Page:Bearing and Importance of Commercial Treaties in the Twentieth Century, 1906.djvu/26

 country, so far as I have been able to ascertain, applies to practically all British industries, and this, at any rate in large part, explains that in spite of shorter hours of labour, higher wages, a higher general standard of comfort, we can still wrestle favourably with protected competitors in most of the markets of the world.

There is another and wider lesson to be learnt from the Master Cotton Spinners and Manufacturers' Association. It is the advantage of an understanding among the interested parties in different countries. Instead of applying for State-aid, this Association, under the energetic guidance of Mr. Macara have made a new departure in economic history by going straight to their competitors across seas. A beginning has been made in the formation and periodical meetings of an International Committee for the examination and consideration of their common as well as respective interests, which can only lead to a widening of the scope of international understandings. What Mr. Macara, in the passage I have quoted from his report, said of the interdependence of our different home industries will necessarily be found to exist among the industries engaged in international commerce, and we may, in the not-distant future, see the industries of different nations arranging their affairs in a spirit of peace and amity as nations as a whole have begun to do. They may do so by international private cartels or by international treaties. They may have their own courts of arbitration, or be referred, under the arbitration clause it is now universal to insert in treaties of commerce, to the Hague Court. Whichever way it will be done, a new era is looming into view in which international commercial understandings, call them what we may, are likely to regulate interests of employer and employed, of