The times-news. [volume] (Hendersonville, N.C.) 1927-current, 1937-12-01
NEWSPAPERS OPINIONS
POLITICIANS IGNORE HISTORY AND
ECONOMIC LAWS

II democracy has any fatal weakness, II is the
inability of politicians to learn anything from the
lessons of history. In spite of the disastrous re-
suits of the AAA and the processing taxa dis
aster that was correctly forecast by every reputa
Bile economist in this country and abroad-our poll
tcians at Washington are intent upon plungng
against into a dscredited experiment that has been
tried repeatedly and failed repeatedly for at least
400 years.
For there is nothing new in the basic idea of this
administrations agrarian policy. The methods may
differ somewhat as to details, but the ultimate pur
pose-to fix prices of commodities at certain
level when all natural economic forces operat-
ing in the opposite direction-is the same as the
object of the corn laws adopted in England in the
reign of Henry vi.
Through four centuries England experimental
with corn laws, first by means of embargoes, then
by export bountieS very similar to our government
subsidy on cotton, and later by all sorts of compi-
Gated tariffs and quotas, but always with the same
result-thc experiments invariably defeated their
own purpose The export bounty had to be COM
pensated by the poor laws, the tariffs by the dole.
But England, being democracy, learned moth
ing from it's experience with the corn laws. In the
early 1920S, in an effort to raise the price OF rub
Der for the benefit of producers in the British East
Indies. the English put into effect sharp restrc-
ton in output on the rubber plantations. Rubber
prices went sky high. Taking advantage of this
situation, the Dutch increased their rubber produc-
ton enormously, and American rubber companies
started their own plantations in Liberia and the
Philippines. The result was ruin for British rubber
producers.
Similarly Brazil tried to peg the price of coffee
by destroying tons of coffee beans and paying the
planters a subsidy for the burned coffee. As soon
as this process raised the price, planters in Colon
bia increased their acreage and captured the Bra
lillian market But Brazil bndly kept on destroy
ing coffee and paying bounties to planters, until,
two weeks ago, the inevitable Approximations
bankruptcy, reputation of the foreign debt. and
dictatorship.
With these examples before our eyes, with India,
Egypt and Brazil already doing to our cotton what
Colombia did to Brazilian coffee and what the
Dutch did to British rubber, continue to restrict
the acreage of cotton and to pay bounties to farm
ers, though even a modicum of common sense
would detect that the only possible outcome is ca
tastrophe.
What then, can be done? If the cost of produc-
ton is greater than the market price of cotton,
it seems obvious that the remedy is to reduce the
cost of production by better methods of cultiva-
ton, by growing better product, and by the use
of labor saving machinery. Soil Improvement Is
one answer; the mechanical cotton picker is an
other. The objections so far made to this machine
are not worth a second thought, for here again
history repeats. They the same objections that
led mobs to destroy Arkwright's power loom and
Hargreaves' spinning jenny. Yet those two inven-
tions made textile manufacture an industry instead
of craft.
If there is u surplus of cotton, the logical proce-
dureNs to find a use for the oversupply. There was
once similar surplus of corn but chemicals found
so many new uses for it that the excess was soon
utilized. ...
When we are through with political cxpedentS
that have only the faintest relationship to the SCI
ence of economics, when these expedents have
driven us to national bankruptcy as they did Bra
zil VIC shall finally realize that, if the cotton farm
er's problem is ever to be solved, it must be done
in the laboratory and not in the halls of congress.
Rupert Gillett in Charlotte Observer.