ENCOURAGING THE FLOW OF WORLD TRADE

Stratford Evening Post, Volume I, Issue 498, 21 July 1932, Page 3

ENCOURAGING THE FLOW OF WORLD TRADE

surest" means of A RE- ! TURN TO PROSPERITY j WHAT DOES OTTAWA HOLD j FOR THE FUTURE? SOME COMPELLING LESSONS. FROM HISTORY i i (By Stuart D. Hayton.) As the Empire Conference at Ottawa daily draws nearer and nearer and occupies a more and more prominent position in our discus-j sions it is icnly natural to Ctfnjec i ture upon the nature ,of .the. propos. als tind as t.fi the results of what may be achieved. The main object cf this conference should he the stimulation of trade. The regulation &f currency the apportioning of tariffs, the cancellation of war debts and reparations j and the disarmament Of notions—all these issues, though, no doubt, very | much in need of readjustment, should be considered from the viewpoint of how they will favourably holp and stimulate the flow of world trade.-. Our very existence, individually, nationally, internationally — < indeed! the very existence of the entire \ world depends solely upon our abil. j jty to trade. \\\e are all traders,, either having something to sell or! something to buy. The artist trades; his canvas for money, the lawyer trades his knowledge of the law for money, the merchant trades his merchandise for money, and each in turn trades the money sioi gained for goods of all descriptions. So it goes on throughout the! long line from the wealthiest corporation to the 1>; wliest peasant, who trades the product of his labour and piece of land for monftv and then trades that money back tor the various necessities of life. As trade progresses, facilities for its further progress are evolved, and so I civilisation advances—when trade halts so does civilisation halt, and J when trade falls away so does civilisation fall away until we find our people becoming poorer in wealth, clothing and food and all that that, means —thereby leading to a less I civilised existence than otherwise. The Need Today

No quantity of gold, nor abundance of natural fertility and resources, nior stability of home government will make any country wealthy —wealth and prosperity depend solely upon trade and as trade increases or decreases so does icur prosperity increase and decrease. Trade is not buying nor selling, nor merely buying and selling, but buying and sell ing in the proportion that our knowledge of history prescribes. Today, with all our problems, Ave require no new principles, no new prescriptions, we merely want men who can apply proven principles to present conditions and who will avoid the disastrous mistakes our predecessors made.

; All history shows that any restricj tions on trade are restrictions on prosperity, yet our Statute Book is full of restrictions on trade. Tariff walls, arbitration awards, trade unions, labour regulations, trading regulations, high . exchanges, national debts, inflated interest rates, rentals, lands, inflation of anything and countless scores of others may be j beneficial under different conditions, I but at present they tend more to j restrict trade, thereby restricting j wealth, and prosperity. Since trade j is wealth, no trade weu.ld soon put j everybody, even our statesmen, out | of a job, j Legislation Generally a Hindrance

it is almost an incredible thing that any government should be so suicidal as to restrict the flow of commerce, yet trade has always pno gressed rather in spite of legislation than by its help, and it appears as though it always will. Let us see how trade has built up prosperity in the past and how the lack of it has not only destroyed prosperity and wealth, but also completely annihilated nations.

Perhaps the best known of the ancient traders and certainly the greatest were the Phoenicians. These remarkable people had neither army nor navy, nor did they possess a fertile land, nor natural mineral resources, yet they became the mpst wealthy and the most powerful race in the world, not through their ability to conquer, but through their ability to trade. This occupation gained for them the supremacy of the wtarld —the sustenance of their volume of trade retained for them that supremacy for 3,500 years; longer than any other nation before or since. The' area of their land was 3,000 square miles, smaller than Taranaki and scarcely as rich, yet from this strip of land on the Mediterranean they set sail for the horizon. Space is too limited to give any details of their romantic and adventurous trade, but history gives us the main fact —they traded, and by so doing, they became wealthy and remained wealthy until the inevitable day when their amazing supremacy weakened by years of wealth and power, fel\ to the nation whose virility and trading efforts superseded their cwtt. When their trade ceased to flow, they as a nation ceased to exist and today their strip of land, once teeming with prosperity, lies bar, ren and desolate.

Trade—Prosperity's Mainspring This same story is told right throughout history, how trade built up cities and countries, then left them to die, and we wonder why commerce, which .is more necessary to wealth than anything else that we know of—mere necessary even than gold —should be so restricted and hampered by any government, and we yearn, for some understanding mind which will teach us and help us to avoid taking steps which, with our knowledge of history, we should know to be disastrous and directly (opposed to our welfare. To take another example: There were a few mudbanks at the mouth of the River Po, where people driven by Attila and his Huns, took refuge and founded a small village known as Venice. They lived mainly by fishing, but later started to trade locally in a small way. Their trade, owing to thei, unique and advantageous position, gradually increased in magnitude until they became at their zenith, the largest trading centre in the then kniciwn world. The result of this trade was i wealth and prosperity and power, ! until in the beginning of the 15th cen--1 fury with the small population of 200,000 inhabitants she possessed ter. rifo'rv and trade routes all over the known world. Her trade with Lornbardy alone was computed at 28,000,000 ducats per annum (a ducat was worth approximately 9s). If we study

the story of their trade, we will find that it grew through strictly honest methods' and was fostered by sound and helpful laws, enacted by tneir leaders, their governors, or, as we know them, the Doges, achieved their position and power through the wealth amassed fricm trading. They wore not professional politicians nor farmers, they knew and understood commerce, and accordingly the laws of the city directlv or indirectly were enacted tor its increment Perhaps that accounts for the remarkable supremacy of this romantic place. However, time, the conqueror of all tilings, at last laid low the magnificence of this city Trade was diverged into other channels and with trade went the wealth and power which is its boon companion Today Venice does npt .possess my volume of trade, consequently neither does she possess any degree of wealth and prosperity. .. .~.

Cause of the Depression- t-M Other notable instances of tradej thrnwing towns and countries into the foremost rank of the world are Genoa, j Constantinople, Portugal and, to arrive! nearer to our present tune. Antwerp, aild London. Did space permit, talesi •ruld be ma of wealth which was j gained through the acquisition of trade, and lost through its decline. But let us have' ft look at the world today This wi:rld-\vide depression is the direct result of trade becoming crush.; ed with the immense burden which it has to carry and with the refractory conditions ' which it must control. America thought she could become wealthy hV producing to her utmost capacity selling her products and preventing her productions from declining by choking her imports with tariff walls. She amassed gold, she built up credits and today! "the United States has a deficit of nearly £200,000, WO last year, and the deficit this year is expected to approximate £400,000,000." "During 1031 2,342 banks closed in the U.S.A. with deposits totalling over £400,000,000." Repots such as these are showing us the horrors we endure for our non-observance of the lesson which is written in history for all to read. Had America profited by this world's thousands of years of exist, ence, she would not have erected tariff walls to such an extent, nor would she have even contemplated the laws | which have gradually restricted the ipassage of trade and the presence of [prosperity, until today she possesses j very little of either.

America's Problem If you take a lake as i'ull of water as America was of wealth, and drainj that lake by sending out the water atj the same rate that America sent out] her wealth in the form of goods, you: will soon have no lake at all, just as I U.S.A. has no wealth. What will it; avail if that wealth is changed to a. heap of sterile gold, or a book full of credits which are not being paid? The lake is still drained of its water, and America is still drained of her wealth. which will not be regained until trade ence again flows through the country. Just as anything which.flews through, comes in and goes out, so must America export and import. The ratio is for her own statesmen to decide. France, another nation which put more faith in gold than trade, as her wealth, is placed in a similar position to the United States. This European country shows a deficit of £35,000,000 and M. Caillaux estimates next year's tit licit at £75,000,000. bike all other countries, there is only one solution to the problem, and that is to build up real wealth by the ;cnly known means —the increase of the volume of trade, both exporting and importing. Britain Glutted While America was hidden behind a tariff, wall, Britain was thrown wide open with free trade and as commerce flowed through the country. she became the wealthiest in the world—she became absolutely supreme until the day when trade ceased to flow through, but started to flow only into the country. Where America, was emptied, Britain was glutted, but the

result was the same. The balance of exports and imports was disregarded and Britain imported goods and cred. its at such an adverse ratio to her ex_ ports, that in the end, she had to make a start towards the balancing oi' her trade, or regard herself as another chapter in the history of the world. Accordingly, she imposed a tariff to bring her imports to a position more favourable in relation to her exports, but even Mr. Stanley Baldwin, Leader of the Protectionist Party, pleads for freer trade between nations. Countries who follow America's example and attempt to become self sufficient will meet America's fate. The first attempt to develop freer trade is to be made at Ottawa. It will be carried out by the: British Empire and will be operated within the Empire. If this conference can formulate a policy for the stimulation of trade, then all the world will be willing to follow that same policy. This conference should consist of men who are gathered to build for the Empire but it is to be feared that, human nature being what it is, New Zealand delegates will be building for New Zealand, South African delegates for South Africa, each country building for itself individually, rather than building up trade for the Empire as a complete whole. We are apt to regard this conference as something which will benefit New Zealand rather than something which will benefit the Empire, and we can trace a large percentage of bur present troubles to this train of thought.

The Empire's Hope The hope of every country within the British Commonwealth of Nations, nay of every country in the world, is centred ancuiid the success of this Ot. tawa Conference to restore the lost volume of profitable trade, to rehabilitate the solvency of the world and to restore prosperity tot the millions which populate this earth —and unless they can accomplish this, we are faced with a long dreary uphill fight against adverse conditions of the type which have crushed Empires in. the past. Nobody can predict the future, but it can be said with a reasonable degree of certainty that the Empire Con. ierence is one lef the greatest oppoPi tunities ever presented —so let us hope that the men attending- it will formulate a policy embodying an ideal, some noble principle rather than one pandering to the betterment of themselves at the expense of others; let us hope that they -will lay a foundation for future trade, far more solid than those upon which we have, to our detriment, built in the past.