| OCR Text |
Show Controls Necessary in Food Crisis a, . , Export-Import Regulations Vital for Curing World Ills By BAUKHAGE News Analyst and Commentator. WNI Service, 1616 Eye Street, N. W., Washington, D. C. WASHINGTON. -The sudden descent de-scent upon Columbia's shoulders of the mantle of I world leadership ; has forced the President to add i all sorts of odd ; jobs to his other functions. Traveling salesman sales-man is one of them. Almost before be-fore he learned his way around the White House, he had the United Unit-ed Nations as- culties. It is impossible to estimate the "destruction" in terms of what has happened to social and political values. As to point two, that becomes a concrete issue which ought to be in debate before these lines are printed; namely, the question of extending ex-tending certain wartime controls over exports and imports. Briefly, if export controls go off, foreign nations can bid against each other for food Wheat, for example. That will send the price of wheat skyrocketing. What does that mean? In the first place it means the country with the most money gets the most wheat, regardless of its need. Others go hungry. It means the American taxpayer will have to pay a fancy price for the wheat the government buys. It means extra American dollars which could be used to buy other American products, which would encourage production, will be sucked out of foreign pockets and world trade will be stultified by just that much. That Is on argument for extending controls on exports Fortunately there are also a lot of "selfish-interest" reasons for controlling con-trolling some exports. It's this way: The man who extracts oil from soy beans, although he is quite willing to have his oil exported, probably i can sell it here anyway. But he j doesn't want beans from which he gets the oil sent out of the country. The man who refines the oil doesn't j mind having his refined product ex- ! ported but he doesn't want the un- i refined oil (his raw material), j which he has to buy, exported; the I man who uses that refined oil to ! make margarine doesn't want to I compete with foreigners for it, al-though al-though he's quite willing to have j foreigners buy his margarine. These mixed motives don't add up to a very good argument for con- j gress. because the only controls de- I Baukhage sifinment at San Francisco. Hardly Hard-ly was he back from the Golden Gate when he was ordered to Potsdam. Pots-dam. He already has become our "flyingest" chief executive. The Mexican trip was scarcely over when he was called to the wearying vigil at his mother's bedside. Meanwhile he has conducted White House business without encountering en-countering too much criticism for being absent without leave. In fact, his popularity with the public has grown. But at this writing some of his followers are growing a little restive res-tive about what they call his apparent appar-ent neglect of certain issues which ought to be brought emphatically before the public. What was considered a crisis In world affairs was met successfully by overwhelming congressional support for the post-UNRRA relief and Greek-Turkish aid bills Although Al-though at times it has balanced upon a rather thin edge, the solidarity solidar-ity of bi-partisan foreign policy has been maintained But there is another an-other matter which those most concerned declare has not been sired are for the other fellow. It doesn't generate too much pressure because there are enough "agins" to balance the "furs." But when it comes to imports. It's a different story. Take fertilizer. Britain and the United States, straining to increase production, now are using twice as much fertilizer fer-tilizer as in prewar years. That is al right. But the destitute European Euro-pean countries with their very tired soil need every ounce they can get -and if there were no import controls con-trols they would get less the rich buyers would get more. The pres- j sure on congress is all against limit- j ing importation of fertilizer. Some imports into America are. Of course, highly d .-sirable to get those American dollars abroad in order that foreign nations may buy raw materials and other things. But j if we are to keep the rest of the markets alive until they can feed themselves, what we give out and what we take in will have to be made to fit the needs of the situation, not the desires of the American businessman busi-nessman who doesn't realize that If he is given too free a hand he'll be cutting off his own nose with it. brought home to the public - the world food situation. There are two Important facts: 1. Two years have passed since the end of the war and the world fbod situation Is no better. 2. Although congress (the people) peo-ple) has been willing to vote huge funds for relief. It appears unwilling to continue certain controls on business, without whlrh the machinery for helping help-ing the stricken countries to their feet will break down. The first Job is to bring home the eriousness of point one. The second Job (which has been dumped into the President's lap) is to convince congress of the importance of point two. Press and radio have been asked to help with the first job. They are trying. Here's one small contribution: contribu-tion: In terms of dollars the destruction de-struction caused by World War II was seven times that of World War I. Recovery is, therefore, at least seven times as hard. Economic difficulties dif-ficulties are multiplied more than sevenfold because of political ditTi- |
