Evening star., 1936-03-03
BY BLAIR MOODY.

A MERICA'S effort to conquer
n the great depression has been
~ built on a foundation of emer-
\ gency measures. tinged with
economic and political expediency and
enmeshed in popular fallacies.
One of these fallacies, which tangle
the feet of business and hinder the
march to recovery, is that the country
can go on forever selling its products
abroad without buying abroad.
Another is that high tariffs neces-
sarily mean high wages.
A third is that the task of absorb
100000 jobless men and women who
stand to mock our economic system
belongs to industry"
Few legislators-yes, and too few
business men-realiZe that the nor
NAL prosperity employment" in the
Nations manufacturing is around
100000 and that best figures now
available show more than 100000
employed in factories today.
Job Problem Not in Factory.
The problem of unemployment,
which means the problem of purchas-
ing power, obviously has its roots not
in the factory, but in the CONSTRUCTED
channels of trade-the transportation
and handling and selling and financing
of goods; the so-called service in
dustries" and the building industry,
which can boom only when general
business creates prosperity and de-
f~, Novty,1 re
and stores.
Within both Government and busi-
ness today we find the sharpest sort
Of paradox dogging all efforts to find
q lob for every man."
President Roosevelt is giving full
support. on the one hand. to Secre-
tary of State Hull's efforts to rake
the snags and boulders from the
stream of world trade by lowering
tariffs through reciprocal treaties
mutually advantageous to the United
States and foreign nations.
The object of this policy is to
smother the RECOMMENDATION, higher
consumers prices, CONSTRUCTED flow of
trade and resulting increased un-
employment, which come inevitably
from system of fanatical economic
nationalism and scarcity economics"
It is the Roosevelt Hull hope that
they can create millions of jobs by
breaking the world trade-jam and
exports that have vanished as COM
pletely as rabbit under ma
eicians handkerchief.
President Held Consistent.
Butts President Roosevelt opposed
to scarcity economics? Did not his
major recovery agencies, N. R. A. and
A. A. A., follow exactly the policies
of regimentation and high prices that
must accompany high tariffs and
withered foreign markets?
The star economists of the ad-
nninistration. like Secretary of Agri-
culture Wallace, declare there is no
Inconsistency whatever in the Presi-
dents position-provided one very i'm
portant point is kept in mind-that
the N. r. A. and A. A. A. were strictly
temporary measures. sired by emer-
gency out of political expediency;
that they were mere "shots-in-the-
arm" and that sooner or later the
Nation must turn away from them
into the broad paths of trading
world.
In business, the admixture of
policies is no less startling. Repre-
sentatives of the automotive and other
"eff1cient" industries, already leading
the recovery parade. are playing for
the long pull by backing Hull-urging
that the Government concede dis
eliminating tariff reductions that will
in turn whittle down anti-American
embargoes, quotas, exchange controls
and duties which slashed our sales
and 1882.
But we have. and always have had,
the minority of log-rollers, pork chop
pers and special pleaders who infest
Congress whenver it is writing tariff
bill-demanding loftier tariffs indis-
crirninately, whether really needed to
guard some segment of the American
wage scale or merely to serve as veil
for profteering.
Politically, the program of tariff
reduction carries dynamite for the
party AL pONeI UeCdU Uot VI tkle Uelel
of organized labor that high tariffs
mean high wages. Some industries.
of course. can and should be protected
from foreign dumping. But figures
do not bear out the tarif-wage
alliance.
Thus, the automobile industry,
ranking first in export of manufac-
tured goods with tariff of 10 per
cent, pays an average hourly wage of
ISL cents, while the watch industry,
with protective duties running up to
100 per cent, has an hourly wage of
AZ cents. The average wage for all
industry is Sc cents.
The hubbub raised by small indus
tries protesting against Hull's revis-
ing of tariff schedules under the pres
en5 program sometimes approaches
absurdity. Manganese interests, for
example, complained bitterly over a
80 per cent reduction of the tariff
on manganese imported from Brazil,
though the domestic industry has
never produced more than per cent
Of domestic consumption and employs
only few hundred men.
The fundamental cause of all of
l0nll1