OUR MERCHANT SHIPS
Redfield, William C.
Our Merchant Ships We Should Make Investments Abroad So Normal Business Will Flow to Us By WILLIAM C. REDFIELD, Secretary of Commerce. ONE vital factor of the readjustment period brought by peace...
...ONE vital factor of the readjustment period brought by peace will be our foreign trade...
...It was valuable before the war...
...Clearly,our domestic trade will depend in a large measure upon bur foreign trade...
...There are four ways by which, according to my mind, this reserve can be maintained...
...We jbould make investments abroad m order that the normal business arising from the use of those investments may be returned to us also...
...it will be essential after it...
...How then, may we protect this reserve against too great reduction...
...It is evident that commercial operations oven in wartime should be conducted with due thought of the future and solicitous memory of the truth that we may not so far injure by war restrictions the commerce of the country that it shall be unable to take up promptly the work of peace when the war closes...
...If this is seriously depleted, our ability to give credits is by so much reduced...
...This is a severely practical matter, because the smallest bank in the smallest village will find its<Af unable to lend to the butcher, the baker, or the candlestick maker his modest requirements if our gold reserve is very seriously depleted...
...The mechanism which makes this credit effective i is our gold reserve...
...We must make loans abroad in order that others may prosper, that we may through their prosperity gain better customers and that we may receive the interest upon our loans...
...Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that ( our banking system is the median-1 ism and the goid reserve is the foun-er-tion upon which the whole credit system rests...
...We may render services abroad by our ships, by insurance of various kinds, and in similar ways...
...And we must make sales abroad that our materials and labor may find a market, that our workmen may be employed, our capital receive its due income, that our necessary taxes may be paid, and that we may ourselves receive in return the sapplies that we need from other lands...
...The whole credit-making power of the country depends upon the gold reserve...
...We must be substantially sufficient to ourselves in the coming days as regards the supply of credit...
...These are by sales abroad, by loans abroad, by investments abroad, and by services abroad...
...This country has the grentart unexhausted supply of credit in the world...
Vol. 10 • November 1918 • No. 11
