Time for Teamwork

The French railroads are in the market for 700 locomotives and 74,300 freight cars. The Indian State Railways plan to spend a billion dollars for postwar repairs and replacements. The Russians have ordered nine gigantic hydroelectric turbines, worth $12,000,000, for reconstruction of the Dnieprostroy power plant. To rehabilitate China (see FOREIGN NEWS) and later industrialize her will cost many billions. These are only a few samples of the post war overseas trade awaiting the reconversion of U.S. industry.

The world demand for U.S. products during the next decade may be greater than private industry can handle alone. The long-term financing of reconstruction projects and the credit risks involved may be greater than private traders can under take. But Government and industry, working as a team, could make possible a flow of exports worth $7 billion or more a year.

Fortnight ago it had become apparent that the Government's most active member of this team will be the Foreign Economic Administration. Last week Oscar Cox, FEA's general counsel, was still studying a letter drafted in the White House. The letter, from Mr. Roosevelt to FEA's boss. Leo Crowley, outlined the postwar duties of FEA. Cox, 38, whose hobby is mountain climbing, has a nimble and imaginative legally trained mind (M.I.T. and Yale Law School), which enables him to have a finger in every Washington pie. He wrote the first draft of the Lend-Lease bill in 20 minutes, then filled in the details in two and a half hours. Last week Cox said the President's letter will become the guiding policy of postwar foreign trade for the U.S. The policy: whenever necessary FEA will underwrite the trade, while private industry will produce and ship the goods.

But from its birth FEA's history has been one of dictation, though necessarily so because of its war function. It has dictated to private traders when & where they may ship their goods; it buys and stockpiles the millions of tons of strategic raw materials needed by the United Nations. This has given rise to some fears among private traders that FEA will not hurriedly cease its dictation. On this, the President wrote : "The Government should assist to the extent necessary to achieve this objective by returning commerce to private lanes as rapidly as possible." This indefinite promise alone stands against the possibility that a Government hostile to private industry could squeeze out the other member of the team entirely. For, under its vast existing power, plus the broad new White House grants, FEA comes close to becoming a state monopoly of foreign trade.

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