2 
INTERNATIONAL LABOR ORGANIZATION 
Second Internationale, The International Conference for 
Labor Protection, and The International Association for 
Labor Legislation. Nothing, however, was accomplished as 
a result of these early efforts, largely because international 
cooperation in labor matters seemed necessary only to a 
small group of reform leaders and to more or less socially 
minded associations of workers. Not until the Industrial 
Revolution had extended its influence outside of England 
and Germany, and had effected a world-wide transformation 
of technical methods, did the labor problem assume a really 
international aspect. 
The increasing importance of industry in the economic 
organization of the more important countries, and the prob- 
lem of international competition as a result of inequalities 
in the cost of production in countries where regulatory legis- 
lation had been enacted and in those where industry was 
free from such governmental interference, placed the demand 
for international labor legislation on an economic basis. 
Viewed in this light, the problem of international cooperation 
in regulating labor conditions carried a practical appeal, not 
only to the industrial workers who were interested in main- 
taining or improving their standards of living, but also to 
the employers of labor who came to regard the exploitation 
of the workers in some parts of the world as a form of un- 
fair competition. 
At the beginning of the twentieth century, the industrial 
development of the world had progressed so far that rela- 
tively few nations remained in a state of economic isolation. 
Moreover, improvement in the methods and reduction in 
the costs of transportation stimulated international competi- 
tion and emphasized the competitive inequalities resulting 
from the differences in the living standards and conditions 
of employment. Employers of labor in the countries where 
the hours of work had beey shortened, employment of women 
and children curtailed, and the hazards of machine operations 
guarded against, either by voluntary action or by legislation, 
found themselves handicapped in competing in the inter 
! For more detailed account of the early movement for international labor legisla. 
tion, see National Industrial Conference Board, “The International Labor Organi- 
zation of the League of Nations,” New York, 1922. pp. 3-13.