Methods of International Coöperation
The first step in international consideration of minerals is obviously one of fact-finding. This became painfully evident during the great war, when the sudden cutting off of outside supplies and markets brought home the fact that the mineral question is only in part a domestic one. The average mining man had come to take the established marketing and commercial conditions more or less for granted, and had not looked into the underlying factors. There had been a tendency to assume that a kind Providence was in some manner looking after these elements in the situation. The nearest approach to Providence, as a matter of fact, was a small group of importers and exporters, possessing special knowledge of the international movements of certain commodities,—which knowledge was of unsuspected importance to the mineral industry. War conditions showed that neither the general public nor the mineral industry as a whole, much less the government, had even an elementary grasp of the important elements of the world mineral situation. The mobilizing of this information under high pressure, through the coöperation of government and private agencies, was an interesting and important feature in the complex activities back of the firing line. It is vastly to the credit of the men interested in the mineral industry in this country, and presumably also in other countries, that almost without exception they contributed their bits of knowledge to the common pool, even though these bits had been in a sense their private capital. Certain importers, who by their knowledge of international phases of the mineral situation had been able to exercise a profound influence on domestic markets, voluntarily sacrificed their own interest for the common cause and pointed out ways in which reductions of imports could be made.
The problems of the Peace Conference, and of other international agreements now pending, have required a still further systematizing of international information. One of the results has been the establishment of organizations of an international fact-finding character in our own and in certain other governments. In the chapters on the several minerals in this book, are summarized some of the salient features of the international situation developed by study of the kind indicated.
Knowledge of the physical facts of the world mineral situation is only a first step. Their interpretation and correlation, the study of the underlying principles, the formulation of the necessary international agreements and regulations, constitute even more difficult problems, which are far from solved.
There always has been some coöperation of governments in the mineral trade through the ordinary diplomatic channels. The question is now prominent whether, in view of the new conditions, it may not be necessary to develop better machinery—in the form of some international or supernational organization, possibly patterned on war procedure—in order to expedite the negotiations and to minimize possibilities of friction.
During the war, when the world demand exceeded the total world supply of certain commodities, such as nitrate and tin, international commissions were formed in order to make an equitable distribution of these minerals and prevent favored strong nations from taking too large a proportion of the total. This procedure presented no insurmountable difficulties. A canvass of the total supplies available and of the demands of the various countries ordinarily led to voluntary compromise in the allocation of supplies. Most of the regulations of these commissions were applied to mineral industries which were unable to meet the total demand. They were not tried out in cases where there were excess supplies; this process obviously would have been much more difficult, though perhaps not impossible.
The general success of international attempts to allocate mineral supplies during the war suggests the lines along which results might be accomplished during peace. The process is essentially a matter of getting at the facts, and then discussing the situation around a table,—thus eliminating the long delays and misunderstandings arising from the procedure through the older established diplomatic channels. How far such a procedure might be possible without the compelling common interest of war is debatable.
The great powers of the Reparations Committee, previously noted, and of the recently formed European coal commission, already indicate the general nature of the machinery for international control which might be exercised through a league of nations. It is not our purpose to argue for international control or for any specific plan of control, but rather to outline the problem. The question is not an academic one. Various kinds of international control are present facts, and the problem relates to the possibilities of more effective organization of existing agencies.