Spring Flower

Day after day since the middle of January they had trooped in & out of quiet rooms in the Natural History Building, the Tariff Commission Building, the Government Auditorium and the National Archives Building in Washington. They were laden with briefcases, burdened with worries. Day after day they made their speeches to patiently attentive Government men.

They were the U.S. oil industry, the lumber industry; the coal interests, the copper interests; the tobacco growers, the potato growers; the manufacturers of jewelry, and of fishing tackle. None of them had a complete understanding of all the ramifications of the problems they discussed. But most of them were certain that their industries faced ruin if the U.S. continued to lower its tariff walls.

The men who listened to them, from 10 in the morning until (frequently) 9 at night, were representatives of State, War, Navy, Treasury, Agriculture and the Tariff Commission, sitting as subcommittees of the Committee for Reciprocity Information. In those rooms the U.S. Government was gathering the information it will need to write a tariff policy, on which all postwar foreign policy depends.

Geneva In the Spring. Since trade is a two-way street, that policy could not be conclusive. The importance of what the U.S. laid on the line would be measured in the end by what the rest of the world was ready to accept. The rest of the world had its own problems and objectives. But it was the U.S. which would make the first offer, and last week the rest of the world watched with closest interest.

The basis of the U.S. State Department's policy would be Cordell Hull's 1934 Trade Agreements Act. With that Act Hull had attacked the economic nationalism of high tariffs--not only in the U.S. but in all countries. Hull did not advocate unrestricted free trade but trade free of "malignant restrictions''; he demanded reasonable tariffs reduced reciprocally for mutual benefit. This was the delicate flower which Under Secretary of State Will Clayton now cultivated.

In April, Clayton's experts would go to Geneva, sit down with delegates of 17 other nations* and try to write the most ambitious contract for reciprocal lowering of tariffs the world has seen, and lay the foundation of an International Trade Organization. Every one of the 17 nations which will grant the U.S. greater access to their markets will be granted the same access to U.S. markets. Under the 1945 extension of the Trade Agreements Act, State can, without congressional approval, cut Jan. i, 1945 tariff rates up to 50%.

State, in other words, would open the U.S.'s end of the street to any nation which would do likewise. State would demand relaxation of export-import controls, preferential tariffs, bilateral barter and other devices by which the war-torn countries of the world have sought economic security. State would demand the relaxation of state trading monopolies.

For World Freedom. State's arguments for its program were not wholly idealistic. State could show that the U.S. economy depends upon its exports, that more than half of all the South's cotton, for example, is sold abroad. State argued that prosperity at home follows the curve of U.S. exports. The 1934 Act started the curve upwards. Between 1934 and 1939, exports to reciprocating nations rose 62.8%; exports to nonreciprocating nations rose only 31.7%.

Under the "Hull program the U.S. has negotiated reciprocal agreements with 29 nations. Concessions have been made in 1,250 tariff items. Had any U.S. industries suffered as a result? The principal complaints came from, makers of pottery, watches, handmade glassware and lace; and from the cattle industry. But, according to State, those U.S. enterprises have not really been hurt by lower tariffs. Cattlemen, for example, complained that during 1936 a shipment of Canadian cattle had depressed the Minneapolis market. State countered that large cattle shipments frequently depress markets, locally and temporarily; a shipment from South Dakota might have had the same effect.

State had other arguments. The U.S., with its productive capacity increased rather than hurt by the war, is able to supply much that the rest of the war-racked world needs. The U.S. can be the fountainhead of international recovery. But if other nations are barred from U.S. markets by U.S. economic nationalism, they will be driven more & more to state-controlled trading, the malignancy which grew out of totalitarianism and two world wars. From Russia it now has spread over Eastern Europe, its economic virulence taking possession of politics and morals as well. It is the disease which destroys free enterprise. Clayton is convinced that the only way to save free enterprise is to win world trade agreements at Geneva, even at the expense of sweeping concessions.

The Objectors. Clayton, who made a fortune in cotton, stood on that line with a crusader's fervor. But the line was being assaulted. Washington, last week, heard the first sharp words of a bitter fight which could tear the so-called "unpartisan" U.S. foreign policy apart. The attack came chiefly from Republican Congressmen.

Objectors ranged from flat-out protectionists, representing the myriad local interests of the U.S., to Republicans who view anything Democratic with suspicion. U.S. businessmen found sympathetic listeners. State was not giving them proper consideration, they saM; they had no confidence in State's final decisions. Republicans cupped their ears.

The Trade Agreements Act does not expire until 1948, but it is not inviolate. It could be crippled. G.O.P. members of the House Ways & Means Committee met behind closed doors last week, listened to both management and labor plead for protection, then planned their strategy. One objective was to force a postponement of the Geneva conference until Congress could investigate the whole program.

In the Senate, Nebraska's Hugh Butler, concerned about the wool growers of his state, wanted Congress to have the final say before any bargains are made. During its whole history when Senate ratification was necessary (before the 1934 Act) the U.S. completed only three reciprocity agreements.

Butler by no means stood alone. Owen Brewster of Maine and Albert Hawkes of New Jersey joined the attack. "Reciprocity" was a misnomer for State's bargains in the past, said Hawkes. The U.S. had more nearly complied "with the scriptural admonition that it is more blessed to give than to receive."

The Menace of Idealism. These were not necessarily the majority, or even the responsible voices of the Senate. There were Republicans who did not want "the blood of another economic war on their hands." They stood somewhere in the middle of the struggle, with Michigan's Arthur Vandenberg and Colorado's Eugene Millikin, the influential chairmen, respectively, of the Foreign Affairs and the Finance Committees.

Vandenberg will fight for the Geneva conference, even though he thinks the time is unpropitious because the world situation is so fluid; he would keep the President's powers to make agreements; he is opposed to the idea of requiring congressional ratification. Vandenberg, nevertheless, would like to have a closer look at State's program. As a young man he wrote a phrase of which he is proud: "Unshared idealism is a menace." In other words, other nations must share U.S. ideals before they are allowed to share U.S. markets.

Whether even that position can be held against the extremists of both Houses will be determined in a few weeks. Whether it will prevail in the world will be determined at Geneva in the spring.

-Russia has not yet agreed to attend. The most important of the 17, from a world trade point of view: Canada, Great Britain.

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