The Cotton Conference
The public and polite -preliminaries in London out of the way, the real business of the international cotton textile con- ference begins today at Buxton. These talks are private and it will be a week or more before we learn whether the delega- tions, with their conflicting views, have arrived or are likely to arrive at any valuable conclusion concerning the prospects of the international trade in cotton textiles and the possible methods of increasing it with fairness to all the exporting nations. It will be pleasantly surprising if they do, but even then their respective Governments will still have to be con• vinced : this is a meeting of business-men, not of Governmental representatives. Of the delegations (British, American, Indian, Japanese, Dutch, Belgian, Scandinavian, French, Swiss, German and Italian), the Japanese is the largest, and some crude attempts have been made by those who cry for restrictionism to paint them as the sole villains of the piece. They may themselves lend colour to this by the vigour of their arguments against the closing of Eastern and African markets (above all the British. Colonial) against their exports. Should they not find support here from the Americans, to whom restrictionism is anathema, free competition the essential doctrine—and cotton exports of secondary impor- tance ? Others, the British among them, will consider the rapid expansion of the Japanese industry in the past two years and think the matter less simple. It would be unfortunate if the conference were to bog itself down at the beginning in those details over which there are the greatest differences of opinion, while in fact there is the same broad problem to be faced by all the exporting countries : the steady, long-established contraction of international trade in cotton textiles and the barriers of restriction which are raised because of foreign exchange considerations rather than protection.
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