Glacier County chief. [volume] (Browning, Mont.) 1931-1940, 1940-08-02
GEN E RAJ
HUGH S.
job SON
.y,....G!!!'!!:Hc!'':'

LOANS 10 FOREIGN LANDS
wASHINGTON.-Poor Mr.. Hoover
nee set out to help our foreign
rade to dispose of our surplus prod
cts by loans to backward and Grip
lied countries" Loans to bankrupts
lave a way of turning sour. These
lid, and what a panning Mr.. Roose-
relt in 1882 gave the Great Engineer
Tor that suggestion.
Mr.. Hoover was only proposing a
policy of private loans-the money
4 risk-takers for profit. His project
vas relatively piker's chickenfeed.
Mr.. Roosevelt now wants to take
500, 900, 900 out of the treasury to
end to Latin-American countries to
Eable their governments to buy up
and hold their own surplus of agri-
cultural products. This is a price
pegging plan such as Mr.. Wallace
hss practiced in American farm
PRODUCTS. 1t has never worked in
he history of the world although
thas frequently been tried-notably
. Brazilian coffee, East Indian rub
Der, Canadian grain and American
yheat, corn and cotton.
It doesn't work because it is the
presence (rather than the mere own
srship) Of unmanageable surplus
and the certainty of oncoming crops
hat overhangs the market and de-
presses price. That was the basic
fault with Mr.. Wallace's Joseph"
or "ever-normal granary" day
dream. Joseph could successfully
buy and store the surplus of Egypt
for seven fat years and then sell it
at hold-up prices during seven lean
years until he owned all of Egypt.
He could do it because he had a
dream-book and a direct wire to the
Pearly Gates. Henry apparently
has dream-book but no direct wire,
although the President says we are
to underwrite the South American
surplus only for one year. How does
he know?
In the romantic days, when spices
we're the only practical food preser-
vative and therefore invaluable, the
Dutch controlled much of the East
Indian trade. They had rougher
remedy for market gluts. If too
much anise, cinnamon, pepper, nut
meg, cloves or what-not was con-
costing on the wharves, they simply
sank the surplus in the sea. Mr..
Wallace has tried variations of that
also. That is why he killed the little
pigs and cattle, plowed under the
cotton, paid farmers for not produc-
ing and recently and more intelli-
gently, through the food-stamp plan,
sold farm surplus to the poor at a
great discount in price and all the
rest of US footed the grocery bill.
o. X. for our own people. This
column is for a direct federal SUBJ
sidy to a parity price" to our
farmers for all their products that
can be consumed at home and also
for the food-stamp or any similar
plan to subsidize consumption of our
food products to all low-income
groups-not merely to help consume
our farm surplus but to relieve US
Of the insufferable charge of permit
ting Americans to Starve or be un-
dernourished in the midst of rot
ting overabundance.
But it is absolutely opposed to
pouring five hundred or any other
number of millions of public money
down any Latin-American rat holes
to subsidize our own competition and
possibly to find their way into Hit
ler's Golfers or certainly, in no small
degree, into the pockets of various
satellites of the assorted dictator
ships of the banana republics.
Sure, we need Pa american SOL
idarity and friendship, but we can't
buy it. The only thing that will
make it on any worthwhile basis, is
cold-blooded community of interest.
If that isn't there, any amount of
billions is just money thrown away.
Mr.. Roosevelt has neither right
nor reason in calling this loan"
intimating that one years operation
will do the trick, or limiting his re-
quest to half a billion.
1t is well known in Washington
that this first step is part of two
billion dollarprogram to make Uncle
Sam the international broker for all
the products of the Western world.
That, too, is grotesque fantasy.
Its cost would eventually take us
but of the multiplication tables and
into the field of logarithms.
The essence of all New Deal plan
ming, craftsmanship, diplomacy and
Of all public problems can
be expressed in a single phrase
give us billions of dollars"
As craftsmanship, that is about
as realistic as Santa Claus and Alad-
Inns lamp.
LOUIS JOHNSON
returned to Washington after the
to find a rumor that
he new Tory Republican secretary
If war had asked his vigorous as