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her export trade against the assaults of sweated industries in these backward countries, in times of slack or depressed trade, when there is not enough market to go round. This policy does not involve the adoption by all the competing countries of identical or even closely approximate standards of wages or hours. It is not necessary to insist that Indian or Chinese labour should be paid the same rates as prevail in Lancashire. But what is necessary is that any rise in wages or other labour costs obtained in Lancashire shall be accompanied by some fairly corresponding rise in wages or other conditions in India, China and other competing countries, and that in periods of world-depression wage-cuts shall not be arbitrarily made in other countries so as to enable their manufactures to displace ours. Unless some such policy, difficult as it may be to operate, can be adopted, there can be no security for employment and wage standards for our workers in export trades, and the low standards and insecurity in these export trades must react in an injurious way upon our home industries.

For though the pressure of high labour costs in stimulating other technical and administrative economies of production may enable certain of our trades to hold their own in competing with cheaper labour in foreign countries, there is no adequate safeguard here against the competition of highly developed countries like Germany and America, where high technical and administrative efficiency may be conjoined with a more flexible wage system, or where extremely cheap labour may be employed in producing