International concerted action by states in economic affairs, save in the sphere of communications and transport, has a history of little more than one generation's span. Indeed, apart from the three disconnected conventions concluded before the Great War at Brussels concerning sugar subsidies, the publication of customs tariffs, and the exchange of comparable commercial statistics, respectively, efforts for international coöperation between governments date only from the Peace Settlement. Of the pre-war agreements, the first was denounced before the War; the second, which might still prove of considerable importance when national tariffs become fairly stable, has proved ineffective in a period of violent tariff changes; while the third came into operation only in 1922.

The movement, therefore, with the important exceptions in the sphere of communications and transport, owed its impetus to the work of the Peace Conferences; but save for Part XIII of the Versailles Treaty and the similar provisions of the other treaties—the labor clauses—no specific machinery was established by the treaties either within or without the framework of the Covenant for economic coöperation.