Excerpt from Proposal for an International Conference on the Regulation and Control of Ocean Carriage by Means of an International Commerce Commission for the Purpose of Steadying the World’s Price of the Staples
Without such international action there can be no guarantee for equi table and fixed rates in the carriage of the staples. The absence of these equitable and fixed rates must necessarily give rise to disturbances throughout the economic world, by forcing values to deflect from the line of the normal.
In concluding my arguments in favour of the adoption of the resolution, I wish to say that there seem to be three ways of disposing of the question before us. One would be to leave matters alone, to let the problems solve themselves. Another would be to live in the hope that the carriers may presently become so wise and disinterested that they will solve the question of their own accord and set matters right. But if in this matter, as in all others, adeq’uate means are essential to the attainment of rational ends, we are forced to set aside both of these ways. This leaves the third way, that of action ‘on the lines of the resolution submitted, the working out of the system indicated therein.
An impartial review of the subject must lead the statesman to the conclusion that this question cannot be solved by action on empyrical lines. The problems of ocean carriage as they affect any one port, or all the ports of any one country, are, after all, but phases and fractions, por tions of the question when it is considered as a whole. Viewed as a whole the problems transcend the limits of any one country they are inter-related and concern all the countries of the world.
The time has passed when the statesman could dismiss this question with a waive of the hand. Population everywhere is increasing by leaps and bounds, and so is popular education. All this is equivalent to saying that wants are increasing. And it is clear that the highest aim of good states manship is to see that the demands arising out of these increased wants are not stupidly and unjustly frustrated by causes which have their root in inequities in the formation of the world’s price of the staples.
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