Evening star., 1935-02-24
If We Kill Foreign Trade

national dilemma, with America at
the crossroads. On the one hand,
this country can abandon cotton and
wheat exports, cut production in agri-
culture, withdraw $4,000, 900 acres and
keep our foreign products. On the
other hand, we can lower tariff walls,
admit foreign products and thereby
create an export market for our farm
products. All that Mr.. Wallace writes
reveals his sympathy with the latter
plan, his realization that cur farm
restriction program can be defended
only on the grounds Of emergency.
Actually there is no dilemma. There
is no crossroads. We have endured
which export markets everywhere
agriculture have suffered intensely.
With the return Of normal conditions
both domestic and foreign trade will
revive. Even with the tariff walls
we have now, foreign trade will
flourish. The sorry episode of restric-
ton and subsidies to agriculture will
be something for historians to explain
and apologize for.
There Is much talk about Americas
economic independence. Assume that
in some way this country could be
persuaded to undertake the damming
of all international trade. We hear
that synthetic chemistry can solve all
our problems. Apparently we can
have steel without manganese, tools
without nickel, shoes without leather,
automobiles without rubber, lamps
without tungsten, thermometers with
out mercury, linen without fax. rope
without hemp, paper without spruce,
pencils without graphite, pens without
iridium, breakfast without coffee.
What for? Is it a home market?
Have we not seen since 1929 Just
what a wretched life our farmers
lead when they depend on the indus
trial home market and just how in
dustry sickens when it depends on
the farm market? Is there anybody
not interested in a special tariff who
is willing to continue this existing
home market economy?
Standard Would Decline.
Assume not only that we can estab-
lish this medieval isolation, but also
that we can manage to exist under
it a while before outraged owners OF
productive land and equipment de-
stroy the whole system. What would
we get from it? Nothing but economic
loss and a reduced standard OF living.
Left alone, the trade OF the world
weaveS a giant economic web over all
the earth, joining the nations in an
economic cooperation that yields the
highest returns to all 1t leads to the
maximum use of the worlds resources
and to the greatest economy. OF
course, we can, for a time. supply all
our needs for copper. But marginal
costs set prices in this hard world. To
get more copper from domestic mines
we go deeper for poorer ores. and the
marginal costs increase cruelty. Any
proposal to increase marginal costs
Of the domestic supply when there are
in other parts of the world cheaply
mined surface ores is economic treas
on. We cannot, in this country, grow
sufficient meat, leather and wool, on
our limited acres. We let the Argen-
tine grow the leather and Australia
and Argentina the wool, and sell them
machinery. The little America prop
agandists actually make the suicidal
proposal that we bar out the vast sup
plies of Canadian lumber and exhaust
our own limited forests, increasing
soil erosion and flood loss and ending
up helplessly dependent on other
countries.
Thrive on Competition.
When we look deeper into the eco
nomics of nationalism we see strange
and forbidding social forces. Our
economic order is maintained by
competition. Monopoly is the death
of competition. 1t leads remorselessly
to faScism or communism. In the
case of many of our major industries
foreign competition is the only re-
straint on monopoly. the one major
preventive of monopoly control. 1t is
generally recognized by economists
that industries protected against for
eign competition by law are the most
monopolistic, the least efficient, and
the least profitable A little America
policy would be the greatest force
for the promotion of monopoly, Gov
ernment RECOMMENDATION and socialism
that could be devised. The advocates
of this policy are playing with ex-
plosives that they themselves do not
even recognize.
Finally, the whole philosophy of
economic nationalism is militaristic.
1t leads not to isolation and peace,
but to rivalry and war. Germany
spent 40 years making herself self
contained" When she achieved "in-
dependence" in steel, sugar, explosives
and chemicals especially nitrate and
glycerine), she went to war. She was
defeated and dismembered by ma
tions that never heard of the policy of
self-containment. World peace is the
worlds greatest objective Its best
present hope of attainment lies in an
extension Of the worlds economic
web, until the united nations will
refuse to have its strands torn apart
by economic covetousness and nation
alistic imperialism The greatest
enemy of world peace today is the
nationalism that breaches isolation
and practices currency manipulation,
tariff trickery. artificial restriction of
production and subsidies to domestic
incompetentS.
HISTORIC TRACT SOLD