Bryan daily eagle and pilot. [volume] (Bryan, Tex.) 1909-1918, 1915-05-04
Secretary Of Commerce 7edfield
Gives Astounding Figures Of
Our Trade Balances.

with March 81 have reached the I'M
paralleled total of 1888, 1850, In
dicating an approximate total for the
full fiscal year OF s2,75O,OOO,O0O. The
apparent balance in our favor on mer-
chandise transactions In this foreign
trade up to the 18th Of April 1.-THE data
for half of April being estimated) Is
S761 100000. Unless some unforeseen
change in the export movement oc'
ours, this favorable balance will reach
II not exceed thousand millions dur
ing the current fiscal year.
This is of itself sufficient to make
American hearts glad, but certain
factors add greatly to its weight. II
includes the month of August In
which the substantial stoppage OF our
exports for fortnight resulted In an
unfavorable balance Of nineteen mil
lions. II is coincident with the aO'
sence of an expenditure on the part
OF American travellers abroad estl'
mated at net about S17O,OOO,OOO per
annum. and also with the absorption
by us OF a large but undetermined
amounts OF American securities own
ed abroad, by reason OF when the
interest on the securities thus pur'
chased is now paid to us instead OF
TO Others. Not only, therefore Is the
favorable balance remarkable in IT.
self. but It is not SUBJECT to the on
sets that have heretofore been usual
1T is Of course a pity that we are
still paying such high rates for ocean
Transportation that foreign carriers
are thereby prospecting at our COST
while we remain in the Illuminating
position of depending upon foreign
navies to protect the movement OF
our own commerce. which we ought
to control but do not From the Far
East as well as from the Atlantic
comes the cry for shipping and II Is
speaklng couseryatiyely TO say that
the business movement which shows
such wonderful results would be
greatly enlarged if vessels we're
available under American control TO
take the traffic where and whittier
American commerce desired it to go.
Some Republican editors are funny
fellows. more facile in fancy than
familiar with facts. They unite
marked powers of assertion with a
wonderful gift of forgetfulness. The
facts of today being hard for their
digestion. they go back year ana
talk about the balance of trade IN
April last with both a singular omis'
sion 10 state the facts of that time
and the facts which followed the en-
actment of the Payne-Aldrich law OF
evil memory. Everyone knows who
reads. but our friends, the editors, II
they read. do not say it, that what
they call the deficit for April, 1914,
was due to the increase in imported
food arising from our own shortage
AZ that time and the increase OF crude
materials which we do not ourselves
produce or produced insufficiently for
use in our manufactures. On the ex'
port side for that month the decrease
was in shipments of foodstuffs, which
we could not spare, and in crude ma
terials. viz, coal and raw cotton. 1t
was in the item of fully finished man
ufactures that the decrease was least.
"Not only, therefore, were the con-
ditions of which our friends so often
and so feebly write the outcome OF
circumstances which had nothing to
do with any law, but they were treat
ed by our friends with an amusing
forgetfulness of their own past. II
they look at the year following the
Payne-Aldrich tariff law, which be-
gan its brief career on August G, 1909,
they will find that in March, 1910,
there was what they call an adverse
trade balance of over nineteen million
dollars. There was no war then to
shut off our trade, but 1t was not I'M
ill August of 1914, when the war did
shut off our exports for time, that
the Payne law deficit was equaled.
Not only so, but in the year which
followed the passage Of the Payne
Aldrich law there were five months
in which there was an adverse trade
balance.
ut is hard to see how our friends,
the editors, therefore, escape the con-
clusion that by their own arguments
the law they favor was a failure. 1t
adds strength to this to point out that
despite the deficit on which they lean
ed so much in April, 1914 the trade
balance for the ten months of that
fiscal yearC which included April,
showed a favorable balance of four
hundred and seventy millions, while