WORK AND WEALTH
other industry. The production of import and export figures,
and of balances of trade, under national headings, is a mis-
chievous pandering to the most dangerous delusion of the age.
It has done more than anything else to hide the great and benef-
icent truth, that the harmony and solidarity of economic in-
terests among mankind have at last definitely transcended
national limits, and are rapidly binding members of different
nations in an ever-growing network of codperation. Within the
last generation a more solid and abiding foundation for this
codperation than ordinary exchange of goods has been laid in the
shape of international finance. Though certain dangerous
abuses have attended its beginnings, this codperation of the
citizens of various countries in business enterprises in all parts
of the world is the most potent of forces making for peace and
progress. More rapidly than is commonly conceived, it is bring-
ing into existence a single economic world-state with an order
and a government which are hardly the less authoritative be-
cause, as yet, they possess a slender political support. That
economic world-state consists of all that huge area of indus-
trially developed countries in regular and steady intercourse,
linked to one another by systems of railroads and steamship
routes, by postal and telegraphic services, administered by com-
mon arrangements, by regular commerce, common markets and
reliable modes of monetary payment, and by partnerships of
capital and labour in common business transactions.
§ 3. The actuality of this world-system has preceded its con-
scious realisation. But the growing fact is educating the idea
and the accompanying sentiment in the minds of the more en-
lightened members of all civilised nations. We hear more of
internationalism from the side of labour. But, in point of fact,
the corporate unity of labour lags far behind that of capital.
For the mobility of capital is much greater, and its distribution
is far better organised. But, as the financial machinery for the
collection and distribution of industrial power over the whole
economic world is further perfected and unified, it will be at-
tended by a loosening of those local and national bonds which
have hitherto limited the free movement of labour. As the
centre of gravity in the economic system shifts from land, which
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