International trade

Bibliographic data

Monograph

Identifikator:: 1758394757

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-136209

Document type:: Monograph

Author:: Taussig, Frank William http://d-nb.info/gnd/120199459

Title:: International trade

Place of publication:: New York, NY

Publisher:: Macmillan

Year of publication:: 1927

Scope:: XXI, 425 Seiten; graph. Darst.

Digitisation:: 2021

Collection:: Economics Books

Usage license:: Get license information via the feedback formular.

Chapter

Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

Title:: Part I. Theory

Collection:: Economics Books

WAGES NOT UNIFORM — NON-COMPETING GROUPS 59 Southern States the utilization of a low-lying stratum of “poor whites” (not to mention the negroes) operated in the same way. The effect was to give an advantage to those industries, or those ways of conducting industries, in which the low-lying group of labor was used in large proportion. Industries of this type were accordingly in the same position in regard to international trade as if they had a comparative advantage; or if not so much as this, something to offset a lack of such advantage. In the iron industry — that is, in the making of crude and half- finished iron and steel — the effect was of the former sort: the situation served to give a comparative advantage. The industry uses great masses of labor. The industry grew in the United States at an extraordinary pace between 1890 and 1915, and came to be an important industry of export. Here, too, the labor factor was not the only one; but it was an important one. It contrib- uted to the remarkable overturn by which the United States, formerly an importer of iron and steel, became a great exporter of them. In the textile industries an analogous development took place, but here not so much in the way of greater exports as of less imports; not so much the attainment of a clear comparative advantage as the elimination, in part or in whole, of a lack of superiority. The shift for the purposes of international trade was negative rather than positive. Those textile industries which could use unskilled labor for tending semi-automatic machinery for mass production found a plentiful and cheap supply at their command. Those for which still other conditions also were favorable, notably those manufacturing the cheap and medium grades of cotton fabrics, grew apace. Their position of indiffer- ence to foreign competition, almost if not quite attained even under the earlier conditions, was strengthened and consolidated by the cheapness of the routine labor. Textile industries of a different type, such as the silk and worsted manufactures, were enabled to attain a half-way position. For them the general conditions were less favorable; in order to hold their own against foreign competition, they needed a tariff prop much more than

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