Page:Bearing and Importance of Commercial Treaties in the Twentieth Century, 1906.djvu/25

 (except in small special sections) the greatest source of danger, as there is only a narrow margin between prosperity and adversity; but this applies to most staple industries, and what is applicable to our staple industries is equally so to those of our foreign rivals. This renders it all the more necessary that any change in our fiscal policy which might place us at a. disadvantage with our foreign competitors should be strenuously resisted. The conditions, taken as a whole, under which the labouring classes in the British cotton industry now live are, I think, generally conceded to be superior to those existing in any other country of the world. But there are distinct evidences in various directions that the workers in the cotton industry in other countries are wakening up to the advantages of more perfect combination and shortening the hours of labour and improving the conditions under which their work is carried on. This movement, I am of opinion, is likely to develop rapidly in the near future, and will remove one of the advantages which the foreign capitalists engaged in this industry have enjoyed in the past. I have endeavoured to show that there is only a narrow margin between prosperity and adversity in the cotton industry—how numerous are the processes through which cotton has to pass—how each process depends on the other—what a large amount of labour is involved—and how many interests there are dependent on it. I think there can be little doubt that the increased cost of production would render it impossible for us, in face of the existing severe competition, to continue to secure the large share of the world's trade in cotton goods which we have at present, and would thus bring ruin upon an industry which supplies the means of livelihood for millions, and in which millions more are indirectly interested."

What Mr. Macara says of the cotton industry of this