Atlanta semi-weekly journal. (Atlanta, Ga.) 1898-1920, 1916-11-28
The Folly of a Food Embargo.


than those it is proposed to remedy. High prices
however burdensome are preferable to paralyzed
industries and to the alienation of those customers
who have contributed much to our present pros
perity and whose continued good will is so impor-
tant to our future interests
While the food situation in this country is seri-
Gus in some respects, il is by desperate
The rising cost bread, due largely to shortage
in the last wheat harvest and the accompanying
increase i'm the price of other staples constitute
neavy problem in a great many families. But pros
porous times invariably bring high prices, and for
the rank and file of workingmen the present scale
of the cost of living is balanced by wages unpre-
cedentedIy high. Wherever burdensome prices are
due to monopoly or manipulation the law should
intervene for the publics protection; and due eff
forts should be made to improve the methods for
distributing and marketing food Commodities At
the same time, it should be remembered that eX-
listing conditions due chiefly to natural causes
and economic laws. 1t is far better to await with
patience and frugality normal readjustment of
food prices than to rush to radical measures that
would lose a pound TO save a penny, and put the
peacefulness of our foreign relations severely to
hazard.
While an embargo food exports would pull
prices down, ii would also pull prosperity down.
1t would cut off millions of the foreign business
that keeps our factories roaring and enriches, in
one way or another, every field of our commercial
affairs. Congress enacted an embargo in the winter
of 1907. The effects caamitous. Referring
to the records of that woeful experiment, the New
York Times points out that exports sank from
hundred and eight million dollars in 1907 to
twenty-five millions in 1908; that the Government
revenues fell from sixteen million dollars to a few
thousand that upwards of thirty thousand Ameri-
and twenty-five thousand foreign sailors were
thrown out of work. their wage losses during the
fifteen months of the embargo amounting to
twenty million dollars; that the loss in the earn
ings of ted-up ships exceeded twelve million dol
lars: and the loss to laborers thrown out of
employment, thirty-siX million. McMaster's His
tory of the United States thus pictures the devas
tation to business and enterprise:
Unable to bear the strain, thousands on
thousands went to the wall. The newspapers
we're full of insolvent debtorNnotices. All over
the country the courthouse doors, the tavern
doors, the postofices, the crossroads posts,
were covered with advertisements of sherifs'
sales In the cities the jails not large
enough to hold the debtors At New York,
during 1909, 800 men were imprisoned for
no other crime than being ruined by the
barge. A traveller who the city in this
day of distress us that it looked like
town ravaged by the pestilence. The counting
houses were shut or advertised to let. The
coffee houses were almost empty. The streets
along the waterside almost deserted The
ships were dismantled; their decks were clear
ed, their matches were battered down Not
box not cask, not a barrel, not q bale was
to be seen the wharves where the grass had
begun to grow luxuriantly A year later, 1,150
men were confined for debts under $25. and
we're clothed by the Humane Society. While
the poor and destitute thus languishng in
the jails of the great Northern cities, the
MIA nf
immediate ruin by stay laws"
These evidences of disaster, together with popular
wrath which in New England led to threats of s
cession, at last constrained Congress to end the
embargo. There would be sense justice in
repeating so costly an experiment today when the
interests and risks involved vastly greater than
in 1907.
For the United States to stop its exports OF
food necessaries at this juncture of the worlds
affairs would be grave error of diplomacy
OF economics. if indeed it would not be trespass
against humanity itself If our own people were in
peril of starving in widespread want, the case
would be quite different. But to refuse to sell to
Europe, with conditions as they are here and
they there, would naturally arouse the resent
ment of the nations that wished to buy and were
refused. The fact is most if not all of the present
agitation for embargo comes from persons who
either intensely prO-German intensely anti
EnSllSn. Inc main anlmuS IN the entire move
ment of which more will be heard when Congress
cOnvenes, is desire for retaliation against British
blockade measures desire to fight for the Cen
trail Empires through the American Department of
State.
The same persons and interests that urged in
the first year of the war; an embargo on the ship
ment of munitions to the Allies because Germany
and Austria bockaded urge an embargo
shipments of fOodstuffs to the Allies. The lat
ter proposal is just unreasonable and, if carried
out, would be just unneutral the former was
Unless the embargo were applied to all countries.
neutral and belligerent alike, it would be con-
strued as deliberately unfrendly act by the AL
lies: and so in effect it would be.
There is scant likelihood that Congress will
venture a course unfair. unnecessary and haz-
ardous, however camorous the agitation from GER
tain quarters may become.