between one nation and another the same principle applies. Trade between a subject country compelled to export its food stuffs and raw materials and the dominant power dumping its manufactured products can never be mutually beneficial; it is an exchange carried on under unequal conditions of bargaining, and no platitudes of free trade can ever undo the mischief wrought by this process of economic exploitation. Protection for the subject country is not a question of fostering infant industries; it rests on the larger issue of making the conditions of bargaining more equal, and is therefore linked up not merely with questions of tariffs, but with questions of excluding foreign capital except on such terms as would correct inequalities and prevent exploitation. As in the case of the individual it is only on a basis of freedom from the cares and worries of finding daily bread that the structure of a larger life can grow and bear witness to the potentialities of the Divine elements, so in the life of nations. The potentialities of national greatness are smothered and the sources of the fuller life dried up where the political environment perpetuates a condition of economic dependence and reduces the people to toil and labour for feeding the over-grown population of an industrialised country.

It follows that no price that this country has to pay can be too great for securing this end of self-sufficiency. We have been listening during these last few months to alarming tales about the sacrifice of the Indian consumers involved in a policy of high tariff rates, about the sacrifice of the agricultural interests, about the sacrifice of subsidiary industries themselves by protection to the basic industries. If the end we are desiring to secure is the freedom of the country from the trammels of an economic dependence artificially induced as the result of our railways, our fiscal policy, our currency experiments and even our educational institutions, then even assuming that this sacrifice has to be faced it is worth facing it. But the killing out of our handicrafts in the past by the advent of standardised goods from the West has entailed already a much heavier sacrifice than any which we may now have to face in the shape of increased prices. What needs to be most remembered to-day, when we seem lost in a maze of tariff rates and in alarms about prices, is that protection does not simply mean the levy of heavy import duties, that it is not a question of tariffs alone, that protection involves the recognition of the fundamental principle that the function of the State is not confined to securing peace and order, but extends far beyond to the ordering and regulation of the material

conditions for the growth of a communal life. Protection at its best is the assertion of the principle that every social group calling itself a nation shall employ its organised efforts for securing the conditions that foster the highest social life of which the group is capable; and if during the days of war the Indian Government organised all its financial and economic resources for multiplying the instruments of slaughter and destruction, Indian public opinion might well insist that in peace these very resources should be utilised for the promotion of the economic well-being of the people not only by tariffs, but also by the promotion of technical education, by the organisation of pioneer industries, by the granting of loans and credit facilities, by the employment of the tax-payers' money in the promotion of the tax-payers' interests.

The danger that looms ahead to-day for all Eastern countries is not the danger of political subjection, but the more insidious danger of economic subjection achieved in the name of those very political shibboleths of democracy and self-government which have held the West enthralled. A few Western nations to-day wield political and economic control over vast territories in Africa and Asia which contain resources in the shape of foodstuffs, cotton, rubber, vegetable and mineral oils and metals. The business firms behind these Powers, with the command of railways and roads, docks and shipping lines, may combine to work these tropical resources and export them to their home countries where flourishing industries will keep contented the large body of Western workers; and capital in the West may thus succeed in making labour a partner in a great sweating system which will replace the exploitation of the Western working classes by the exploitation of Asiatics and Africans. An oligarchy of bankers and financiers and business men working behind the Foreign Offices of a few great Powers might exercise and perfect a policy of economic exploitation under the guise of protectorates and mandatory powers, of trusteeship of weaker people alleged to be incapable of self-government, and might strengthen their hold upon their respective Governments by making them sharers in the booty and reducing the burden of taxation. This is the danger that the East has to face to-day-a danger that lurks even behind the jeremiads of our latter-day prophets who denounce Western economic civilisation in other ways. Take as an instance Mr. Norman Angell in If Britain is to Live, where a policy of winning over Soviet Russia and Turkey and the fallen foes and India and the African Crown Colonies is justified not

as

on grounds of Christian idealism and Christian ideals, but on grounds of economic safety and considerations of economic expediency. India need not be a "friend" of Great Britain, "we may " not "admit them to be good or nice," but "we" do business with Indians as we do business with our tailor, or we" command the services of the man who waits on us at the restaurant. Or take as another instance the speech of Mr. Innes at the opening meeting of the Imperial Conference on October 2, 1923. "In India we have 350 millions of peopleroughly one-fifth of the human race-and if only we can raise the standard of living of these millions and increase their capacity to consume goods, India's potentialities as a factor in international trade and as a market are almost limitless," and Great Britain may even give its paternal blessings to a policy of "discriminating protection" for India, if there is a chance that way for English manufacturers of finding a larger market for their goods.

This is the latest phase of a bankrupt imperialism which, tired of the platitudes of justice and benevolence, now trades on the cynicism of the shopkeeper and the ethics of a degenerate commercialism. And the policy of protection which the subconscious mind of the Indian people is clamouring for is a protection against this imperialistic exploitation now sanctified by a twentieth-century "Holy Alliance." It is as much protection against the overgrown industrialism of the West as it is a protection for industrial self-sufficiency within her own territories.

Bombay.

P. A. WADIA

WAGES IN THE COTTON INDUSTRY, 1914-1920

'It is never safe to assume that changes in piece-rates are proportional to changes in resulting earnings, both because gradual changes in machinery and methods of production may facilitate output, and on the other hand because the operatives may make less effort when rates are higher, being content with their former earnings.

"In June 1914 trade was only moderately good, and there was some room for improvement in earnings without any change in rates. After allowance is made for this, it still appears that earnings have increased more rapidly than rates, and that in particular the reduction of hours in July 1919 did not result in a reduction in the week's output."-Bowley, Prices and Wages in the United Kingdom, 1914-1920, ch. xiv.

PROFESSOR BOWLEY drew these conclusions by comparing in detail the figures of average earnings for one week in each month as returned in the Labour Gazette for a large number of cottonspinning and manufacturing firms, with the recognised changes in piece-rates from June 1914 to June 1920. As he carefully points out, such a comparison is difficult not only because the figures make no differentiation between men, women, boys and girls (total numbers employed and total wages paid are alone stated), and would therefore be affected by the withdrawal of men for military service and their subsequent partial return, but also because no account is taken of short-time working, and therefore deductions as to the rate of wages can only be roughly made. Professor Bowley makes allowance for these factors in selecting periods for comparison, and there seems no reasonable ground for doubting the legitimate nature of the very general inference which he draws as to a more rapid increase in earnings, though he would be the first to admit that no exact statistical measurement can be made from the available data. An interesting point, however, lies in the diagnosis of the nature and causes of this more rapid increase in earnings. If, for example, it is due to "gradual changes in machinery and methods of production," then it is permanent, and provides a most hopeful indication of that continued progress in productive efficiency which in the second half of the last century made possible a greater advance in real wages than occurred in any other big industry. If, on the other hand, it is due to special causes arising from peculiar conditions during the war period, it may

be only temporary, and in its nature it may possibly resemble a somewhat hectic flush rather than the glow of real solid health. Or can it be, as the quotation above seems to suggest, that Professor Bowley attributes a great part of it to an increased rate of output resulting from the reduction of hours from 55 to 48 per week in July 1919? Can we assume without further proof that the shorter hours enabled the operatives to increase their rate of output to such an extent, particularly in view of the very large increase in list rates, which, as Professor Bowley suggests, may mean diminished effort? If the rate of output has actually increased to such an extent, there would seem to be a very strong case for further experimental reductions in hours, in the hope that output would be still further stimulated. Or is it possible that some quite different cause or causes have been at work to produce such an extra advance in earnings, particularly after July 1919, as to more than counterbalance the reduction in hours? A more detailed inquiry as to the correct interpretation of the statistical comparison might yield results of useful and practical importance as well as mere historical value, and as the result of investigations in Lancashire, the following observations and conclusions in regard to this problem are here tentatively presented. Many points rest on the evidence of employers and trade union officials, and are not in their very nature capable of proof. It would seem, however, that substantial conclusions may be drawn as to the true causes of the extra increase in earnings, and their nature and character, even if it is not possible to determine the exact degree in which each contributed to the total result.

(1) The probability of an increase in earnings as distinct from an increase in list prices due to improved machinery.

It is one of the fundamental principles of the price lists that the operative should obtain some share of the benefits accruing from increased mechanical efficiency. Mr. Wood, in his History of the Cotton Trade, calculated that between 1860 and 1906 the average wage increased no less than 49 per cent. solely as the result of the increased efficiency of the operatives and the machinery. The bulk of this increase took place in the period prior to 1886, although earnings continued to increase slowly more than list prices during the following twenty years.

On general grounds, however, any far-reaching change is not to be expected since 1906, for mechanical improvement takes place not at a steady rate but by leaps and bounds, and the last millbuilding boom ended in the following year. Mill-building and