WHEN NATURE LAUGHS

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 45, 22 August 1938, Page 8

WHEN NATURE LAUGHS

The political gospels of insulation and isolation do not appear to be making very much progress. Neither of them seems to be practicable unless all exporting and importing cease; but if Nature. provides a bountiful harvest so that a country is bursting with wheat (or butter or meat or wool) that wheat forces its way out into other countries, and in return commodities from the other countries must come in. The result is that isolation becomes a myth and insulation a figure of speech. The

United States Government did appear to be getting near the root of the problem when it proceeded to limit farm production, to, control crops, etc. But the United States Government must have only scratched the surface of the question of how to control • surface-scratching on farms, for suddenly the old familiar fact of bumper wheat harvests returns, and isolation receives another knock-out blow. "Tickle the §arth and it will laugh a harvest" was one of the old pre-depression slogans of the late lamented production-and-prosperity jschool. And the earth must indeed be laughing, for it has presented the American crop limitationists and the political isolationists with a wheat surplus that compels them to consult with neighbours and with foreigners, and to take regard of extra-American opinion and purchasing power.

On the North American continent this year Nature has ignored produc-tion-control and political isolation to the extent of providing export surpluses of wheat estimated at one hundred million bushels in U.S.A. and twice that quantity in Canada. Export surpluses are both assets and debits; in some circumstances they are hostages given as pledge of good behaviour towards the importing country (whose markets are generally beyond the control of the exporting country's price-fixers) or equally they can be guarantees of good behaviour by the exporter towards a rival exporter. When such wheat surpluses exist neither the United States nor Canada can be careless of the interests of their customer countries, nor can they act in a manner regardless of the interests of each other. So it is not altogether amazing to find that President Roosevelt's good-wiM visit to Canada, and his statement that U.S.A. will not idly witness a threat to Canadian soil, is followed today by a suggestion from Vancouver that overtures are to be made by the Americans for an avoidance of throat-cutting in the marketing of the wheat surpluses. The technique of crop-limitation cannot alone solve the problem of farmer and consumer, nor can the technique of financial pooling nor that of storage; but all these technical processes together, plus neighbourly good .will, may. have.some success. At any rate, let the trial be made. .