of bankruptcy and has operated successfully for forty years. The District now has surplus taxes amounting to about $4,000,000 in its treasury, which cannot be used for any purpose, notwithstanding the pressing needs of the schools, streets and other civic departments. A sapient minority of the House Committee on District of Columbia thought the only way to get rid of this money was to increase District taxes, and the

House has so voted. As usual, be it said to the discredit of the House leadership, the voteless people of Washington must again rely on the Senate for protection. It never yet has failed them. The House evidently forgets that some 200 correspondents of great newspapers published outside live here, and as citizens are determined to insist on a square deal. The New England men as a rule stand by the District. W. E. B.

The International Trade Conference, lately in session at Atlantic City, came to a conclusion which, while indeed cutting all producing interests in this country to the core, seemed to single out for immediate execution without benefit of clergy our whole. galaxy of American cotton mills. And this with the frankly avowed purpose of opening a wider market abroad for raw cotton. The New York Sun's report of the Conference, issued on October 24, contains the following:

The review of the textile committee showed that the sole demand from Europe will be for raw cotton, for which she expects to pay in large measure by a return of finished textiles to the United States. The textile section found that, due to this hope, the European merchants expected to finance their own cotton purchases.

This is from the report of a com

mittee which naturally would have been formed from American raw cotton producers and European cotton manufacturers at the conference; and, of course, they ran true to form and came to conclusions exclusively in their own interests. But what did the Conference, as a whole, think of this proposal? The same newspaper, on October 25, tells us that the Conference was of the opinion that "it was of prime importance that there should be the widest practicable interchange of commodities and in particular the freest possible distribution of raw materials," meaning after all by "raw materials" raw cotton, which their committee had said was the only demand we could expect from the warwasted countries of Europe-"and that at the present moment consideration should be given to the question of a fair distribution of raw materials in connection with any financial plans for

the revival or rehabilitation of industries that have been interrupted or prostrated by the war."

This last quoted portion of the paragraph sounds very much like an echo from Article XXIII of the League of Nations' proposed covenant, as follows:

Provisions shall be made through the League to secure and maintain freedom of transit and equitable

treatment for the commerce of all member States, with special arrangements in regard to the necessities of regions devastated in the present war.

It has been contended that this provision does not mean free trade

among "all the member States"; but the Conference at Atlantic City had no doubts as to what their similar language meant; for the Sun's report further has this, as reflecting the practically unanimous sentiment of the Conference: "The second step will have to be the revamping of the tariff

and the creation here of a market of hitherto undreamed of proportions for European goods"!

The influence of the Administation over the Conference, with its Third Point of the famous Fourteen, was supreme. For this third point might well have been written by the Conference itself, which as plainly as language could express it, pledged itself for "the removal, so far as possible, of all economic barriers and the establishment of an equality of trade conditions among all the nations consenting to the peace and associating themselves for its maintenance." The temper of the Conference was such as to inspire the representative of the Sun. further to report as follows:

The clinching of these things as the program of the type of men represented by Mr. Bedford of the Standard Oil, of Dwight Morrow of J. P. Morgan & Company and of their business and banking prototypes from all over the country, ‘a cross section of our whole financial and commercial life,' Mr. Bedford called them, has accentuated the gossip which commenced when Mr. icy enunciated first by Secretary Morrow indorsed the low tariff pol

Redfield of the Wilson administration. Not among these men, despite the program, is there any fondness for the Wilson administration. Nearly all of them are predicting, however, that this conference will result first of all in a revo

lutionary change in the policies and doctrines of the Republican party, with whom so many of them are intimately and powerfully associated. (Italics ours.)

That these international bankers and traders are proposing in this a definite and permanent policy to govern the course of trade between the United States and foreign countries and not a policy to prevail merely dur ing the period necessary to re-establish war-wasted Europe, is proven by the fact that, at the present moment, if the whole of the remaining revenueonly duties, to which we were reduced by the Underwood-Simmons law, were removed, it would not have any perceptible effect to facilitate our export trade with Europe for anything but cotton, because of the enormous premium to which have arisen abroad American obligations with which European indebtedness for American goods could be liquidated. For example, at this Atlantic City gathering, Mr. Domenica Gidoni, representative

of Italian interests in the United States, showed that the present rate of Italian exchange imposed a penalty of 80 per cent on all imports from the United States. Add this 80 per cent to the American subsistence cost, (which is the lowest figure at which American goods can be sold anywhere), five times the average Italian subsistence cost (wages in Italy being about one-fifth as high as wages in the United States), and you discover a situation in which it would be absolutely impossible for Italians to think of buying anything but cotton in this country; and not even cotton if it could be found in some other country or arrangements could be made for a supply of some other fibre to substitute for cotton.

The relation of all the other countries of Europe, with the exception, perhaps, of Switzerland, to our trade, shows a situation of the same nature, although in some cases not so extreme. It thus appears that the Atlantic City Conference was not looking at all for an immediate shipment of our goods to Europe to alleviate the alleged dearth there; but, primarily, for overwhelmingly great shipments from Europe to the United States; since the premium in Europe against our exports is a like premium here in favor of imports.

Take the case of Italy at the 80 per cent premium on American exchange above referred to. That means that an American dollar will buy five times as much producing activity in the form of goods in the Italian market as it will buy in the United States. No. goods but those of the extremest need,

in the most frugal quantities and during the most limited period, can possibly flow from this country to Italy; whereas American traders like those at the Atlantic City Conference will rake together every American dollar they can get to invest in Italian products.

The same situation in a greater or less degree, exists between this market and all the countries of Europe, except, again, perhaps, Switzerland. In the present condition of foreign exchange, it needs no reduction of tariffs to tempt European goods this way. For our already dangerously reduced tariffs are negligible as a defence against the heavy premiums on American dollars which European sellers are offering American buyers. It is, therefore, very apparent that these Atlantic City bankers and traders, in their advocacy of further reductions in the tariff, are planning for a permanent future condition of easy imports and not for any present benefit therefrom to exports. That is, the present crisis is taken advantage of to inaugurate permanent Cobdenism in the United States, for the benefit of international traders alone, let the sacrifice of American production be what it may; and first in the line of sacrifice stand our cotton mills.

Europe may make upon this country for products, except that for raw cotton (and, possibly, a generation later not even for that), will be but fleeting and possible only during the dearths and disjointments caused by the great war. For everything that we produce, even including raw cotton, can be produced somewhere in the broad world. outside at not to exceed an average of one-fifth the normal cost of subsistence at the life-level of our American civilized citizenship.

There is only one condition upon which our international bankers and traders can continue long to gather profits from trade in either direction between this country and the outside world, viz., the leveling down of American citizenship to a point not to exceed one-fifth of its pesent fullness, richness and potentiality. They tell us that we must revamp the tariff and create here "a market of hitherto undreamed of proportions for European goods"! Let it be understood that this is for their exclusive benefit; and let it be known that they are willing to deliver a staggering blow at American

independence and sturdy nationalism for the benefit of their own balance sheets alone. This is the raw fact They will come back, of course, and say that this tremendously wealthy country can afford to admit to its domestic market "hitherto undreamed of" quantities of "European goods,” because, after employing all its own people in the myriad forms of American production, it has an enormous excess of product-requirements over the yield of its own industries; and therefore buying from other countries what will meet these excess require ments will still leave our own people fully employed.

fully employed. If they should verture to be frank and admit that two solid bodies cannot occupy the same point in space at the same time and that the incoming of foreign goods meant a corresponding outgo from employment into unemployment for Our own people, their proposal to open here "a market of dreamed of proportions

pean goods" would be Americans at just what barous proposal.

hitherto un

for Euroreceived by

it is—a bar

London, Jan. 15, 1920. Politically speaking we are all at "sixes and sevens,"-in a terrible muddle. No one is really satisfied with the government work, and the condition of Ireland is simply appalling. One of the greatest and old

est Irish papers has just been suppressed!

The anti-dumping bill is dead, if it was ever alive, and something else will be put in its place. But England is bound to some sort of a protective tariff on farm produce, or a subsidy

to the farmers as the latter are compelled by statute to pay high wages to the men. Just what will happen in 1920 no one can tell. We are sitting on the edge of things.

If people think the Germans are going to meekly acquiesce in the destruction of their great dye industry, such people are mistaken. The firms composing the German dye trust have decided to increase their capital to an unprecedented extent in German industry. It is determined to reassure German supremacy in the dye industry. In 1917 the three leading companies each increased their capital from 54 million marks to 90 million marks. The shares of these companies have been continually rising lately on the expectation of large exports of dyes. The share capital has now been increased to 286 million marks. So prepared, the Trust will, at the earliest moment, begin a vigorous onslaught on the markets of the world. It has plants capable of producing 300,000 tons of nitrate yearly, and it is arranging to double this quantity and to export 250,000 tons a year. After all, it is hardly time to lower tariffs on dye products.

The economic condition here is certainly improving if one may judge from the official statistics relating to trade. The returns for the eleven months ended November last show an excess of imports over exports of £617 millions. If we take the monthly returns from January last we see a steady and extraordinarily rapid increase in our exports, accompanied by a steady but smaller increase in imports till finally in the month ended November last, the ex

cess of imports is only £36 millions as against an excess of £82 millions in January, 1919. This adverse trade balance is subject to a very substantial reduction on account of our “invisible" exports, viz: shipping freights, insurances, profits on foreign investments, etc., estimated by best experts at about £590 millions a year. Roughly speaking, I may say the adverse balance is reduced by 75 to 80 per cent by the value of our invisible imports.

Europe's great need of coal is one explanation of this big value of our export trade; and Europe's dire incapacity to produce goods to compete with us in foreign markets is another. Our production of manifold articles of export is almost as high as before the war, because the number of women in industry has swelled the total of our production, while man for man we are producing less. F. C. CHAPPELL.

THE FIGHT FOR DEMOCRACY.

President Butler of Columbia University, in Leslie's Weekly.

No man could be free who had not the right, protected by law, to dispose of his own goods and services as he may choose, and to apply his just gains as he will, subject only to the limitations of every other man's right to do the same thing. We are called upon both to explain democracy and to fight for democracy. We are called upon to make it clear that class divisions, class struggles, class control are not only undemocratic but also anti-democratic, and that the only end which they can possibly achieve is anarchy and economic stagnation.