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This article explores the links between international environmental law and the law of free trade. Democratic countries have tended to favor both environmental law and free trade more so than other countries. The more interesting question is whether the converse is true, that is, do environmental law and free trade aid democracy and the development of the rule of law? This article addresses that question.

Current economic and political trends present particular challenges for countries dealing with the development of industry without the social infrastructure needed to uphold citizens' rights. As free trade demands competitiveness in global markets, so the demand for cheap labor rises. This has specific implications for children. This article argues that despite new legislation to fulfil the requirements of international mandates (such as the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child and International Labor Organization Convention 182 on the worst forms of child labor), rights-based programming does not sufficiently incorporate the perspectives of poor children and their family members. This article draws on recent ethnographic research that pioneered a collaborative model in which government, voluntary, private, and trade union organizations conducted research to compare the impact of current approaches to child labor on the livelihoods of working children. It shows that in failing to incorporate sociocultural understanding in program planning, services fail to maximize their potential in offering children opportunities to end the cycle of poverty.

Mexico's financial crisis placed in jeopardy one of the major fundamentals of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA): the liberalization of financial markets. In the United States, the Mexican crisis threatens to destroy the legitimacy of a so-called Washington consensus, whereby economic liberalization, privatization, and free trade became a panacea to Latin American economies, especially those like Mexico's. In spite of this major crisis, a new consensus seems to be emerging between Washington and the Mexican government, namely, that the Mexican crisis has no connection with NAFTA and that NAFTA is operating according to the major purpose for which it was created: the opening of markets. This article reviews the weakness of this new NAFTA consensus that seems to be shared by Mexico and Washington, and comments on the major institutional challenges that NAFTA has provoked in Mexican society.

Mexico is now plagued by guerrilla uprisings in its poorest states, the most theatrical and celebrated of which is that of the Zapatista National Liberation Army in Chiapas under the leadership of the enigmatic, pipe-smoking Subcomandante Marcos. The rebels have made the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) a focus of their fury and have cleverly used the Internet to air their complaints. While free trade certainly is contributing to the economic problems of the Mexican underclass, the depopulating of rural areas and growth of the cities is an almost inevitable trend that even the most dramatic gestures by Marcos and his followers are unlikely to postpone. NAFTA has become a scapegoat for the modernization of Mexico.

This article examines current trade patterns of the Caribbean Basin and the likely impact that changes in the international trade environment will have on them. The numerous bilateral and subregional preferential agreements that sustain the region's economy will be the framework in which Caribbean trade is examined. Also examined are the threats posed to these relationships by the implementation of free trade arrangements and the changing political alliances throughout the global community. We conclude with an evaluation of potential Caribbean responses to the challenges of the international economy of the twenty-first century.

The historical process of enlarging the Community of Six to double that number in 1986 was based on the increasing economic dynamism and success of the European Community. With the end of communism, the number knocking at the door has increased, with the countries of the European Free Trade Association leading the way. The legion of issues that are to emerge with the fourth broadening exercise—and subsequent Mediterranean and Eastern European ones—will necessitate substantial institutional changes at a 1996 meeting, but there are questions whether the new entrants will eventually conform to the integration goals of the Single European Act and the Maastricht Treaty.

What Latin America has gained so far from President Bush's proposal for hemispheric free trade is primarily a psychological boost. Future economic and political gains—and losses—depend on events and decisions that have not yet occurred. The provisions of eventual trade agreements are a crucial area of uncertainty. So are the overall architecture of the new trade system and the success of global talks on the General Agreement on Tarrifs and Trade. Nonetheless, important qualitative conclusions can be reached about the benefits of (1) expected export increases from lowered trade barriers without considering changes in production patterns; (2) the insurance effects, that is, the reduction of future risk by locking in policies; (3) greater investment flows; (4) improved economic coordination; and (5) greater political cooperation. The main benefits to Latin America from free trade, however, will come not from the signing of agreements but from internal changes—economic restructuring and political opening—that each country must make to reach and sustain free trade agreements.

The vision of a continentwide free trade area, unthinkable a few years ago, now merits consideration. Latin American countries have been opening their economies, some have succeeded in lowering previously exorbitant rates of inflation, most have moved toward democratic regimes, and the United States' Enterprise for the Americas Initiative envisions a hemispheric common market. There are obstacles, however, in integrating unequal parties such as the United States and an emerging Latin America. While the United States is the largest trading partner for most countries in the region, its importance has decreased since the early postwar years. Mexico is a striking exception, with almost three-quarters of its trade with the United States. Compared to Mexico, trade diversion costs of a free trade agreement (FTA) with the United States could be high for other Latin American countries. Increased investment rather than trade is the primary Latin American FTA objective. Preconditions for an investment surge are improvement in transportation, other infrastructure, and upgrading the labor force. Excepting Mexico, shortage of resources for human and physical infrastructure will delay substantial Latin American integration benefits far into the future.

The United States is immediately facing decisions on extending the current free trade area with Canada to Mexico and quite possibly to other Latin American countries. This article attempts to assess the economic basis, if any, for the objections that organized labor has raised to a free trade area with Mexico and other countries in the hemisphere. It is intended as a challenge to economists who support labor's position. Economic analyses undertaken to date conclude that a North American Free Trade Area (NAFTA) is in labor's interest generally, although not necessarily in the interests of workers in some import-sensitive industries. Labor's proponents are unconvinced, but they have failed to provide theoretical or empirical analyses that support their position. While a variety of scenarios have been considered by economists analyzing a NAFTA, the consensus on employment impact converges on an estimate of a net increase of more than 60,000 U.S. jobs. Most studies also estimate small positive impacts on U.S. total wages and substantially expanded Mexican employment.

Regional economic blocs are compatible with the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) multilateral trading system through Article XXIV, which provides for customs unions and free trade agreements. However, both the European Community and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) raise questions about the GATT criterion that the level of import restrictions to nonmembers is not higher than before the bloc formation. The actual trade impact of regional economic blocs is likely to be strongly trade-creating, while trade flows within the overall trading system are approaching parity between preferential and nonpreferential trade. NAFTA and the Enterprise for the Americas Initiative have unleashed a dynamic toward further bloc formation, especially for the Asian-Pacific region, which will have to be resolved during the 1990s. Questions on whether regional free trade arrangements will ultimately converge toward multilateral free trade, and in what form, cannot yet be answered and will depend on future political as well as economic relationships.

If the prospective North American Free Trade Area can be extended to the rest of Latin America and the Caribbean, the United States will gain from increased exports and employment in about the same dimensions as the benefits of free trade with Mexico alone. Ironically, however, the United States should want Latin America to keep its tariffs toward the rest of world low, so that the inefficiency of too sweet a deal for the United States does not create a drag on Latin America's growth. In the long run, the United States earns more from rapidly growing Latin American economies than it would from an oversized margin of preference for U.S. goods in a regional free trade area. The grand Enterprise for the Americas strategy can be successful for the United States and Latin America if it helps consolidate Latin America's historic economic reforms, including its opening to global competition.

The various Latin American and Caribbean free trade agreements have not been successful. This is due to a number of underlying elements within the region and, more recently, to unfavorable external economic conditions. The oil shocks and the external debt crisis placed intra-Latin American trade at a low priority. Overlapping and inaction now beset the Latin American Association for Integration, the Andean Pact, the Central American Common Market, and the Caribbean Community and Common Market. Recent bilateral and multilateral initiatives in Latin America have failed to clarify the issues. Mexico is seeking integration with the United States and Canada. The Enterprise for the Americas Initiative, on the other hand, envisions a vague hemispheric free-trade area. As certain Latin American countries become increasingly capable of exporting manufactures on a competitive basis to world markets, intraregional trade will also develop, provided joint ventures are carried out, tariffs are lowered, and nontariff barriers are eliminated within the region.

As the movement toward liberalization has succeeded in reducing or eliminating visible border barriers to trade, interest in and use of dispute settlement mechanisms have grown. For a North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the general model will be the 1988 U.S.-Canadian Free Trade Agreement. Broad institutional and dispute settlement provisions along the lines of Chapter 18 of the U.S.-Canadian accord have already been agreed on in the NAFTA negotiations. More problematic is the extension of Chapter 19 to NAFTA. This special binational mechanism for dealing with antidumping and countervailing duty determinations depends for its success on the similarity of the U.S. and Canadian systems. Mexico has a different tradition and method of making such determinations. It is not clear whether the differences can be bridged. In other areas, such as standards—perhaps including the environment and labor—the U.S.-Canadian binational review principle or binational monitoring might be adapted to NAFTA. The outcome of the NAFTA negotiations on dispute settlement will probably be the model for other Western Hemisphere free trade agreements, although arrangements with groups of countries may be more difficult to adapt.

The history of free trade in the Western Hemisphere can be traced back more than a century. Indeed, the Spanish colonial legacy set patterns that were followed during much of the nineteenth century. Early trade patterns were marked increasingly by the intrusive demands of the industrial nations. U.S. efforts to secure its interests in this regard were highlighted by the 1889-90 Washington Conference and by the ardent efforts of James G. Blaine. Even before the dawning of the twentieth century, Latin American suspicions of North American motives were profound, and this was manifested in the basic hostility toward free trade proposals.

U.S. trade policy has four sometimes incompatible strands: multilateralism; preferential bilateralism; preferential regionalism; and unilateral imposition of import restrictions outside the framework of the multilateral structure. President Bush's proposal for free trade in the Western Hemisphere represents one of these elements, but it comes as the other strands are also being pursued in multilateral and North American trade negotiations. President Bush's free trade initiative was warmly received in Latin America and the Caribbean. This is because the region now looks outward toward exports more than at any time since the Great Depression. The feasibility of hemispheric free trade will depend on the extent to which the United States is prepared to discard unilateralism in its protective measures, how far other countries in the region are prepared to open their markets, and how committed they are to cooperating in formulating product and environmental standards and in protecting intellectual property.

Among the most original foreign policy departures of the Bush administration has been the Enterprise for the Americas Initiative. This initiative is also the first indication of a return by the United States to a hemispheric foreign policy orientation since the end of the Cold War. At the same time, an overwhelmingly democratic and market-oriented Latin America is a newly appropriate partner for the Enterprise for the Americas Initiative. The future of both sides lies in a strategic partnership between them.

Technology and its transfer take many forms, a fact that contributes to the difficulty of accounting for them in international trade agreements. This situation has been rendered even more complex by dramatic changes taking place in the organization of global manufacturing, the so-called Third Industrial Revolution, which itself rests on advances in telecommunications and informatics. Too much attention in Latin America has been directed toward expensive high-technology and turnkey operations and not enough on infrastructure and softer, but ultimately more important, questions of operational technology. Much of the success that Latin American and Caribbean countries can expect to enjoy under liberalized trade depends on each nation's ability to find niches and to promote quality, efficiency, and flexibility in domestic manufacturing.

Three outcomes of the problem of institutionalizing hemispheric free trade seem possible: (1) a U.S.-centered series of multilateral and bilateral free trade areas in which only the United States enjoys truly hemispheric free trade; (2) a set of integrated subregional free trade agreements, emanating from the North American Free Trade Area if it is completed; or (3) a hemispherewide system coordinated by inter-American agencies—its realization, if it is to be, is a long way away.

With the end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the conflicts between nations will increasingly be economic rather than military, but the existing international instruments for dealing with trade conflicts are antiquated and inadequate. The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), as a foundation for global trade, is fundamentally flawed. Japan has ignored its GATT obligations, taking advantage of open markets wherever it can while keeping its markets closed through a variety of formal and informal barriers. In contrast to Europe, the United States' response has been passive, resulting in a long history of failed process-oriented bilateral negotiations with Japan. In the final analysis, the difficulty lies not with Japan but with the United States. The solution is a result-oriented agreement with Japan. While this can be achieved through a variety of means, the guiding principle is results. That means an agreement that concentrates on outcomes, timetables and mutual responsibilities, levels of permissible trade imbalances, the composition of trade, allowable market shares, investment in both countries, and practices like dumping in third markets.

In the past two decades the proportion of U.S. gross national product that enters international trade has increased from four percent to over eight percent. This rapid growth of international trade, particularly U.S. trade with the more rapidly developing countries, has been an important source of vitality for the U.S. industrial sector. The growth of trade has necessitated some transfer of resources from one industry to another. The availability of foreign goods has also reduced the market power of U.S. industries and with it the power of resources in these industries to command rates of return higher than those earned in more competitive sectors. The magnitude of the former sort of adjustment has generally been overstated and the need for the latter sort strenuously resisted. Government policy has tended more to reduce the flexibility of the industrial structure than to enhance it. Administrative mechanisms that deal with trade matters reflect the mercantilist presumption that exports are the gains from trade and imports the costs. Because there is no administrative mechanism through which consumers or users of imports may put forward their interests, trade disputes very quickly become political issues.

Concern about competitiveness in high technology has induced the European countries to pursue a policy of accelerated modernization. Raising the level of investment has become first priority, which implies reduced individual and social consumption and a distributive bias in favor of capital at the expense of wages, government revenues, and externalities, or environment. In addition, labor-saving innovations in process technology are speeded up without demand for final products being allowed to rise proportionally. The policy model is therefore bound to tolerate mass unemployment. Worldwide, the neomercantilist strategy creates large-scale overcapacity and leads to a race of competitive downward adjustments vis-à-vis increasing low-cost competition. The preferable alternative for Europe is a combination of Continent-wide free trade and controlled external trade in order to achieve both industrial modernization and economic growth.

The summit meetings between Secretary General Leonid I. Breznev and President Richard M. Nixon, inter alia, broke the economic isolation which existed be tween the USSR and the USA. The turnover in trade rose to $642 million in 1972 and to approximately $1.5 billion in 1973. This growth in trade reflects, without doubt, the economic potentialities of, as well as the wide scope for, mutual eco nomic complementarity between the two countries. Interest ing joint undertakings are already in sight. Yet, the primary problem of the future is the normalization of trade policy. The USSR cannot afford to pay a political price for normalization of trade. The fact that the USSR has not been extended most favored nation (MFN) treatment and difficulties in credit ar rangements through Eximbank have put the Soviet Union in an inferior position in the United States market. Should this situation continue long enough, adjustments to real market conditions will appear to be necessary in US-USSR trade and the lend-lease package.

The rapid industrialization of labor-surplus countries will present serious problems for the achievement of high levels of employment in the industrialized world. The employment consequences of a flood of imports from developing countries is jeopardizing the liberal international trading system that has contributed to the world's prosperity since World War II. The argument for free trade and a liberal system of world trade is based on a static analysis that does not countenance the rate of change imposed on the importing nation. Some intermediate stance that avoids the employment costs of unimpeded imports and the rigidities that permanent, die-hard protection will inflict on an industrialized economy may prove desirable as an aid to the process of economic adjustment.

Scholastic authority, practically unanimous, admits no challenge of the proposition that the levy of a tariff does violence to every fundamental principle of trade. It is difficult to fancy a modern Bacon, conceiving another Atlantis and attaching international perfection to it, not affixing the label of free trade. Yet-and here the layman's bewilderment comes in-his own observation appears to suggest that in this country we do violence to those same fundamental principles in the production and distribution of our goods, not only with impunity but to our apparent great advantage. We in the United States are accustomed to admit our prosperity. Not in all sections, at all times, have we enjoyed it, to be sure. As a nation we have sometimes overreached; sometimes have been imprudent, very likely. But, by and large, generation in and generation out, we have found the pursuit of material contentment continuously less difficult. Had the United States chosen to develop essentially as an agricultural country, bringing into full play its great gifts of acreage, soil and climate, we might, to this day, have limited our enterprise to keeping the world's market-basket full, depending in turn largely upon our neighbors to supply us with manufactured goods essential to our sustenance. Had we done so, this might still be a comfortable country in which to live, assuming perpetual peace, assuming also our neighbors' willingness always to fill their baskets with the products of our farms, and assuming further their constant resistance of he temptation to exploit their American markets.

The substantive commitments contained in the Charter may be divided into two groups. In the first group are those that relate to issues of national commercial policy that have previously been covered in international agreements. In the second are those that mark the first attempt to deal with some of the major problems now affecting world trade. The first group contains commitments relating to tariffs, preferences, discriminatory internal taxes and regulations, methods of customs administration, import and export quota systems, and other devices for restricting trade. These commitments limit the freedom of nations to employ measures other than tariffs for the protection of domestic industries, and they require the members of the ITO to enter into negotiations directed toward the substantial reduction of tariffs and the elimination of preferences.

Sugar and Molasses ....... $95,000,000 preference now being given by the Wool 89,000,000 United Kingdom on motor cars, musiCoal (Anthracite) ......... 33,000,000 cal instruments, wines and a few other Coal (Bituminous) ........ 43,000,000 products from the overseas Dominions Silk 42000000 may be extended in the near future. Vehi C es 35,000,000 Breadstuffs 29,000,000 Other preferential arrangements may Chemicals. .........26,000000 develop. In markets, which are not Hides and skins..... . 2,000,000 British, Canada must meet the compeRubber 21,000,000 tition of the world. This requires Flax, Hemp and Jute ..... 19,000,000 special machinery in the nature of Tobacco 16,000,000 exporting corporations, steamship faLeather 16,000,000 cilities and banking arrangements. Furs 14,000,000 Much of Canada's exports is now Tea 11,000,000 sold through New York exporting Canada's total import trade for the houses, but Canadian export companies twelve months ending September, 1920 are growing in number and strength. was $1,325,767,940. The value of Two of the leading Canadian chartered Canada's export trade for the same banks have agencies in Cuba, British period was $1,208,919,000. West Indies, Mexico and South AmerCanada has still much to learn about ica. The number of steamers enforeign trade. The proposed estabgaged in foreign trade is increasing. lishment of an Empire bank to stabilAs all these features expand, Canada ize exchange between the United Kingwill probably maintain the record dom and the British Dominions would which she has already made as a reliundoubtedly be helpful. The customs able and energetic foreign trader. ar and Molas es ..... $95,00 ,000 p eference now being given by the ol .. .. ... 89, ,000 United Kingdom n motor cars, musial (Anthracite) .... 33,000,000 cal instruments, wines and a few other al (Bituminous) .... 43,0 0,000 products from the overseas Dominions l .. .. ... 42 000 may be extended in the nea future.

AMONG significant influences of the war is an increased respect for organization as a means of accomplishing desired ends in civil life, as well as in military operation. It was recognized, in a conflict in which there was call for the entire energy and resources of nations, that economic cooperation was as necessary as military organization; and continuous co6peration was only to be assured by more or less formal organization. In some cases, the necessary organization of industry was accomplished by direct government control; in other cases, by private organizations directed in varying measure by public authority. It was logical that, as thoughts of a postwar period began to assume importance in the minds occupied by war activity, organization should be regarded as the first step for the recovery and development of national, as well as international, production and distribution. Although action was sporadic in the early years of the war and in form the organization varied in different industrial countries, the end of the war saw a much greater similarity in organization methods and in ideas and opinions of nations concerning industrial combination than had existed before 1914. The greatest change in opinion appears in England and in the United States, which were the most prominent industrial countries characterized by the English common law attitude of opposition to certain types of combinations which involved restraint of trade. English government committees and authorities adopted a position of encouragement of trade and industrial organizations as a means of rehabilitating commerce and industry. The United States departed from its traditional attitude in passing the Webb Law, legalizing export combinations. The pre-war contrasts with Germany in this respect have largely disappeared. The development of trade and industrial organization during and following the war, in so far as it affects foreign trade, may be broadly classified into government organizations, on the one hand, and private and semi-public organizations on the other. Government organization for foreign trade shows the greatest development in England, where the Board of Trade and the Foreign Office jointly formed the Department of Overseas Trade which combined a variety of promotional activities formerly decentralized. The general divisions-Empire Trades and Economic Division, Foreign Division, Exhibitions and Fairs Division, Export Credits Department-indicate roughly the broad scope of its work. Chiefly through the collection and dissemination of commercial intelligence concerning trade conditions and opportunities, the Department aims to develop British foreign trade.

IN A world nominally committed by the United Nations to a more nearly equal distribution of resources relative to population, one might expect numerous proposals for the migration of people to areas of greater opportunity. While it is doubtless true that population pressure is now discredited as a basis for demands for Lebensraum, colonies, or trade outlets, it is nevertheless recognized that inequalities in the distribution of resources and economic opportunity must be reduced if there is to be a lasting solution of the world's economic and political problems. To use the current phrase, it is generally realized that "poverty anywhere constitutes a danger to prosperity everywhere." As yet, however, there are few serious proposals that the indicated redistribution be effected even in part through international migration. The Atlantic Charter, for example, in speaking of access to raw materials, was apparently directed more toward free trade than free migration. Consistent with this is the action of recent international conversations and agreements in proposing ways and means for promoting the international movement of capital, manufactures, and raw materials, but not the international movement of people. Even the International Labor Organization at its recent Philadelphia meeting gave only passing attention to the migration of labor, choosing to look in other directions for means to accomplish its economic and social objectives. OUTLOOK FOR MIGRATION

IN the development of foreign trade the three main factors to be considered by the manufacturer are markets where the goods may be sold and general economic conditions in these countries, methods of transporting the goods overseas to their destination, and means of financing the transaction. For some years the Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce, in cooperation with the Consular Service of the Department of State, has been supplying the information regarding markets and economic conditions, but it has remained for the disturbed conditions in shipping and commerce, due to the war, to develop governmental organizations which are concerned with methods of transportation and the financing of foreign business.

INTERNATIONAL trade is influenced by so many varied factors that it is extremely difficult to measure the effect of any single cause upon the growth or decline of this trade or upon the character, the sources of supply and the direction of goods moved from country to country and from continent to continent. It is true that no other event has gripped the world with such intensity and violence and has involved so many nations at one time as did the Great War, but because of this very fact one is likely to commit the error of attributing to it some of the after-war changes in world commerce with which the conflict may have had very little to do. The task becomes increasingly difficult when one attempts to evaluate not the immediate effects of the war, but its more enduring influences. With the passing of years other factors have asserted themselves with an ever increasing force. Some of these were operative before the outbreak of hostilities in 1914, others appeared after 1918; to what extent the latter were caused, if at all, by the war, is at times not easy to determine.

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A major objective of economic policies among nations is to achieve industrial development in ways which not only accelerate national industrial integration, but also integrate regional and international economies. The new phenomenon of the multinational enterprise, and the resulting international production, is a means of gaining industrial integration. But the resulting pattern of production and trade is not likely to be that which would have arisen with free trade under classical assumptions. At the national level, the multinational enterprise (ME) can respond to inducements to locate in "depressed" areas, helping to integrate the economy. Regionally, it is more responsive to policies directed at integration among members than are most local companies, and it has in fact been a catalyst for integration in the European Common Market, though it has not been permitted to be such in the Central American Common Market or in the Latin American Free Trade Association. At the international level, it is already integrating the advanced economies, but the pattern of industrial integration between the advanced and developing countries leaves much to be desired, partly because the MEs are not being used effectively. In addition, some restrictions are imposed by states, not so much because of the fact that the firm is "foreign," but because it will not necessarily produce the kind of integration sought by host countries. If governments moved to cause the multinational enterprise to support objectives of industrial integration at all levels—national, regional, and international—it would become a more acceptable addition to Western economic institutions. To achieve this, new governmental guidelines are necessary.

A FUNDAMENTAL objective of the foreign economic policy of the United States is the establishment by international agreement of common rules of fair dealing which will secure the maximum benefits from international trade for all nations. The particular rules and standards of international trade which we in this country would like to see made universal are, with a few notable exceptions, those which are consistent with the principles of free international trade carried on by the unregimented activities of private enterprise. Specifically we would like to outlaw by international agreement all exchange restrictions on current international transactions, all export subsidies and import quota and licensing arrangements (except those considered necessary for the Department of Agriculture's support price program), all restrictive international cartel arrangements, all tariff preferences (except our own preferences with respect to Cuba) and all state trading activities.

IN SPITE of a marked increase in the value of exports and imports of merchandise since the depth of the depression was reached in 1932, our external commerce at the end of the calendar year 1936 had recovered little more than one-half the 1929 value. Imports have shown a somewhat greater resiliency than have exports, as a comparison of the figures will show. the same degree of recovery from the low figure of 1932, they displayed a marked difference in their approach to the 1929 level. The unit prices of exports in 1936 represented 129 per cent of the 1932 figure and 76 per cent of the 1929 level; import prices in 1936 were 124 per cent of those of 1932 and only 62 per cent of those of 1929. It becomes at once apparent that if import

trap than his neighbor, the world will find him and beat a path to his door. And to this it might be added that, even though the mouse-trap be but a common one, its maker will set his feet upon strange ways only when the number of his traps exceeds neighborhood demands. In short, until a producer of goods is driven by circumstance to seek distant markets, he sits at home and, waiting, gives slight regard to those agencies upon which reliance must be placed for the transportation of his wares to the door-step of the buyer. Happily situated, such a producer may without risk to himself ignore the problem of carriage-or say, to parallel the legal maxim, Provideat emptor. But those days of calm indifference in the life of American industry are drifting rapidly into the golden past, as is evidenced by the trend of our export trade during the half-century just ended. At the opening of that period foodstuffs and crude materials contributed almost four-fifths of the value of our exports, while semiand finished manufactures accounted for but one-fifth: many millions abroad depended upon the United States for cotton and for grains. Yet our manufactures now contribute almost half, while foodstuffs and crude materials, despite the continuance of great cotton exports, do little more than maintain a parity. And every sign points toward a further decrease in the volume of those exports for which the world's reliance was once in us, with a corresponding increase in the volume of those which ust meet keen competition in every market where offered. In consequence of this change, the United States may no longer wait complacently for a materials-hungry world to seek out a path to the door; instead, we must discover means of placing goods in the world market with expedition and at minimum cost. To accomplish this dual purpose effort must be directed steadily and thoughtfully toward reducing production expense without impairment of quality, and effort must be made to move the

FOREIGN trade is, and has been, necessary to the welfare and progress of the United States. Until recent years, however, it has been the subject of comparatively little thought or interest. With exports consisting largely of foodstuffs and raw materials urgently needed by foreign nations, we knew nothing of real competition abroad. Receiving as part of the return for these exports the so-called invisible items of foreign trade-services of a merchant marine, of banks or insurance companies, services to our tourists abroad, satisfaction of interest payments on foreign loans or immigrant remittances-it was never brought home to us as a people that "imports pay for exports." Foreign trade, therefore, in the popular mind and even among business men came to mean exporting American products for which we received cash, often before the commodities left our shores. The importation of foreign goods was regarded as an unmitigated evil, to be confined within strictest limits since it "took our money abroad" and "robbed American laborers of their jobs." Any gain on the part of foreigners in selling goods to us must of necessity be so much loss to the purchaser here: so ran the popular argument. The international phase of American business, however, has recently taken on a new significance. We have come to see our need of international trade as an integral part of our fullest economic development, and the discussion of the last ten years has clarified and corrected many misleading popular notions. This much is now clear-we have changed from a nation exporting chiefly foodstuffs and raw materialswhich foreigners must have from usto a nation needing some foodstuffs and much raw material, and exporting manufactured goods which must compete for a market. Then, too, our domestic market of over 100,000,000 people no longer absorbs all the output of our productive machinery. In the past, development of domestic business took all our attention and capital, and foreigners took our available exports; at present our internal economic development has ceased to demand all our energy or money, and we can manufacture more than we need at home. This leads inevitably to one conclusion -foreign trade is, as never before, a factor in increasing our national wealth. With this as a thesis this paper will endeavor to point out: (1) The importance of foreign trade to our business development. (2) How foreign trade increases our national wealth.

The scope of this article is confined to a discussion of the development of agreements and conferences entered into by the steamship companies engaged in the foreign trade of the United States. These companies furnish today the greater portion of the tonnage required to move the vast export traffic of this continent. The evolution of the different services into the powerful position occupied by them today affords an interesting study presenting innumerable instances of lines falling by the wayside, history alone remaining tc tell the tale of disappointed hopes and wasted endeavors. Those lines which have survived, together with many new enterprises, share today in overwhelming proportion the export traffic of the United States. This traffic logically divides itself into three distinct groups, and for the purpose of this article it is desirable to consider the subject from the standpoint of each separately. The three groups may be stated as follows: Group I. The trans-Atlantic trade covering all ports in Europe bordering on the Atlantic Ocean, the North Sea, the Baltic, the White Sea, and the Mediterranean, as well as ports in Asia on the Mediterranean and the Black Sea.