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Show International Relations Precedent to Widening of Agricultural Markets By BERN ABO BARUCH, Address to A. F. B. F. Convention. Our thoughts must turn toward considering what, if anything, we can do to widen our foreign market, on which we are dependent for the sale of our surplus products. You farmers are the real exporters of this country. It is you who are most deeply interested in foreign affairs. It is true that last year large quantities of our products were exported but how were they paid for? In the first place, by the sale in this country during the first six months of the current year of some $600,000,000 worth of bonds issued by foreign countries at. the highest rates of interest ever known in the history of international finance. Secondly, by the sale of family heirlooms, called by my old friends in South Carolina the "wedding rings." Families have sold their famous pictures that have been with them for centuries, in order to be clothed and fed. Already there is almost an end of the sale of bonds of European countries, because nations cannot pay the rates of interest that are being demanded. The supply of works of art and treasures must soon come to an end. The money secured from the sale of the bonds and the family treasures has not been used for productive purposes, but to feed and clothe the population that has been paralyzed by corroding fear. Gentlemen, I affirm that there is nothing in the world that affects your credit so much as the shrinking of foreign markets for your products. prod-ucts. There is nothing to which you can give your attention that is of greater moment to you in a practical way than the creation of the international inter-national relations that are precedent to the re-establisliment of those markets. I do not speak of our moral responsibility in the matter, nor of the great opportunity that America has to lead a stricken world into a finer and better order of things an opportunity toward which the noble thoughts of all men urge them, though I do think this consideration the most compelling of all. These thoughts are fundamental to all religions and to the hope of a better world for men and their children. Rather, I dwell merely upon what enlightened selfishness or even just plain greedy selfishness demands the necessity of keeping open and enlarging an ever increasing market for the products of your hands and minds. |