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 competition, in which any circumstance 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 class 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 principal 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 class since the twentieth century began.  But there is still, in nearly every trade, a considerable mass of masters who rarely think and never experiment,