. On the subject of the night-work of boys and the hours of women and young persons, proposals were actually considered and conventions drafted by an official conference at Berne in 1913. The draft conventions were far from admirable: their framers went so far in the spirit of compromise to meet the objections of the backward States that the provisions laid down, had they been accepted without modification, would have tended to depress rather than to raise the standard of international opinion on the questions to be affected by them. We need not, therefore, feel much regret that the war has swept them, with so many other pre-war schemes, into the wastepaper-basket. The vast question of minimum rates of wages and their regulation by the State is obviously still too much in the experimental stage of its solution (even in this country where experiments have been boldest) for it to be possible to make it the subject of international agreement. As a subject of international discussion it has had its place, and an increasingly important place, for at least eight years past in the studies of the sections and the discussions of the a.s.sociation meeting. Upon no question has public international opinion ripened more rapidly. In 1906, at Geneva, where the conditions of home workers were first under discussion, a few daring delegates met in corners and whispered under their breath the words 'Wages board'. By 1910, at Lugano, an English woman delegate was elected joint president of the a.s.sociation's Home Work Committee, 'as a recognition of Great Britain's achievement in pa.s.sing the first Trade Boards Act'; at Zurich, in 1912, a two-day conference on the legal minimum wage preceded the meeting of the a.s.sociation, and a whole sheaf of minimum wage bills introduced by private members into the Chambers of different countries was before the delegates, together with an official measure of the French Government. To watch this change of att.i.tude was to see international thought in the making. To appreciate its full significance, it is necessary to bear in mind the different aspects presented by the 'sweating' difficulty in this country and in the great industrial States of the Continent. The French or German social reformer sees it mainly, if no longer exclusively, as a problem of home work. Now home work in Great Britain is a by-product of a strictly limited cla.s.s of industries, affecting a comparatively small cla.s.s of the population; in France and Germany it forms a highly important section of the general industrial structure, it is interwoven, to an extent rarely grasped by British students, with the life, and habits, and productive power of the nation. Much more courage--and greater freedom from prejudice--was required in the one case than the other. The remarkable advance towards definite action on the part of the State in relation to the establishment of minimum rates for home workers which took place between 1906 and 1913 could not have been achieved in so short a time but for the labours of certain voluntary a.s.sociations led by men of insight, candour, and indefatigable devotion. In this connexion the pioneer work of the late Comte de Mun and Professor Raoul Jay has been of inestimable value. Realizing themselves, as did few unofficial reformers, the wide nature of the movement in which they had engaged and the impossibility of confining it in its sweep and effects to a section of the manual workers, they succeeded in gradually bringing home to the ablest among their fellow-workers the necessity for closing the gulf which French mental habit had fixed between factory and home workers and preparing to treat both cla.s.ses on a similar footing of equity. In Germany,--where, as we might expect, there was less forwardness to launch unofficial schemes and a disposition to work rather from the first through authoritative channels--experiments were being made under the Home Work Act which, if of little value in themselves, seemed the earnest of much better things.

If this result only had been attained, the meetings of the a.s.sociation and the labours of the sections would not have been in vain. But far more was in process of achievement when the work of the a.s.sociation was interrupted by the catastrophe of the European War. The adoption in all industrial countries of the 'English week', with its half-holiday so much coveted by the continental worker--the establishment of a uniform working day--the gradual introduction of the eight-hours shift into such 'continuous industries' as steel-smelting and gla.s.s-blowing--an international agreement to eliminate the use of lead from many branches of the pottery industry and to limit and safeguard its use in all others,--these were only some among the questions which study and investigation and discussion had brought to a stage at which the a.s.sociation could look upon them as fit matter for potential international conventions in August 1914. Now that its activities are, for the most part, in suspense, it is well to remember that its greatest achievement was the proof, again and again renewed, that it is possible for persons of twenty different nationalities, holding the most diverse opinions on nearly every subject under the sun, not only to act together but to find common motives of action so strong as to break down every sundering barrier of political doctrine and religious creed. Whatever of suspicion or antipathy might flourish outside the boundaries of the international a.s.sociation, these evil weeds have never taken root inside them. Is it Utopian to dream, when the days of peace shall have returned, of a reconciliation within its borders for those between whom at present the great gulf of division seems hopelessly fixed?

BOOKS FOR REFERENCE

_History of Factory Legislation_, Harrison and Hutchins. Macmillan.

Revised edition.

Frederic Keeling, _Child Labour in the United Kingdom_. P.S. King.

Clementina Black, _Sweating_. Duckworth.