Now, in foreign countries, particularly you mentioned Great Britain, under the parliamentary system, there is no question that the Parliament will ratify the agreement which the executive enters into; unless the executive can command the vote of Parliament, the executive must resign.

So that question does not arise, and when we negotiate, for instance, with Great Britain, we know that Parliament will honor anything the Prime Minister puts his name to. That does not obtain in this country, and you are going to strip yourself of bargaining advantage and bargaining possibilities the moment you notify foreign countries of such an arrangement as that.

Mr. ROBERTSON. I just threw that out for suggestions because I think some have been thinking along those lines.

Mr. SAYRE. I think that you kiss goodbye to your trade concessions which you can win for American exports if you do.

Mr. ROBERTSON. Is it true that the casualties we have already suffered in this war exceed those of the last war?

Mr. SAYRE. I am unable to say offhand.

Mr. ROBERTSON. I have seen it published in the papers that that is the fact. Is it true that we expect to have about 12,000,000 men in our armed forces by the last of this year, and more in 1944? Mr. SAYRE. I refer that to the War Department, sir.

Mr. ROBERTSON. I think that that is correct.

Is it true that we are fearful that we will have heavy casualties surpassing any war we have ever fought when we go into Europe? Mr. SAYRE. I think that is possible.

Mr. ROBERTSON. Next to their desire to win this war, what is the most earnest prayer of the fathers and mothers of this Nation? Mr. SAYRE. To prevent another war.

Mr. ROBERTSON. Do you think that they are in a humor to have the proposals made by their Secretary of State to this committee, and by you, on plans for a permanent peace to be ridiculed or dismissed as the star gazing of day dreamers?

Mr. SAYRE. I do not.

Mr. ROBERTSON. Let us test the theory that has been advanced during these hearings that your proposal that friendly trading between friendly nations will promote good will and be the cornerstone for enduring peace is simply bunk. Well, when you deal with a merchant do you get his good will or his ill will?

Mr. SAYRE. It depends on his goods.

Mr. ROBERTSON. You do not usually offend a merchant when you deal with him. You can generally count him in politics as your friend.

Mr. SAYRE. That is correct.

Mr. ROBERTSON. When you employ a doctor as your family physician, you establish a friendly relationship with him, do you not? Mr. SAYPE. That is correct, if he is a good doctor.

Mr. ROBERTSON. What happened when we bought the major proportion of Brazilian coffee and placed a 42-cent tariff on Argentina wheat, 25 cents on Argentina corn, and an embargo on all Argentina beef in the relationship that existed immediately after the foul blow that was struck us at Pearl Harbor between Brazil and us and Argentina and us?

Mr. SAYRE. Of course, Argentina has not yet forgiven us. Mr. ROBERTSON. But immediately our friend, the trading nation, Brazil, said, "Whither thou goest, I will go," isn't that true?

Mr. SAYRE. Very largely.

Mr. ROBERTSON. Has not the principle that you have announced to us, and that Secretary Hull has announced to us, that mutually profitable trade develops international good will, been tested and proved to be true?

Mr. SAYRE. I believe it has.

Mr. ROBERTSON. Have not the American people tried out the policy of isolation, of high tariffs, and of international trade wars?

Mr. SAYRE. They certainly have.

Mr. ROBERTSON. And I understand that based upon that experience, looking forward to a more hopeful future, you and Secretary Hull are urging us to abandon the policy of isolation and to adopt this program as the least we can do to indicate the national policy we intend to follow when this unfortunate war is over.

Mr. SAYRE. As the only way, so far as I can see, to build for an enduring peace; one of the foundations, as I said this morning, is that.

Mr. ROBERTSON. Is it not futile to attempt to prove a general and fundamental principle in connection with international trade, to cite some isolated figure, however true the figure may be, either from the Democratic side or from the Republican side? Can you establish a fundamental principle in that way?

Mr. SAYRE. Well, I think it is very apt to be diverting.

Mr. ROBERTSON. I speak of an isolated figure without all of the surrounding facts and circumstances.

Mr. SAYRE. That is true.

Mr. ROBERTSON. Like the figure, for instance, that the gentleman from Minnesota presented, that in 1940, the war year, our exports to trade-agreements countries fell off 10 percent. He did not mention the fact that to the non-trade-agreement countries they fell off 53 percent. Or yesterday the gentleman from California showed you a table for another war year, 1939, in which it showed that all trade fell off 11 percent, but when you consider the fact that in that year Great Britain bought and stored tobacco in this country that they had previously been exporting, and that we lost practically all of our market for our cotton which had been the chief item of farm export, what would the figure show if you eliminated cotton as to what happened in 1939 to our trade?

Mr. SAYRE. It would be an increase instead of a decrease.

Mr. ROBERTSON. Of how much? Fourteen percent; you need not look. I can tell you.

Mr. SAYRE. That is right; 14 percent.

Mr. ROBERTSON. Then the gentleman from Ohio went into some store and he saw some Japanese pottery, and he denounced the program that because we had made a concession to Great Britain on pottery, 90 percent of the imported pottery had come in from an Axis Power that had made no trade agreement with us.

Do you have the figure on how much of our pottery in 1939 came from Great Britain?

Mr. SAYRE. I have not the figure here, sir. I will be glad to put it in the record.

Mr. ROBERTSON. I will put it in now for you; 94 percent. And the other 6 percent was then divided between Mexico, France, Germany, Japan, and any other nations that might be making pottery. But all told the amount was only 6 percent of the importation of pottery for 1939. That is the last year in which we had any full trade and that was not full.

On yesterday my distinguished friend from Kansas invited the attention of the Secretary of Agriculture to the wise admonition of Thomas Jefferson that if we had to depend upon the Federal Government to tell us when to sow and when to reap, we would soon be out of bread.

It is most gratifying to me to see my Republican friends and beloved colleagues rediscover that great statesman, Thomas Jefferson, but I contend

Mr. GEARHART. He was against the third term, was he not?

Mr. ROBERTSON. Yes; he was; and if Mr. Thomas Jefferson was so fundamentally right in his domestic policies, it would not pay us to completely ignore his views on foreign policies and especially his views on the subject of international trade.

Would you tell us what Jefferson said on the subject of international trade?

Mr. SAYRE. I am afraid that you have me there.

Mr. ROBERTSON. Instead of your taking the trouble to look it up, I will insert it for you. Jefferson said:

Could every country be employed in producing that which nature has best fitted it to produce, and each be free to exchange with others mutual surpluses for mutual wants, the greatest mass possible would then be produced of those things which contribute to human life, and human happiness, and the number of mankind would be increased and their conditions bettered.

I thought maybe you had read that.

Mr. SAYRE. I have read it, but I could not quote it.

Mr. ROBERTSON. When you put in your statement that through a free and unfettered foreign trade, the standard of living of the whole world would be increased and the number that could be supported in a decent standard of living would be increased, that was your statement, was it not?

Mr. SAYRE. Yes, sir.

Mr. ROBERTSON. You also referred to the fact in your statement that some of the States after the Revolutionary War imposed tariffs on imports of other States. Do you recall how many did that?

Mr. SAYRE. I cannot say offhand.

Mr. ROBERTSON. Well, I will supply that; all of them except New Jersey.

Mr. SAYRE. Yes.

Mr. ROBERTSON. And do you remember what Patrick Henry said about that?

Mr. SAYRE. I turn to my professor.

Mr. ROBERTSON. Well, Patrick Henry said, when all of the States were ruining themselves through these tariffs:

Why should we fetter commerce? Fetter not commerce, sir, let her be as free as the air and she will range the whole creation and return on the wings of the four winds of heaven to bless the land of plenty.

Mr. DISNEY. I think that Mr. Robertson ought to have the privilege of putting that in the record.

Mr. ROBERTSON. The point I wish to make is this, and it was developed in a beautiful way yesterday by President Roosevelt in the brief speech he made on the life of Thomas Jefferson, and that is that there is a close kindredness between those of the founding fathers and ourselves who sacrifice for a principle that is as much alive today as it was 150 or 175 years ago.

Mr. SAYRE. That is absolutely true.

Mr. ROBERTSON. And if we concede that they were wise in their day and generation and laid the foundation for one of the happiest and most prosperous nations in the world in the form of government that they gave us, why would not it be the part of wisdom for us to know and to understand what they regarded to be political truth and seek to apply it to twentieth-century problems. Is not that sound? Mr. SAYRE. That is sound.

Mr. ROBERTSON. That is the reason I have taken the trouble to try to find out what men like Daniel Webster-I could quote him, but I will not take the time to do it-and Jefferson and Madison and even Patrick Henry felt. He is known as an orator, but he was the greatest lawyer of his time, and Washington begged him to be his Attorney General-said about certain of the problems that they had then that we have now. Is not that sound philosophy?

Mr. SAYRE. That is sound, and that brings to my mind this mostfavored-nation policy, which is one of the great centers of debate now. It was President Washington who laid down the most-favored-nation policy, and you remember what he said in his Farewell Address on the most-favored-nation policy.

Mr. ROBERTSON. I know the address, but I would not undertake to quote it all.

Mr. SAYRE. May I read it?

Mr. ROBERTSON. Yes; if you please.

Mr. REED. Pardon me. Are you reading from the Farewell Address?

Mr. SAYRE. Yes, sir; of President Washington.

Mr. REED. I wish that you would turn to that part where he said that we need not expect disinterested favors from other nations. Mr. SAYRE. He said:

Harmony and a liberal intercourse with all nations are recommended by policy, humanity, and interest. But even our commerce policy should hold an equal and impartial hand, neither seeking nor granting exclusive favors or preferences, consulting the natural course of things, diffusing and diversifying by gentle means the streams of commerce, but forcing nothing.

There you have the most beautiful expression of the straight outand-out unconditional most-favored-nation policy that I know of. Mr. ROBERTSON. I have used it several times because it is fundamentally sound. It was true then, and it is true today.

Now, it has been suggested by our distinguished friend from Minnesota that the chief weakness of your program is that practical businessmen do not negotiate these agreements.

Do you know the name of the practical businessman that sat in on the deliberations of our distinguished friends in 1929 and 1930 when they were framing the Hawley-Smoot tariff? He was from Pennsylvania.

Mr. SAYRE. Mr. Grundy.

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Mr. ROBERTSON. Mr. Joseph Grundy. And Mr. Practical Businessman Grundy, a very fine manufacturer of woolen cloth, did such a practical job on the Hawley-Smoot tariff that 1,015 of the leading economists of the Nation signed a statement to President Hoover that the rates of that tariff bill had been placed so high that it would destroy our foreign trade and throw our domestic economy into a tailspin. That is a job that a practical businessman did for us in 1930.

How many items, specific items, are covered by the Hawley-Smoot tariff?

Mr. SAYRE. I am unable to say offhand.

Mr. ROBERTSON. Well, about 3,000, and then they have the basket clauses for things, like the sheriff's sale, too numerous to mention. And a practical and successful businessman is centered on his own business; is he not?

Mr. SAYRE. Yes, sir.

Mr. ROBERTSON. You would not pick Mr. William Knudsen, the great manufacturer of automobiles, to advise you on lowering the duty on Belgian lace; would you?

Mr. SAYRE. No.

Mr. ROBERTSON. Then if we have got to have this job done by practical businessmen, it would take about 3,000 of them to cover all of the practical items that would be under consideration, and that would fill a big meeting, and we would not know but away back in the back of the meeting one of those practical businessmen would say to another, "Now, Bill, these other fellows don't know anything about your problem or mine, and they are fixing to ruin us." Now, he says "If you will tickle me, I will tickle you. There would not be any way to stop that, would there?

Mr. SAYRE. That is correct.

Mr. ROBERTSON. You bring to the solution of this problem the same type of trained expert skill that our Republican friends have been bringing here ever since 1934 in the distinguished Dr. John Lee Coulter, one of those A. B., A. M., Ph. D. college professors, college presidents, employee of the State Department, confidential adviser to Woodrow Wilson on foreign trade missions, chairman of the Tariff Commission. As far as the biography in Who's Who is concerned, he never operated a plant or met a pay roll in his life, but he knows this tariff.

Mr. WOODRUFF. And, my friend, you are going to hear him again. Mr. ROBERTSON. And he is the expert that those who have been fighting the reciprocal trade agreements have relied on so heavily ever since 1934. Is it not true that you have had the benefit of trained, skilled, men without any selfish interests in any particular industry?

Mr. SAYRE. We have had the very best that we could get from all over the country.

Mr. ROBERTSON. To frame these programs for you.

Mr. SAYRE. Yes, sir.

Mr. ROBERTSON. Now, it has been intimated here that we are not going to fight reciprocal trade agreements, but there are four little amendments that we would like to have added. Did you read in the newspaper what those amendments were?

Mr. SAYRE. In the Washington Post I saw an article referring to amendments.