The Indianapolis times., 1931-06-09
By WILLIAM PHILIP SININIS
scripps Howard Foreign Editor

TORONTO, June Stems OF
thousands of American workers are
joblesS today because the present
tariff policy of the United States
has failed utterly to protect what
is perhaps our largest industry
foreign trade itself.
Before coming here I visited
Akron, o., the rubber capital of the
world. There saw how vicious the
policy can be. BY conservative
estimate, I was told, Akron today
has e. total unemployment of ap-
proximately 10000 while between
1000 and 1000 jobless have left the
city in the last year and half.
Except for painstaking readjust-
mentS on the part Of Akron en-
ployers, by which some 5000 have
been absorbed back into industry by
staggering" and split-week systems
and seasonal improvement, the sit
uation would be far worse.
Caused by Reprisals
All this because tariff reprisals
have forced Americas leading in
dustries to establish branch factor
les abroad or else lose the bulk Of
their increasingly profitable foreign
trade.
1T is not at all dif1cult," one
Akron observer told me, "to trace
our unemployment to the forced mi
grafton of part of our industrr.
Canada alone has some $4,000
jobs for rubber workers that
wouldn't be there but for the tide
of American industry sweeping
northWard across the border.
I'm 1929, Canada manufactured
for export 3,21,000 automobile tires.
In the production departments alone
on the customary basis Of five tires
per day per man, for three hurS~-,I
working days, this export busine-s
accounts for more than 1000 OF
Akron's jobleSs workers.
That Means $4,000 Jobs
Tn addition, Canada exported
$8,500,000 worth of rubber foot
wear. On the customary 1929 ratio
of one to two, the labor cost of these
items was s4,250,0O0, or 2,10O names
on the pay roll at boom figures in
Akron.
"Canada's total rubber produc-
ton was $91, 1,410,000 worth of fin
ished goods. The raw materials
costs and fixed charges amounted
to some $47,000,000. The remainder
labor and distribution costs-is
translatable almost entirely in
terms of somebody's work.
"At $4,000 year, that means
$4,000 jobs.
Virtually all of this sol ,00O,O0
production came from plants owned
in the United States but operated
in Canada to get past tariff barriers
and to overcome prejudices in
spired by the blind economic
chauvinism Of congress.
Every One in Export Trade
Eight companies in Canada now
are manufacturing tires for export.
Only two are British or Canadian
owned. Their export business is
negligible.
THE others all are transplanted
from the United States, and Of
these all but one are from Akron
and every one of them in the ex-
port trade.
That's the story of just one in
dustry and just one frontier. It is,
therefore. a very incomplete picture
Of the situation as a whole.
Goodyear is IN Wolverhampton.
England; Sydney, Australia, and
Bueno5 Aires, Argentina. Goodrich
is in France. Firestone is in Ar
gentina and England. Seiberling is
in England and, by manufacturing
agreement, in Germany and Russia.
United States Rubber-not an
Akron concern-is in England.
France and other European coun-
tries by special arrangements with
foreign companies.
It Is Hearth Breaking
And the tariff, complicated by
prejudice against American goods
largely arising from it, has sent all
this good rubber business away from
home.
The heart-breaking part of it all
is it didn't go of it's own free will.
Mass production is always at its best
when concentrated in one place. But
it has to migrate else give up
foreign trade"
Sucn is the story of just one ex-
rort-rubber. have before me.
however, a compilation of more
than 1,l00 other concerns with
branch plants over here, while in
Washington heard it authorita-
lively. estimated that a total Of more
than 1000 are operating abroad.
Which means just so many fewer
jobs for Americans.
Wednesday: American Dollars
building aluminium canifzI 80