The Dominion TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 1919. AN INTERNATIONAL LABOUR CODE

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 117, 11 February 1919, Page 4

The Dominion TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 1919. AN INTERNATIONAL LABOUR CODE

Various recent reports relating i to the constitution of the League I of Nations have shown that it is .hoped to make the regulation of labour conditions henceforth an international concern. The methodical efforts that are being made to this end certainly promise vastly _ better results from the standpoint of Labour and that of other sections of society than the disorderly upheavals that are now giving so much trouble in Britain and elsewhere. The war has not only made it possible to seriously approach the international regulation of labour conditions, but has demonstrated that progress in this direction is imperatively necessary. Failure to devise the machinery required would entail only less serious results than failure to establish a Leagueof Nations to control and regulate international relationships in their broadest scope. Conversely few things would tend more ■as time goes on to promote national j security and friendship between, nations than united efforts to establish 1 common minimum standards of life and' labour. Ordinary humanity impels the people of advanced democracies to extend a helping hand to those of- less favoured countries, but if another motive were needed it would be found by a slight exercise of prudent foresight.: Apart from the fact that countries in which low wages i and bad working conditions prevail are on that account a danger to themselves and a menace to the neace of the world, there is an immediate and urgent reason for attempting to correct these conditions by international action—a reason which should appeal strongly to the workers in countries like Britain and the United States. It is essential to the prosperity of these nations that they should be able to compete and "hold their own in the markets of the world, but so long as they are doomed to compete against countries which rely upon low wages and sweating their commercial development is bound to be hampered and limited, and nothing that they can do within their own borders will completely overcome this disability. _ Interest therefore combines with humanity in urging thera to do everything they can to secure the adoption in other counstandards of wages and working conditions corresponding to their own.

The methodical efforts that arc being made in connection with the Peace Conference to bring about the international regulation of labour conditions are. to be commended on all grounds. As yet there is little •to show what progress has been made, but the draft constitution of the League of Nations which was cabled_ yesterday mentioned labour conditions amongst the matters it is .proposed to refer to permanent commissions subordinate to tho League. It was announced, also, as recently as the end of last week that the International Labour Legislation Commission—one of the . detail bodies set up by the Peace Conference—had agreed, to adopt as a basis for discussion British proposals for the establishment of a permanent organisation for dealing with Labour matters internationally. The Commission is the more likely to attain practical results since it is presided over by Mr. Samuel Gompers, who speaks with unquestioned authority on behalf of the American workers. A Labour correspondent of the London Observer commented not long ago on the fact that Me. Gompers hoped to securo the adoption of an elaborate programme of international Labour legislation as part ,of tho Peace Treaty. "It is by.no means improbable/ 1 tho ..correspondent added, "that his general aims are not without the support of President Wilson. The proposals have been accepted by the Allied Labour and' Socialist representatives (at a conference in London), and the matter will certainly not be allowed to drop." :-•

So little has yet been accomplished in this direction that the attempt to arrive at international regulation of labour conditions may be described almost as effort in a virgin field. The trade union movement includes a number of international federations—those of transport, textile, and wire workers and others—but such bodies have not yet given ajjy powerful impetus towards the adoption of common standards. _ Dealing with the problem here involved, the correspondent already quoted observes that there are two important aspects of the problem of which account must bo taken: -

In the first place there are European countries where labour conditions in one direction or another are substantially below those accepted in other countries, but yet where the general economic conditions are broadly similar to those prevailing elsewhere in the West. The differences are comparable to those found between different districts in the same country, arid are perhaps in 6ome cases at least no wider than those which obtain between the best firms and the worst_ firms in the same country. The adoption of international standards is, therefore, within the reach of possibility.

But there is a second aspect of the problem which presents greater difficulties,- viz., that of competition between the products of white and coloured races, or, mther, to put the question more generally, non-industrialised races. Imaffino the possible use of large-scale production of certain classes of goods in China assisted by Western oapital. ' Consider the question of the need for man-power in the United States after the war in relation to the negro population, whioh might well be used in many forms of industrial employment. - We have here ..a. problem of the very gravest, kind, and one, moreover, which it is utterly beyond the power of any single State, however large, to control. It is, therefore, clearly an international question.

No 'complete and immediate solution'of the problem of dealing with the competition of coloured races offers itself, or is likely to for a very long time to come. To an extent the white nations arc helped in competing with these races by higher _ standards of individual capability and better organisation, but these advantages may be modified as time goes on. But while the problem of coloured competition is likely at best to romain acute, international regulation offers a. means of eliminating its worst features. In particular it is open to the .white democracies, as M. Albert Thomas points out in a statement quoted to-day, to prevent the exploitation of coloured races. The practical aspect of international labour regulation which is uppermost at the moment and must hi regarded as most urgent is that

iof establishing safeguards against unfair competition by Germany and other European countries. This aspect the workers in countries like Britain and America arc bound to face unless they are content to see their respective countries go downhill and to abandon hope of securing the increased wages and improved working conditions they universally demand. It is certainly true of Britain that if licr workers insist on extorting unreasonable conditions she win find Herself unable to meet foreign competition, and the folly of the _ workers will speedily recoil on their own heads. In a definite degree the extent to which it is_ possible to improve labour conditions in Britain or in any other trading country is governed by the conditions ruling in competing countries. It has been well said that the old arguments in favour of national minimum labour standards apply with equal cogency to the_ world as a whole. The international aim certainly ought to be to prevent any country exploiting its workers to their injury and to the injury of its competitors. The difficulties to be overcome are chiefly those of practical method and of arriving at a just basis of comparison. It is not to be suggested that the labour conditions of one country should be imposed as a pattern for immediate adoption in another. But the investigation now in progress may enable the Peace Conference to establish some standards for international enforcement. It would then remain for a permanent commission attached to the League of Nations to gradually broaden the scope of the regulations. British workers would obviously be wise to throw their full weight into securing progress on these lines than to attempt to establish conditions in their own country which would to cripple it in the period of strenuous competition now to be faced.