Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1916-09-16
SAFEGUARD THE FUTURE


TT is impossible 70 arrive at any ade-
quate conception Of what Is going to
happen to American foreign trade after
the war until one realizes what has hap
pened 70 n during the war.
We have bean congratulating ourselves
on the splendid ana unprecedented bal
ance Of trade in our favor. 1t reached the
enornotA sum Of s2.o74 100000 in the last
fiscal year. We have been saying to our.
selves that Europe had to have the things
which we produced and so came to our
markets. This Is only part Of the truth.
TIE United States has been a debtor
nation. England and France. but espe.
cially England. invested their surplus in
American enterprises. They did not con-
fine their investments TO North America,
but loaned vast sums TO South America
came necessary for the belligerent nations
to mobilize their financial assets as we'll as
their armies. II was imperative that
they should call their foreign loans. They
have been doing this for the past twenty
FIVE months. The exact figures are not
obtainabie. but Il has been estimated that
between billion and half and two bill
lion dollars worth of American securities
have been unloaded on the American
market
How have these been paid fort Not In
cash. They have been paid for by the
shipment OF goods which Europe. fortu-
nately for us, needed In her great emer-
gency. II we could not have paid for
them in goods It would have been neces-
sary to ship gold abroad and thereby
drain our banks Of their supply of yellow
metal The same process has been going
on in South America, where the exports
Of Argentina, for example. have increased
almost as amazingly as our own, in re-
sponse TO the demand for the payment
Of European creditors.
The expansion of our foreign trade,
dating from the middle eighties of the
last century, has been coincident with
the industrial decline of England and her
decreasing ability to hold the foreign
securities in which she had invested.
The boom OF the past two years has diff
fered In degree and not in kind from that
which has been going on for a genera
tion. @
The peril in the present situation is two
fold: Our industries have acquired such
momentum that It cannot be stopped
when the war ends. We are in grave
danger of producing a surplus that will
glut our markets and demoraIize business.
Second, when the men OF Europe leave
the battlefield and resume their places in
industry all the nations viii exert them
selves to the utmost to recover the trade
which they have lost by supplying their
own markets and selling their surplus at
any price they can get in the markets of
the world. There is grave danger OF a glut
Of homemade goods made worse by
flood Of foreisn-made articles. Further,
because they have borrowed billion and
@ half here since the war began. there is
the added necessity OF selling more goods
here to pay the interest on these loans
instead Of shipping gold to us.
It win require the broadest and wisest
and political statesmanship to
prevent grave economic disaster grow.
Ing out Of these conditions. Our FIRST
duty is to those of our own household. |
What is needed now is not a law to mako |
foreign competition with our producers
easier, as the Underwood law has done,
but law which will protect our mar.
kets. and thereby protect our workers |
from ruinous competition. If there ever |
were a time In the history of the nation |
whom an intelligently framed protective |
tariff law was needed that time is the
present.