ABSTRACT
The aftermath of World War I fundamentally changed the world within which tin had evolved. Hitherto, decisions that shaped the industry had been made on a purely pragmatic basis, divorced from any general form of economic analysis. Indeed, such a divorce was an inevitable consequence of the reigning orthodoxy whose three moral principles, unfettered competition, free trade and the gold standard, sustained the institutions within which such pragmatic decisions were encouraged. War had now destroyed those institutions and the old orthodoxy looked increasingly irrelevant.
