The Sauk Centre herald. (Sauk Centre, Stearns County, Minn.) 1886-current, 1939-03-30
CAPITOL!
Paving For Our Folly
By Con gresham KnutsOn

have gone blithely along making
trade agreements with all countries
that wanted to get up to the pie
counter. In all negotiations, we
were represented by inexperienced
theorists who honestly believe that
the millennium among nations can
only be attained through free and
unrestricted trade between them.
Cuba was given our sugar market;
the Orient was to be permitted to
send US 1000 million pounds of
vegetable oils yearly that go into
the manufacture of butter substi-
tutes and soaps; Czecho-Slovakia
was given the women'S shoe mar
ket; China was invited to send her
enormous egg production, and so
on down the line.
OF course, such a witless policy
could have but one result. Ameri-
can industrial plants, unable to
meet the competition of cheap la
Dor in competing lands, were oblig-
cut of work. Where these unem-
ployed formerly had meat, pota-
toes, bread, butter fruits, vegeta-
bles and pie on their table, they
soon found that the w. P. A. does
not pay enough to provide any
thing above barest subsistence.
The demand for the products Of
our farms and factories has shown
a steady falling off-so have prices
until the country faces a collapse.
What a picture! What insanity.
In the meanwhile, Roosevelt,
Hull, Sayre, and all the other free
traders go merrily on giving away
our home market as we spent hun
dreds and thousands of millions
of dollars feeding the millions
from whom they have traded their
jobs, not to mention the tens Of
thousands of farms and homes that
are being sold under the sheriff's
banner each year. In the mean
while, Uncle Simple, standing on
the sidelinei Juggling at his whis-
kers, wonders where and how it is
all going to end.
Can Economic Here
Santa Claus Roosevelt is deter
mined to spend 200 million dollars
on a canal across the state of
Florida that the people down there
dc not want, and for which there
has been shown to be no need.
How would it be if that vast sum
were spent for relief or on some
other worthy and necessary pur-
pose? Then it would not be nee
essary for Roosevelt to ask Con-
gress for that $50 million additional
for the WPA.
Must Be Looking For Trouble
The administration continues
to play a very dangerous game in
Europe. To all intents and pur-
poses, it has scrapped our neutral
ity law. Rarely does a week pass
that we do not send to one of the
'have-not' governments a sharp
note of protest, just like we did
back in 1915-16-shortly before we
talked ourselves into that awful
carnage in Europe.
Today, American government Of
ficials are again scolding and pro-
testing. Again, they are meddling
in matters that are of no direct
concern to us. We deplore and
condemn the rape of Czecho-Slova-
kia, but it would be sheer folly for
us to go to war over it. However
if those chattering parrots in Wash
ington are not soon called off, we
may wake up some fine morning
to find ourselves in another costly
war. Let us not forget to ever
bear in mind that this is not a
fight between democracy and auto
cracy. 1t is fight between the
HAYES and have-nots.' In short
it is struggle for raw material:
and markets.
Matters were not helped wher
Roosevelt last week arbitrarily in
creased import duties on German
goods by rs per cent. That coun
try buys several times as mucl
from us as we buy from her.
would heartily approve such an in
crease were it applied to all coun
tries, but to single out one coun
try because we do not counteranc
its foreign policy is little less thai
Grass stupidity. Oh, for few ex
perienced business men at the helm
The ofv,pcf,,ro If hat1cf0nas