APPEAL TO HOOVER

Hokitika Guardian, 18 October 1932, Page 5

APPEAL TO HOOVER

TO INVOKE ACT elimination of equalities. (United Prerj Association —By Eldctrit Telegraph—Copyrigh t.' WASHINGTON, October 16. Carrying the direct inference that the recently-announced Canadi.in-Brit-ish tariff agreements demand immediate action, 180 leading economists and tariff experts to-day presented Presidc.n Hoover with a petit.on, urging him to invoke the inflexible previsions of t’.c Smoct-Hawlcy Act, to “eliminate inequalities, especially those which are causing retaliation abroad,” and they directly! challenged the Prsidenf’s position as presented by him lately in his sneech at Des Moines, that the tariff is not directly responsible for the United States agricultural and general depression. The petition relates succesive examples of foreign retaliation, culminating in the Ottawa Conference. It says: “That conference furnished a living proof that the United States cannet impose an embargo against products of its best customers without harmful reprisals against American goods,” The petition also declares: “Many of the duties written into the SmootHawloy Tariff Bill were intended to raise a prohibitive tariff. As well as being against international trade such rates defy all sound priniephs of economics. They spread a blight of unemployment, and strangle commerce. They impoverish the working people of all nations, while deluding them with the false promise of an improvement in their conditions. It cur earnest belief that farmers, wage earn ers, and. business' men have infinitely more to gain fiom a. reduction than from K.-i. increase of our tar ft rates It is clear to us that a recovery, either in this country or abroad, will be extremely difficult as long as a n excessive arbitrary restriction is impose l on world commerce, operating a m liriuai embargo.”

The petitioners remind the Prefi dent that they are among the more than one thousand economists who, in 1930, warned him cf the disastrous results that would follow his signing the Hawley-Smoot Bill.