ships, and special dispositions regarding the Red Sea, Suez Canal, and Persian Gulf. The convention on labor legislation provides for uniform principles with respect to the forbidding of night labor by women and the use of white phosphorus in the industrial arts. The Sugar Union has limited the amount of duty to be levied upon imported sugar and has entirely forbidden the granting of bounties to sugar producers.

Administrative activities

The administrative activities of the international unions vary with the manifold purposes of the latter. Thus far, national governments have exhibited great reluctance against endowing the organs of the international unions with direct powers of action. As long as the union confines itself to establishing a means of communication between the governments, to giving an occasion for the periodical interchange of opinions and comparison of results, even the greatest upholder of national sovereignty will not discover any dangers in such arrangements. But once permit the organs thus created to make binding decisions or to take administrative action which the individual sovereignties are bound to respect, and an entirely different situation is created. Yet the needs of international intercourse have become so prominent that it has been found convenient in many cases to give a certain limited power of action, carefully guarded and well defined, to the international administrative organs.

Their general purpose is, of course, to serve as a link of communication between the contracting states in order that, should they desire to bring about any change in the administrative arrangements or in the relations between states in the matter covered by the respective union, they will have ready to their hand an organ through which their efforts may legally and properly be made. The bureaus of the unions are therefore quite generally charged with the duty of giving due form to demands for changes in the respective convention or règlement. More specific authoritative functions have been intrusted to a number of the bureaus. Thus, the Slave Trade Bureau at Zanzibar superintends the enforcement of the general antislavery act, which gives it a certain power of control over the

vessels furnished by the treaty powers for police duty in African waters. The Sanitary Councils of Constantinople and Alexandria exercise a direct administrative control over the various quarantine stations of the Levant and the Persian Gulf. The Mixed Commission of the Danube, the Caisse de la Dette, and the Macedonian Commission fulfill specific functions indicated by their local purposes. The Bureau of the American Republics has been charged with the duty of obtaining information for the governments of America which may be useful to them with regard to projected public works. The governing board of the bureau, moreover, fixes the date and program of future conferences. The International Patent Bureau at Berne, in behalf of a restricted union for this purpose, acts as a registry of trade-marks, which are thus made ipso facto valid in all the member states of the restricted union. The work of the Metric Bureau and of the bureaus of the scientific unions can be called administrative only in the sense that it contemplates the establishment of more adequate methods of investigation in the sciences concerned. The Metric Bureau, however, has a specific administrative duty of preserving the original standards of weights and measures, and of issuing to governments and associations duplicates of such standards carefully tested as to their accuracy.

More extensive and important administrative functions have been intrusted to the Sugar Commission. As already noted, it has the quasi-legislative function of preparing regulations for the customs administrations with a view of preventing the secret importation of bounty-fed sugars into the treaty states. The commission also decides upon requests for the admission of new members. In addition to these and other functions, the commission has the very important power of making certain determinations of fact on the basis of which the legislation of the treaty states must be modified under the provisions of the convention. Thus, the commission is instructed to ascertain if in any of the contracting states any sugar bounty is given; further, to determine the existence of bounties in noncontracting states and the amount of such bounties, with a view of applying the compensatory duties provided for in the treaty; and, finally, it may authorize the levy of a surcharge (not more than one

franc per hundred kilograms) by one treaty state against another, by whose sugar its markets are invaded to the injury of national production. The treaty not only fixes the maximum duties permissible on sugar imports, but it also establishes a general scale of countervailing duties to be levied against countries paying a bounty to their sugar producers. But all the determinations of fact upon which the levying of such duties is dependent are made the function of the Sugar Commission. It is difficult to define a function of this kind. It may perhaps be described as essentially judicial in that its main element is the determination of fact; but as it is a situation rather than an isolated fact which the commission is to determine, its power may in many cases be in its effect practically legislative, in that it may determine the duty of a certain administration to levy certain taxes or to make certain administrative arrangements. The functions attributed to the Sugar Commission constitute the greatest reach yet given to the powers of an international organ. The policy of granting such attributes was not discussed as a theoretical question, but the course of action was forced upon the treaty states by the situation of the sugar industry at the time when the treaty was concluded.

It is quite a general practice to give functions of a fiscal nature to the international bureaus and commissions. Sometimes accounts between different national administrations are to be settled. Thus, in the Postal Union, the bureau acts as a clearing house between the administrations and provides for the settlement of unsatisfied balances. In 1907, the amounts thus balanced by the Postal Bureau reached a total of 71,000,000 francs. In a similar way the bureau of the Railway Freight Union acts as a fiscal center for the collection of arrears and the settlement of balances between the administrations. The bureau for Industrial Property, which is charged with the special work of trade-mark registry for the restricted union, derives a direct income from this service, as it levies a fee of one hundred francs for the registry of a trade-mark and fifty francs for each additional trade-mark registered by the same proprietor at the same time. The proceeds from these fees are, after deduction of the expense of administration, divided among the members of the restricted union.

The governing board of the Bureau of American Republics deliberates on and fixes the annual budget of the bureau, which must be submitted to it by the director of that institution.

The financial support of the international bureaus and commissions is usually derived from direct contributions by the member states. In some instances, these contributions are made pro rata, according to the population of the member states (e. g., American Union), or the expense may be borne in equal shares by all the members (e. g., Sugar Union). In the Railway Union, the expenses are borne in proportion to the mileage of railways operated for international purposes in the various countries. Another method is to divide the member states into classes and to attribute to each class a certain number of units in the expenditure. Thus, the members of the Union for the Protection of Industrial Property are divided into six classes. Those belonging to the first class pay twenty-five units, those of the second class twenty units, and so on down to the sixth, which pay three units. The total annual expense of the union is divided by the total number of units, and the individual unit is then multiplied by the number associated with a particular class. A similar system is used in the International Institute of Agriculture. Here the states are given the choice as to which group they desire to range under. Stringent regulations covering default of payment are not always made, as the national self-respect of the member states is deemed a sufficient guaranty of payment. But in some cases a definite sanction is provided; in the Metric Union, for instance, the failure of a member state to pay its quota for three years in succession results in the striking of its name from the list of membership. It occasionally happens that the international unions receive special support from a particular nation, or from private sources. The American Union thus recently received the sum of $750,000 from Mr. Carnegie for the purpose of erecting a suitable building as a home for its bureau; and upon the establishment of the International Institute of Agriculture, the King of Italy made a very substantial donation for the purpose of assisting in its maintenance.

In some of the international unions, methods have been established for the arbitration of controverted questions. It is evident

that a complete organization of internationalism would involve the creation of international tribunals in which controversies with respect to the various interests represented might be heard and decided. The general opposition which the principle of obligatory arbitration has encountered has thus far prevented any far-reaching action in this matter. Nevertheless, in a number of instances, arrangements for arbitral settlement of controversies have been concluded, which may indeed be looked upon as important precedents in the general movement of arbitration. When, at the Second Hague Conference, the general question of arbitration was being discussed in committee, it was prominently suggested and seriously considered that all the interests which had been publicly organized upon an international basis should be made subject to arbitration procedure. This fact very well illustrates the connection between the establishment of the international unions and the growth of a general feeling of international community. It was not merely an accidental suggestion that was made at The Hague, but rather the announcement of a principle which takes account of the most salient facts in the present organization of the civilized world. If certain international interests have arrived at a stage where their importance is recognized to the extent that separate international institutions have been created to guard over them and develop them, it may well be argued that these very interests constitute the most natural subjects for international arbitration. If their administration has been made international and to a definite extent common among all the nations, the decision of controverted questions with respect to them may safely be left to an international organ. Although the opposition to the general principle of arbitration was still so strong upon this occasion that the above suggestion was not enacted in the form of a treaty, it nevertheless embodied a sound principle of international policy.

Turning, now, to the specific arrangements for arbitration which have already been instituted, we note that in the Postal Union the bureau is instructed, upon demand of the parties, to give advice on controverted questions. Moreover, it is provided for that questions concerning the responsibility of any administration for registered mail matter and disputed interpretations of the convention shall be