VORACIOUS AMERICA

Evening Post, Volume CV, Issue 80, 4 April 1923, Page 3

VORACIOUS AMERICA

ECONOMIC CRISIS PREDICTED

SUGGESTED WORLD-WIDE SEORTAGE OF RAW MATERIAL,

In an interview with a representative of the Press Association (says the London "Daily Telegraph"), Sir S. Mackay Edgar, Bart., the well-known industrialist and financier, who has returned from his annual visit to the United States, foretold an approaching crisis in America's economic conditions. In his judgment the American demand for metala, cotton, and oil is so insatiable and is so rapidly increacing that a world-wide shortage of theee commodities is inevitable. All countries, he believes, will be affected by it, but the United Statea most of all. There is bound to be a sharp halt in American progress; there may be something like a collapse. The best policy for Great Britain in the circumstances is to develop and keep under British control as many physical assets as possible all over the world. If we do that America will have to como to us for some of the indispensables of life and industry. "In all the yesrs I have known America," said Sir Edward, "I have never been so struck as during the past two months by her prodigality. They have long been the champion spenders of the world, but now they are making all previous records in that line loo?: silly. It is not merely money they are throwing about, but everything-—copper, cotton, zinc, lead, oil, timber—you can hardly name one of the big staples of industry that they are not literally devouring. It is an amazing spectacle. There you have 115,000,000 people feverishly tearing from the earth its irreplaceable wealth and UEing it to maintain a rate of growth utterly without precedent in all human history. It is this terrible consuming power of America that is by all odds the biggest economic fact in the world of to-day. It is terrible, because already it is outrunning production. Before long, while the demand will be as voracious as ever, the supply will have run short. Then there will be a smash. "Just think of this. In 1914 America produced about 65 per cent, of the world s output of cotton, .oil. copper, lead, and zinc. Her consumption was at that time roughly 35 per cent, of the total supplies. To-day, while she is producing relatively the same, her consumption of these commodities amounts to over half of the world's total Output. Ten years hence she will be producing relatively less and consuming relatively more. She will be producing about half of the world's output; she will be consuming something like 70 per cent, of it In other words, she'will have to import.

"You cannot imagine America importing cotton. Well, it is going to happen. Do you realise that America is this year using m her own milk about 70 per cent, of her cotton crop? Before the war she used 20 per cent.; now eh©* is using 70 per cent. The time is clearly coming when there will be precious little left over for the rest of the world. 1 do not think you are going to see very large cotton crops in the future. The Southerners have found that they do bet- ! r l with small crops fetching a high price. What Lancashire is going to do to obtain the raw material of her huge textile c<Mtry I honestly do not know. Now, take the non-ferrous metalscopper, lead, and zinc. The demand for them in America itself is going to be colossal. One of the heads of the pubhe utility industry told me that to meet the growth of population some £200,000,----000 a year will have to be spent for the next ten years on tramways and electric light and power services. Think what this means in the way of non-ferrous metals. Then, too, there is the growing demand—it has doubled since 1914-r----from Central and South America, and when Europe revives the first things she will clamour for will be copper, lead, and zinc.

As for oil, America has already reached the importing stage. Five years hence she will be taking in from outside, if she can get it, not far short of a thousand million barrels. That is what she will require to import if her present rate of consumption continues. It is with oil as with cotton, copper, lead, and zinc—the world is nearing .i shortage not far removed from a famine because of the voracity of.the American demand. But that demand can only diminish at the cost of a serious halt to American prosperity and expansion. If it persists and is unsatisfied, then something graver is to be feared than a halt. There may be a breakdown of the economic order, and a vicious, violent' outburst of sectionalism.

_ "Our business as Britons is to sit tight on what we have and to exploit all the oil, cotton, and metal possibilities of the non-American world. In. that way we shall do more than safeguard our own position. We shall be able to supply America with the commodities she must have to keep going. She will have to come to us for some of the essential means of livelihood. It will be a costly experience for her, but, so ,far aa I can see, she cannot escape it."