“Those countries have the field and the experience and better access than Italy to sources of raw material.” “That we know, also.” “Then how can you hope successfully to compete with them? What have you that they have not? What advantage against theirs?” “One you haven’t thought of.” “What is it?” “A man can live on less in Italy than anywhere else. We don’t know why that is. It may be the way the sun shines on him. But it is a fact. That is our advantage. With that we shall succeed.” “Do you realize what that means? You are saying that Italy proposes to found an industrial career on the lowest terms of human existence. Your people will not accept it.” “But they will.” “How do you know they will?” “Because they will do anything sooner than starve.” What a finish for the morning hope of the machine-age!—if it were. Monotonous tending of the machine on the lowest standard of living; alternative, starvation. Suppose it were true. Suppose the Italian people did accept the terms and acquired the knack and skill. Then Italian manufactures, being cheaper than any other, would sweep the markets of the world. The older industrial nations—Great Britain, Germany, France, the United States, _et al._—could protect their domestic markets by tariff-barriers, but they would find themselves losing their foreign markets to the Italians. For such industrial countries as are obliged to exchange a machine-surplus abroad for food the loss of foreign markets would be fatal. They would have to meet the Italian competition. They would have to say, as the Italians now are saying: “It is that or starve.” They would have to let down the standard of living to meet Italy’s wage-cost. This would oblige Italy to make her standard lower still, and thus, in a cycle, until all of them were sunk in misery.