What New Jersey Means
Thompson, Charles Willis
256 THE COMMONWEAL July 2, 1930 ON THE DOTTED LINE R. HOOVER, signing the new tariff bill in record breaking time, had at least one point in his favor. He did the inevitable gracefully,...
...Chase the figures around the world as much as you like, eventually one of two things must happen: either America must spend a little more than its interest payments for the debtor's labor, or the debtor will go into bankruptcy...
...It may be that a referendum on the present schedules, if it could be taken, would not show either a preponderance of feeling against them or, indeed, any marked feeling one way or another...
...As a matter of fact the President had no choice...
...This law, very like the prohibition legislation in one respect, is evidence that Congress legislates without being sure that it is responsive to public desire...
...Everybody knows that making automobiles is one of the great enterprises of the age, which has absorbed hundreds of thousands of workers, stimulated basic forms of production and amassed huge profits...
...When a nation owes another money, it must (unless it wishes to get hopelessly in debt) sell more to the creditor than it buys from the creditor...
...One is relatively sure, however, that if the works of Congress during the last few months abide very long, the clamor against them will rise even higher than the tide of sentiment hostile to the Eighteenth Amendment...
...Nevertheless it is obvious that a considerable portion of recent American affluence derives from the catastrophe of the war...
...Hawley and Smoot might come to naught...
...Big business has two kinds of pickets with whom Congress is relatively unfamiliar—salesmen and economists...
...It is fairly easy to riddle the now famous statement, which tried to show first that the present schedules are no worse than their ancestors and second that, if they are worse, they can be revised under a patented flexible provision...
...And nobody—least of all labor, it seems to us—wants to see this last event occur...
...Their big argument is an old law which seems considerably more dependable than any legislation introduced by Professor Einstein...
...Since then both houses have been listening to each other's speeches, probably a still more dire ordeal...
...Meting out little doses of protection to a group of industries which succeeded in convincing Congress they were ill, it makes a particular effort to establish high prices for farm products inside the United States...
...Everybody knows that the fault— if such cataclysms are anybody's fault in particular— lies with those who suffered...
...Last summer congressional committees were sitting in their shirt sleeves listening to conflicting demands for new rates...
...It is proverbially difficult to single out from among the factors likely to control the future those few which are sure to prove operative...
...It was no secret that corporate industry regarded what was happening with alarm...
...This is truer than ever under existing conditions, when the United States is arrayed against the world as the greatest known source of credit...
...Ford to sell cars in Europe simply because he can make them more cheaply, when Europeans are not permitted to sell over here what they can make economically...
...Awareness of this fact in other countries has fostered enmity and bitter jealousy, but it has never led any intelligent European to attribute to the United States responsibility for the event...
...What is bound to happen is something like this: higher tariff rates will curtail imports, but it will also reduce exports...
...But every abuse of its position by the United States would now constitute just cause for complaint and would probably be avenged in the name of economic laws themselves...
...256 THE COMMONWEAL July 2, 1930 ON THE DOTTED LINE R. HOOVER, signing the new tariff bill in recordbreaking time, had at least one point in his favor...
...Hoover, committed to farm relief without debentures and to a protective policy, was as surely destined for the ultimate bonfire as an old-fashioned Hindu housewife...
...Manufacturers of automobiles in particular prayed hard that the labors of Messrs...
...Nor did it require a particularly canny salesman or a phenomenally learned economist to see that all was not well...
...Meanwhile the industrial and financial outlook is obviously not brighter by reason of an added shot of protection...
...and while the conclusion then arrived at—that rural scepticism regarding the benefits of the law is largely justified—remains with us, we do feel that agriculture, having gained this much, may succeed in going farther along on the road to securing government assistance...
...We have already discussed this aspect of the matter at some length...
...To date the loans have been stabilized under another method—the method of taking out another mortgage so that the interest on prior liens could be met...
...The history of Mr...
...It should be obvious that this procedure has the customary virtues of perpetual motion...
...Some such thoughts are certainly behind many of the innumerable protests which have been drawn up in opposition to the new tariff...
...On paper, at least, it seems fairly simple to assert that if the country cuts down its purchases abroad to $3,000,000,000, it is automatically resigning itself to selling less than $3,000,000,000 worth abroad...
...Ford's endeavors to sell automobiles in Europe, for instance, is a pretty good case in point...
...He did the inevitable gracefully, and like a soldier going out to be shot at dawn shook hands all round...
...Regarded in detail, the new tariff is too complex a measure to be confronted with ease...
...The mere fact that Washington has tried to use protection, a device traditionally intended for the benefit of the manufacturer, as an aid for agriculture establishes something like a mighty precedent...
...What effect this might eventually have upon American industry as a whole is, however, another matter...
...This question has been asked so often and so heatedly during recent weeks that you can label it serious without the least chance of being in error...
...The economists, for their part, have talked so lucidly that it is strange Congress remains the only place where they have apparently not been heard...
...To have escaped would have meant a quality of leadership over the Senate to which the present incumbent of the White House has never even so much as aspired...
...Why, then, allow Mr...
Vol. 12 • July 1930 • No. 9
