WAGES NOT UNIFORM — NON-COMPETING GROUPS 57 
that results from the domestic conditions is well established and 
seems to be deeply rooted; and it is not likely that international 
trade will impinge on it with such special effect on a particular 
grade as to warp it noticeably. 
The case is somewhat different as regards the train of causation 
running the other way. While international trade is not likely to 
modify the alignment of grades within a country, peculiarities in 
that alignment may affect international trade. I will call atten- 
tion to one or two instances in which this sort of influence seems to 
have appeared, departing for the moment from the general plan 
of this book, under which illustration and verification have been 
relegated to the later chapters. 
The first illustration comes from the history and position of the 
chemical industry of Germany. I speak of the situation as it was 
before the war of 1914-18; what happened in Germany in the 
years immediately after the war is too confused for the illustra- 
tion of the forces ordinarily at work in international trade. Before 
1914, as 1s well known, chemical industries, and especially those 
vielding highly elaborated coal-tar products, were more success- 
fully carried on in Germany than in any other country. Coal-tar 
dyes and drugs were supplied to England and the United States 
from Germany; the domestic output in these countries was 
negligible. Other countries also were supplied by German imports, 
tho not as preponderantly as the two English-speaking countries. 
The Germans evidently had some advantage in making these 
things. A comparative advantage? Certainly not one of a 
natural (physical) sort. It arose largely from the plenty and the 
especial cheapness of a particular kind of labor: that of chemists 
and of chemists’ skilled assistants. Germany had a learned 
proletariat. The excellence and easy access of technological 
education, and the powerful social forces which attracted large 
numbers from the middle classes into ‘the learned professions, 
brought about a large supply and a low remuneration of highly 
trained chemists. A similar excellence of intermediate education 
supplied to these officers a capable non-commissioned staff; (to 
use a military analogy) there was a supply of exact, careful