Surely a Congress representing America's best interests will remain true to America's traditions and policies and will not be misled by this appeal of internationalism even though promoted by such an array of economists and college professors.

Thanking you for the interest which you have taken in the welfare of America's wage earners and assuring you of our appreciation of your efforts.

Sincerely yours.

MATTHEW WOLL, President.

Mr. ROBERTSON. You may say none of them know what they are talking about

Mr. WOODRUFF (interposing). I wonder how soon the committee is going to adjourn.

The CHAIRMAN. Right now, until 1 o'clock. Take an hour's recess. The quicker we get through with this the better.

Without objection, the committee will take a recess until 1:15. (Whereupon, at 12: 15 p. m., the committee recessed until 1:15 p. m., this day.)

AFTERNOON SESSION

(Whereupon, pursuant to recess, the committee convened at 1:15

p. m.)

The CHAIRMAN. The committee will please be in order.
Mr. Crowther, continue with your testimony.

STATEMENT OF SAMUEL CROWTHER-Resumed

Mr. REED. Mr. Crowther, there has been a great deal of bandying of figures around here in the effort to show that we were behind a Chinese wall when we had a tariff system such as the FordneyMcCumber and Hawley-Smoot bills. I have before me here a record which I had checked by an expert in the Tariff Commission, and while we have had these so-called high tariffs, what they called the high tariffs, I notice in the year 1922 that our exports were $3,831,707,000 and that our general imports were over $3,112,747,000.

In 1932 our exports were $4,167,593,000 and our general imports $3,792,066,000.

In 1924 our exports were $4,590,984,000 and our general imports $3,609,963,000.

It runs all the way like that along down, running from $4,000,000,000 to $5,000,000,000 until we get to 1930 and 1931, when we commence to get over into the years of the New Deal, starting with the trade-agreements period of 1935. There I find that our exports in 1934-I do not mention that with the idea that much happened during that particular year under the trade agreements because it was not adopted until June, but in 1935 our exports were $2,282,874,000 and our general imports $2,047,485,000.

In 1936 our exports were $2,455,978,000 and our general imports $2,422,592,000.

In 1937 our exports were $3,349,167,000 and our general imports $3,083,668,000.

In 1939 they run $3,177,178,000 for exports and for imports $2,381,081,000.

In 1940 we were still, of course, shipping a vast quantity of war material, and we jumped to $4,021,564,000 in exports and $2,625,445,000 in general imports.

In 1941 it was about that time that we have been unable to get any figures from the Department of Commerce. We do not know really what has been happening down there, but our exports have been dropping, and the figures for 1941 are exports $3,317,595,000 and general imports $2,417,307,000. These have all been checked, and it is a rather informative graphic chart, Mr. Chairman, and I would like to put it in the record.

The CHAIRMAN. Without objection, it will go in the record. (The matter above referred to is as follows:)

UNITED STATES WORLD TRADE EXCEEDED $128,000,000,000 IN THE PERIOD 1922-41

This is the greatest record ever achieved by any country and proves conclusively that the United States of America has not been a "hermit nation"; that its tariffs have not been "unsurmountable barriers"; or that the policy of our people has been that of "isolationism."

For the past 20 years the United States of America has been the world's most generous foreign trader, exporting over $70,000,000,000 worth of merchandise and importing over $58,000,000,000 worth-a total in foreign trade of $128,000,000,000.

The above are U. S. Treasury Customs Report figures.

Mr. REED. But that does not indicate, expecially in view of the war shipping, any great increase in business, does it, Mr. Crowther, under the reciprocal trade agreements? Any comment you wish to make about that will be appreciated.

Mr. CROWTHER. I cannot make a specific comment on the figures themselves because, of course, I cannot keep them in mind, and I brought no figures with me. If you go through that period it is extremely difficult to separate a dollar increase from the quantity increase.

Now, that was a period of rising prices, and a period of enlarged use of paper money, but I doubt if it is possible for anyone to show any increase in exports due to the trade agreements, if you separate the war factor and the price factor.

Mr. REED. That has been the irresistible conclusion to which such figures as I have been able to obtain have driven me. I want to be realistic about it. Certainly, I would not want to be otherwise in time of war.

Now, another thing that I think has been thrown back and forth here, there have been a good many jests about the question of turkeys. I am sorry that Mr. Robertson is not here. Without joking at all, or

wishing to embarrass him, he unconsciously stated exactly the situation when he found that this industry in his district was seriously injured by the low production costs in Argentina. He did what a good representative ought to do; he went down and tried to save that industry in his State by pleading with them not to let these imports come in with their low cost of production and ruin a very substantial enterprise, as he saw it, in his district and State.

All we would ask is, the same philosophy he applied to his constituents apply to our people here in all lines where foreign imports might destroy the industries that give us our domestic pay rolls. That is something that has not been talked about much here; the pay rolls.

I have always felt, that for the loss of one domestic industry to a foreign country, that it would be necessary to get not less than two markets abroad.

Mr. CROWTHER. At least that.

Mr. REED. I would like to have you comment on that.

Mr. CROWTHER. When you survey the whole field? Now, I do not have the figures with me. I can get them and put them in the record, if you would like.

Mr. REED. Will you do that?

(The information above referred to was not supplied by Mr. Crowther.)

Mr. CROWTHER. I have figures of the national income-although I have reservations that there is such a thing as a proper figure of national income-made up for the year 1929, estimating national income, gross and per capita, through all the countries of the world. I am speaking from memory, but I think England, Australia, and New Zealand were the only countries with a per capita income above that of Mississippi and North Carolina, which shows how futile most of these notions are that at the end of the rainbow is somebody wanting to buy this artificial thing called a surplus.

Now, the reward is not worth the effort, and a home wage goes in so many directions. We do not know how many directions it goes in. A home wage is just a pebble in a pool, and I have not been able to get any figures to sustain that the importation of cheap competitive goods raises the level of home manufacturing, or agriculture. Mr. REED. Is it not true, and I try to visualize it as I ride through the country-I come to a little town, and a question that my own family often asks, in riding with me is: "I wonder what it is that sustains these people in this little village. It is a neat little place, with comfortable homes, but I do not see any activity. There is a store, a post office, a church-several churches, perhaps." But if you will look you will find a pay roll in that town, an industry. It may not be in sight of the main highway. I see them every time I go home, particularly if the leaves are off of the trees.

The important thing to that community is not the profit of the industry necessarily, except the profit that keeps it alive, but the important thing in that town is the pay roll that supports all these homes, keeps them in repair, everybody happy. Now, is that not true? Mr. CROWTHER. Of course it is true.

Mr. REED. Now, all right, even a company in receivership sometimes is worth a great deal to a community. You talk about eliminating inefficient industries under the old tariff, making them all efficient, but when we do get right down to the human equation, it is those pay rolls that really support this Nation and keep it, you might say, spiritually sound. Do you agree with that?

Mr. CROWTHER. I agree entirely. I think in point of fact we know very little about the nature of our economy. You can compile all the statistics that are available, and still you will not have the human picture. That is the fundamental reason why in this present discussion I feel that there cannot be an expert tariff. I feel that the give and play of forces will outweigh all that. What comes out eventually is the best thing we know.

Mr. REED. Right here, take that chart, the figures. I do not want to go through all of them here, but here you have them under trade agreements and you have them under tariffs, moderate and what the other side calls high, and all of that, but when they talk about so-called Chinese walls, or isolationism, we have always had under all conditions quite a substantial foreign trade, both export and import.

Mr. CROWTHER. True.

Mr. REED. And always will have so long as nations are at all prosperous. They are going to want something that the other fellow has, and they will scale any tariff wall to get it, a certain class will, because they can afford to do it.

Mr. CROWTHER. Yes.

Mr. REED. I want to ask you another question that troubles me, and I want to say here now if I thought the removal of all the tariffs, every one of them, would benefit my Nation, I would vote for them in a minute, and I do not know of any American who would not. I feel satisfied that we have a right to disagree in the views that we arrive at after a study of any subject. You would take that position, too, would you not?

Mr. CROWTHER. Yes.

Mr. REED. Anybody would. It is a natural thing, if we saw that it was to our advantage, so there is nothing fixed and set in that. I can be open-minded, although I admit my natural inclinations are to believe in a tariff and a home market because our people are taxed to build up that market. If peddlers come into a town, the people there are very jealous, and they usually have an ordinance to keep peddlers out. They will have to take out a license and pay for it. But when it comes to a question here, the broader question of coming in here and perhaps ruining an industry, or a whole series of pay rolls, some people seem to think that it is our duty to permit it. We ought to do that just to make friends with foreign nations.

Mr. CROWTHER. I do not think you buy friends. They do not amount to much, the ones that you buy.

Mr. REED. Do you believe the way foreign affairs are ordinarily conducted, and have been through all the years, and probably will be through all the years to come, right down deep there is any degree of friendship, or any attempt to create friends just because there is commerce between the people?

Mr. CROWTHER. Not at all. Foreign trade is peculiar. Starting back at the time when we used to get valuables from aborigines in exchange for buttons and odds and ends, trade is peculiar. Trade is trade, and foreign trade does not differ from any other type of trade.

Mr. REED. I must confess that I was perfectly astounded at some things that have happened. It does not seem that they could be so, but going through this English publication that I have here, I must confess that my idea that trade does not create friendships, or that trade does not prevent nations with whom we are supposed to be on friendly terms, from attempting to create much trouble and jealousy and disturbance and ill-feeling between other nations seems to be confirmed. I have an article by H. Belloc, appearing in the G. K. Weekly, London, January 6, 1938, entitled "Can We Rope in America?" The article speaks of the increasing menace to England's wealth in the Far East by Japan avidly reaching for the revenues England derives from that source. After discussing England's weakness and inability to cope with Japan, it says:

There remains the United States.

It is commonly said up and down Europe that we can make the United States do what we like. That idea is based on the vague and most misleading word "Anglo-Saxon" but also on the actual and recent experience of the last 20 years. We got the United States into the great war on our side, and what was more extraordinary, we managed, in the debt business to make France the villain of the piece. We have got them to feel with us against modern Italy, and we have got them to talk of ourselves as a democracy—which is prodigious. Can we rope them in to fight or threaten to fight the Japanese? It is a question of the most poignant interest, and it is a question which will be answered in a comparatively short time one way or the other.

Roughly speaking, we are about half of the way to our goal. Shall we be able to go the remaining half of the way and reach our goal? Shall we rope in America against Japan? That is the important question of the moment, and as this paper is free to tell the truth, the truth can be stated here on its simple and obvious terms. As things now stand, our chances are (to put it in American) about 50-50.

When you come to analyze these things, they just do not measure up, that is on the basis of friendship.

I am not going to put in the record anything more except this little table here from the United States Tariff Commission showing the United States domestic exports of selected commodities that might be used, directly or indirectly, for rearmament or war, 1943 and 1937-40. I ask permission to put that table in the record.

(The table above referred to is as follows:)