Red Lodge daily news combined with Carbon County news., 1932-02-11
TELEPHONE NUMBER NINE
IF "oLD HICKORY" HAD BEEN THERE!
By GEORGE B. LOCKWOOD

In the ten years ending with 1929, our total exports to
all the world amounted in value to $40, 09,677114. Dur
ing the same period the amount of money Americans
sent and spent abroad was over 60,00O,0O0 900. This
included foreign investments and loans, debt funding
settlements, gifts, ocean freight bills, tourist expenses
and remittances. ". a. asssAs ,s saaa
Exports during the World War were more than cover
ed by our direct expenditures, much of them spent abroad,
all a contribution to foreign interests.
America paid for much of our exports to Europe by
loans which we are now told will not be paid.
The European nations which tell us they cannot pay
the cut-ln-tWo debts owed our government and people,
have already collected nine billion dollars from Ger
many. The allies are trying to collect ten billions more.
Besides, the allies received from Germany vast areas
IN Europe, Asia, Africa and the islands of the sea. We
asked and got nothing. What is the value Of Alsace-
Lorraine to France At the price of how many Billions
would France cede these 'lost provinces" to Germany
or any other nation?
Having driven a big and boosted trade with Europe
on our own money, and propped up prosperity on that
basis, settlement day has now arrived for our foreign
adventures beginning in 1917. That is all our depression
and unemployment means. American prosperity has not
been destroyed from within. 1t has been wrecked from
without, with help from within.
Yet national leaders no less distinguished than John
w. Davis and Governor James NJ. Cox complained at a
Jackson Day dinner at Washington that the trouble with
us is that we did not get far enough into what Premier
Macdonald SO well described as 'the European mess!"
Their prescription for national prosperity is for the
United States to keep right on keeping on in Europe &C.
onomic and political involvement, and as for what Europe
owes us, the thing to do, they say, is to displace more
American production, which means more American en-
%ployment, by more cheap foreign production to enable
Europe to pay what it owes us.
Europe vastly increased her production during the fiji
teen years beginning in 1914, by the introduction of mass
and machine production. During that period wages and
standards of living were lowered in Europe rather than
increased. Without lifting her consuming power, Europe
vastly inflated her producing power. The result Karl
Marx predicted is at hand. With one fourth Americas
per capita consuming power, Europe is smothered in a glut
of goods for which she has no outlet at home. This isl
the result of attempting to base prosperity on foreign
trade, in which the effective weapon is a constantly grow
ing c~heapness attained by the c~heapening of wages and
living standards and consequent destruction of consum-I
ing power.
Because we doubled wages while Europe was lowering
wages, between 1914 and 1927, and did from 80 to "a per
cent of our business at home, we increased mass consum-
ing power until the rapidly widening gap between Amer
lean and European labor costs began to operate to the in
jury of our independent industries and the destruction of
employment more than five years ago. The battle put up
by the international bankers and industrialists and by
demagogues, prevented Congress from enacting a tariff
sufficiently high to bridge this change in living levels.
Thru intensive propaganda, highly organized and heavily
financed, the people have been led to believe that a tariff
lower in protective value than any we have had since we
became a great industrial nation, is the highest tariff in
our history, and is responsible for the depression. and I'M
employment directly due to the effort to bring American
living standards to the level of those of Europe thru low
ering our price levels by European and Asiatic competi-
+ion. With international financiers and bankers having
billions at stake in the attempt to save their European in
yestments at the sacrifice of Americans, it was natural
lat they should undertake to fool the people about this,