International C. of C.

When members of the International Chamber of Commerce started for their fourth annual congress in Stockholm last week, there were grand hopes that that organization of practical financiers and businessmen would make definite moves towards smoothing out the international exchange of commodities, of breaking down or at least lowering national tariff walls.

The recent World Economic Conference in Geneva had recommended such tariff reductions (TIME, May 16, et seq.). But that conference had had a political aspect. Members of it had been hog-tied with national aspirations, with unneighborly exasperations. . . .

In Stockholm, Sir Alan Garrett Anderson, acting president of the International Chamber of Commerce congress, made an eloquent appeal for tariff reductions: "We generally speak as if someone besides ourselves were responsible for trade barriers, but frankly, must we not admit that we manufacturers and producers of goods sold in all countries, we and the men and women of our employ, are the real force behind the trade barriers? We producers have labored to protect ourselves, our products and our wage standards, and trade barriers are the methods we chose. Alas for the futility of human hopes and even interests as we suppose them te be! . . . As happens to the ship which is too heavily freighted with even the best cargo, our argosy capsized. We all know now that we can have too much of a good thing; that without foreign trade the nation's trade, aye, even the nation's life, languishes."

Cried Professor Gustav Cassel, Swedish economist, with as much emotion: "What is wanted is a general understanding of what is fair in the way of international protection. Say, for instance, we allow 20% or 25% ad valorem tariffs for the protection of living and wage standards. Surely all will agree that tariffs of 50% and 100% are not only unfair to world interests, but are uneconomic. If it costs more than 25% more to manufacture an article at home than abroad, give up making the article and let others make it."

And the congress resolved: "The congress wishes most particularly to affirm the emphatic adhesion of the business world to the Geneva Conference regarding those tariff walls and policies which are unduly hampering trade directly or indirectly. It especially associates itself with the statement: 'The Conference declared that .the time had come to put an end to an increase in tariffs and to move in the opposite direction.'"

The International Chamber of Commerce financiers and businessmen at Stockholm had generalized as adroitly as did the politicians in Geneva.

But the Stockholm show was grand. Flags flew from poles on the Norrbro, the bridge which leads to the Swedish Houses of Parliament. One of the cleanest and most sanitary cities of the world was greeting its foreign visitors.* In the Concert Hall where the convention proceedings opened, the great organ played for 20 minutes. Then Axel F. Wallenberg, onetime Minister to the U. S. from Sweden, spoke (in English): "I have something to say to the representatives of the United States. . . . Allow me to say a few words as a Swede. In the name of my countrymen I thank you and all the citizens of the wonderful country on the other side of the water most heartily for the nice, kind reception you gave our Crown Prince and Crown Princess last year [TIME, June 7, 1926]. Sweden will never forget that."

Crown Prince Gustaf Adolf of Sweden and his wife, who were in the Stockholm Concert Hall listened with obvious pleasure. King Gustaf, also there, applauded vigorously.

* U. S. delegates were initiated without ceremony, at their hotels, into one of the most famed and entirely innocent of Swedish customs. Upon ringing for a bath, they were led down the corridor by a woman exactly resembling in age, attractiveness and dress the ordinary U. S. "scrub-woman." Unsuspecting, many U. S. delegates entered the bathroom, closed the door, disrobed and got into the tub. The Swedish bathwoman, having retired during this interval, suddenly re-entered without warning, soaped and scrubbed the delegate in question, then applied a towel as large as a sheet, patting vigorously until dry.

Since the bathwomen speak no English and are usually, large, muscular, and determined to earn their rightful tip, most of them dealt with bashful delegates in the manner of a large policeman upholding the majesty of law and custom.