The Carbon County news. [volume] (Red Lodge, Mont.) 1924-1931, 1931-05-21
FAILING FOR BALLYHOO?
By George B. Lockwood

Some of the national leaders of the American Lee
gon to have fallen for the ballyhoo now being
carried On through the metropolitan press by the in
ternatona banking and industrial interests. In res
olutions adopted at Indianapolis the national eXecu-
tive committee of the legion demanded and inquiry
into the charges, coming chiefly from this quarter,
that legislative bodies "have erected barriers which
have caused limitation in the sale of products Of the
American workman" This is clearly reference to
the camor which reached climax at the recent meet
ing of the international Chamber of Commerce again
st the excessive American protective tariff
Why not an inquiry into the far more justfiable
charge that in failing to erect barriers against the
importation of many products of foreign cheap la
Dor now displacing the product of American labor in
own markets, legislative bodies have permitted
the creation and increase of unemployment in the
United States? It does not take much Of an inquiry
to demonstrate the damage thus done, or to learn
that further displacement of the output Of American
labor by the same method as proposed by nternaton-
al bankers and industrialists will hurt rather than
help.
For instance the failure to have tariff on tractors
has enabled Henry Ford to move his tractor plant
from the high wage market Of Detroit to the low
wage market of Cork. Ireland and supply the Amer
lean market from abroad.
The failure to have tariff on coal has enabled
oYel Russia to dump hundreds of thousands of tons
OF that commodity on the American market at price
made possible only by working labor at little or no
wages. This has caused the unemployment in the I'm
1ted States OF the number of who would other
wise be producing this coal
lie failure TO ave tariff on oil causes $3.50 000,-
600 OF oil and oil products to enter the United States
yearly from cheap labor markets abroad at time
when 100000 are out of work in this industry In
the United States, and dearly the number Of Aneri
cans it would take to produce and refine this oil are
thus thrown out of jobs. This includes between 200
and 300 men in Muncie formerly engaged in making
oil field machinery.
The failure to have tariff or more than an insig
nifican tariff, on lumber, wood pulp and pulp wood
is causing the flooding of our markets with timber
and timber products from abroad with 100000 men
out Of work in our timber camps and lumber product
INDUSTRIES included in these importatons are the car
goes Of whole fleets of ships bearing timber and tim
Der products from Soviet Russia produced by convict
and forced labor
The failure to have an adequate tariff on mangan-
csc enables the Steel Trust to buy all it's manganese
from the Georgian mines of Soviet Russia while the
manganese mines of the United States, which were
producing at the rate of 100000 tons year during
the first half of $780, closed down and their work.
men out of jobs.
The failure to have tariff, or any adequate tariff
on scores of other products is causing the dispace
ment of the output Of American labor on large scale
in many other industries. This is matter that will
bear looking into quite as much the demands of the
international bankers and ndustrialists and their
mouthpeces of the metropolitan press that our 'res
effective legislation" be oosened up to permit the
dumping in market of more cheap labor products,
the output of industries owned abroad not only by
foreigners, but by American capitalists who wish to
avoid paying the American wage scale.
The failure, particularly, of Congress to place an
absolute embargo of the agricultural and industrial
output Of the Soviet government which has sworn
the overthrow by violence of the American govern
ment members Of the American Legion fought to
save might also egitimately form part of the demand
for inquiry.
The pretense that foreign restrictions upon the sale
of our products abroad is due to our protection in
our own market of the output of home industry, to
the extent of the difference in wage scales at home
and abroad, is unwarranted. Restrictions on A1neri,
can exports to foreign countries began to be increased
several years ago. Every country in the western