The Barre daily times. (Barre, Vt.) 1897-1959, 1916-12-14
United States to Have Bet
ter Position Than the
/ States Now at War
FOODSTUFFS WILL
BE IN DEMAND
Says Secretary of Commerce
( Redfield at Southern Com
mercial Congress

Norfolk, Va, Dec. l4.--The United
States will enter competition for the
world trade after the war with every
advantage, said Secretary of Commerce
Redfield, speaking yesterday before the
Southern Commercial congress.
"There is the best reason for knowing
that in at least four important respects
the end of the war will mean calls on us
for supplies which now we are prevented
from furnishing" said Mr. Redfeld.
"These demands will be for foodstuffs of
many kinds, for agricultural machinery,
for lumber in many forms and for cred
its in the way of loans and investments"
Americas advantage will lie, said the
secretary, in the fact that her adjust
ments from war to peac, conditions will
not be so severe as in the fighting coun-
tries.
at is reasonable to suppose that for
eign industries a. a WHOLE" he said, will
have to make sharper readjustment OF
product from war goods to peace goods
than is to be the case with us. Consider
what manufacturer in one of the cen
trail powers would face if he undertook
to make up goods for stock to-day on
any considerable scale for an export mar
ket. He would manufacture at high
rates under war conditions, with higher
than normal costs, with some of his
trained supervising and working staff in
the armies, and with every material en-
HANGED in price, perhaps with some sup
ply cut off.
"This man must pile up goods so made
at time when credit is costly and taxes
a a ca 10 a
which may be distant and in markets
whose current movements he may not
know and of whose future conditions no
one can tell him. He may not be able to
say whether styles, designs, colors and
dimensions and other elements of the
goods he makes will suit when the un-
known day shall arrive when he can offer
them for SALE Nor will he know wheth-
er in the interval industries shall not
have sprung up in the place where he
would sell, that will make the vending Of
his product there impossible.
For a manufacturer under conditions
of this kind to pile up goods would be
almost an act of industrial insanity and
certainly not one whose existence on any
considerable scale should be thought a
dangerous threat"
rotary declared, not as offensive weapons
but as defense.
"These movements cannot be looked
upon as if they were weapons backed by
exceptional economic power. On the con-
trary saner view is to regard them as
weapons forged to overcome unusual eco
nomic weakness. They are not the out
come of developing strength but of in
creasing loss. They are created to make
the best of bad situation"
Economic alliances may come and go;
tariff policies may change; but greater
things than either will determine our
place in the world" he concluded. "If
we will waste we cannot win. If we
condemn the scientific by boastful ad
hesion to the so-caled practical-which
often means the ignorant-we cannot
win either. If we pit unframed minds
and hands against those which have been
skillfully taught we cannot win. If we
persist in ignoring what it costs to do
business we cannot expect to cope with
those who are more intelligent We can
not have our place in the sun unless we
deserve it.
'If / were asked the message which at |
the end of 80 years connection with in |
dustry / would leave as a warning |
against danger, the sign post for the flu |
ture path, it would be:
Educate young people for the work |
of the field; make industry the servant |
of science; know costs and the causes of |
costs; stop wasting"