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Show HIGH COST DRIVING US OUT OF FOREIGN FOR-EIGN MARKETS Any American can talk till tho cows come homo about capturing 'foreign markets but nobody can sell tho goods abroad unless hu v makes a right price. Ho cannot j make a right price if his labor costs are excessive either becauso of a too high wago scale- or a too low production by the wage earner working under that scale. Cuba la onlya Jew miles from our Florida coast. Compared with Hamburg It Is no distance at all from our Atlantic porta. But In the Cuban market according to maf tho Iron Age, German wlro works V , are 'underselling American mills. Tho samo thing Is happening in South America. Taking another part of the world on tho opposlto side of the globe, an Illinois milt bid for a D.000 ton tin plato order from tho Dutch East Indies, but German exposal!' ex-posal!' "untyvId .(tho American liouso liid got 'the business. In the same way a European mill bld- ding on 10,000 tons of steel rails from tho Dutch East Indies captured cap-tured tho order from American competition. The American bidders tor all that business which they didn't get couldn't have cherished any ' hallucination that all they had to do was to malto their own prlco and bring homo tho bacon. They know business Isn't done on that basis. They know that other things being equal, tho lowest prico Gets tho business busi-ness on any artlclo of commcrco any-whero any-whero in tho world. And, with American Am-erican mills going on half tlmo or shutting down for'lack of business n6 doubt thoy would havo been glad to got tho orders on tho very thinnest margin ot profit so as to keep tho wheels turning. Undoubtedly, also, they couldn't go any lower with tholr bids becauso their production coBts wcro too high too high bo-cause bo-cause everywhero in this country labor la-bor costs, which aro tho big pcrcen-M pcrcen-M j , tage ot production costs, aro too L With our wage scalo too high and our labor efficiency too low, It isn't merely steel business that wo are losing and aro going to loso In for- elgn markets of tho Occident and ol tho Orient. If our labor cost ot anything any-thing whether It Is steel or shoes, tox tiles or toys, is higher than Germany's Ger-many's or England's or Holland's or Japan's or anybody's, cither wo must houl down our oxccsslvo labor costs or surrendor our export business. Illght at this minute Canada Is not only underselling us on wheat In European raarkotB, but underselling us on wheat hero In our own homo market. Tho American farmer says and says truly that tho labor cosn of his 1920 crop of wheat woro so 1 heavy that ho cannot sell his wheat Sf under $2 a bushel aud mako a pro- fit. nut tho man who Is buying wheat isn't thinking' about tho sel-Ior'a sel-Ior'a profit. Ho la thinking about getting his wheat on tho best terms ho can mako. When ho can buy Canadian wheat in tho Chicago mar-liot mar-liot for $1.85 ho Isn't going to pay nnybody elso $1.80. In any Intensely compotltivo field farmor or miner, manufacturer or merchant must equal or hotter hta rival's prlco with tho samo quality If goods or quit. American business Is not going to quit In our own markets mar-kets or "in foreign markets that nat-wally nat-wally belong to ns if labor will Rive It a chaucc. If labor will not gtve it . mnnco it must shut up shop. New York Hcnvd. |