Whereas heretofore the artificers of this realm of England (as well within the city of London as within other cities, towns, and boroughs of the same real) that is to wit, girdlers, cutlers, saddlers, glovers, point-makers, and such like handicraftsmen, have been in the said faculties greatly wrought, and greatly set on work, as well for the sustentation of themselves, their wives, and families, as for a good education of a great part of the youth of this realm in good art and laudible exercise:
Yet notwithstanding so now it is, that by reason of the abundance of foreign wares brought into this realm from the parts of beyond the seas, the said artificers are not only less occupied, and thereby utterly impoverished, the youth not trained in the said sciences and exercises, and thereby the said faculties and the exquisite knowledges thereof like in short time within this realm to decay; but also divers cities and towns within this realm of England much thereby impaired, the whole realm greatly endamaged and other countries greatly enriched.
For reformation whereof, be it enacted by our sovereign lady the Queen’s Highness, and by the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and the Commons of this present parliament assembled and by the authority of the same, that no person or persons whatsoever, from or after the feast of the Nativity of St John Baptist now next ensuing, shall bring or cause to be brought into this realm of England from the parts of beyond the seas, any girdles, harness for girdles, rapiers, daggers, knives, hilts, pummels, lockets, chapes, dagger-blades, handles, scabbards, and sheaths for knives, saddles, horseharness, stirrups, bits, gloves, points, leather laces, or pins, being ready made or wrought in any parts of beyond the seas, to be sold, bartered, or exchanged within this realm of England or Wales; upon pain to forfeit all such wares so to be brought contrary to the true meaning of this act, in whose hands soever they or any of them shall be found, on the very value thereof.
Shall it be either this again, or from a universal war of machine-competition the survival of one titanic industrial nation with a monopoly of foreign trade and the might to force its surplus goods on other people’s markets? That nation would fall in time and not altogether from its own weight. It would, of course, abuse its power; but, moreover, it would be unable to collect its favourable trade-balances from all the rest of the world.
Logical extremes are fictions of thought. It is always another thing that happens. The one impossibility is for trade to wear in its present character. It has come to the end of its theory, witness the dread with which European statesmen, economists, and industrialists regard the payment of German reparations. How shall Germany pay? In goods. There is no other way. She cannot pay in gold. There is not that much gold in the whole world. The Allied creditors actually lend her a little gold in order that she may recover from her amazing act of bankruptcy and get back to the way of producing exportable wealth. But to whom shall she deliver her goods, or sell them? Great Britain does not want them. Her anxiety is how to keep her own factories going. They make the same goods. France does not wish them, nor Belgium, nor Italy, nor the United States, and all for the same reason. They have a potential surplus of industrial commodities from their own machines. Then shall Germany sell her goods in other markets and turn the money proceeds over to Great Britain, France, et al? But they themselves need those other markets on which to sell their own industrial products. German competition is not wanted there. Thus an impasse.
If, in desperation, the Allied creditors forgave Germany her reparation debt, or so much of it as she should be obliged to pay in competitive goods, that would be still worse. For Germany would then compete in those other markets on her own initiative and keep the profit. And all the time those other markets, in Asia, Africa, South America, tend to become less and less exploitable because they belong to people who have begun to found industries of their own and are in the way to be natively supplied with manufactures.
VII
DIM VISTAS NEW
It must occur to you that what the world requires to find is a new conception of commerce among nations—one that shall be free of the predatory impulse, above the exploiting motive, competitive in some nobler sense. It need not be magnanimous or unselfish—not yet; but only enlightened enough to comprehend the latter meaning of events.
For a superseding principle the perfect pattern is represented in nature, where you see dissimilar organisms existing together in a state of symbiosis, one sustaining the other, vitally interdependent, yet neither exploiting the other.
There is no accrual of advantage to one side, no gain, no favourable balance of trade. One gives exactly as much as it receives and two wants are equally satisfied, with nothing to boot either way.