510 PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION F. 



supply of labour by excludino; foreigners. Those, however, 

 who are already prepared to adopt that step, do not always 

 recognise, as clearly as they should, that the exclusion of 

 cheap foreigners from our labour market will always be 

 accompanied by the exclusion from our market of the cheap 

 goods made by those foreigners in their own country, the 

 admission of which, whilst it increases the aggregate wealth 

 of England, inflicts a direct injury upon those particular 

 workers, the demand for whose labour is diminished by the 

 introduction of foreign goods which can undersell them. If 

 an alien law is passed it will bring both logically and 

 historically in its wake such protective measures as will 

 constitute a reversal of our present free-trade policy. . . . 

 It seems not unlikely that a democratic Government will 

 some day decide that such artificial prohibition of foreign 

 labour, and the foreign goods which compete with the goods 

 produced by low-skilled English labour, will benefit the low- 

 skilled workers, in their capacity of wage-earners, more than 

 the consequent rise in prices will injure them in their capacity 

 as consumers." 



I believe that the organisation contended for may be 

 established with facility in a young country hke Austraha by 

 a system of industrial licenses. The first step is to prevent 

 the conflict of capital with capital, so far as it is possible, in 

 industries to which the system can be fairly applied. I do not 

 contend that the system could be applied to every industry, 

 or brought into operation all at once. Any capital destroyed 

 in a country is detrimenta? to the whole community, — it is 

 not merely the loss to the capitalist. Instead of allowing 

 capitals to destroy each other, or to form great trusts so far 

 free from competition as to admit of their imposing higher 

 prices upon the public, and realising enormous profits, and 

 so that the product does not receive any equable distribution 

 among the producers, the amount of capital employed in 

 particular industries might approximately be restricted to 

 that actually required, and no more. The monopoly con- 

 ferred by the license would bring capital to Australia which 

 does not come now, and admit of conditions being imposed. 

 The system would not do away with competition — it would 

 have full operation in the first instance as to the terms upon 

 which the capital should be invested. If, under a pro- 

 tectionist system iron industries could be fully established in 

 Australia, and the production of iron to supply the Australian 

 continent would not for some time exceed approximately five 



