SOVIET TRADE CAMPAIGN.

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXIV, Issue 18823, 11 March 1931, Page 9

SOVIET TRADE CAMPAIGN.

No Evidence of Dumping. MOSCOW'S REPLY TO ALLEGATIONS. United Press Association—By Electrlo Telegraph—Corvrlgnt MOSCOW, March 9. M. Moltov, chairman of the People's Commissars, reporting to the Sixth AllUnion Soviet Congress, declared that the success of Socialism is assured, partly because of the enormous success of Socialist countries. The exports refuted the suggestion that all the evils of capitalist countries resulted from importing cheap goods from the Soviet. The Czarist Russia of 1913 constituted 3.6 per cent of the world's exports—in 1930 only 1.9 per cent owing to the increased Press and Parliamentary attacks against the Soviet. M. Moltov warned the Congress of the necessity of carefully watching the situation in England, as the Conservative Party was endeavouring to break up Angle-Soviet relations.

EXPORT OF SOVIET TIMBER. CONDITIONS OF LABOUR. KNOTTY PROBLEM FOR BRITAIN. On December 11th, Sir Hilton Young sent to the Prime Minister a sworn statement by three Russian refugees concerning the deplorable conditions in the timber prison camps in North Russia. Since thep others have given testimony regarding the conditions. Sir Hilton Young invited Mr Macdonald to say what action the Government proposed to take in the matter, and Mr Macdonald promised that he would cause inquiries to be made. He has now replied as follows: — “Dear Hilton Young: I have given very careful consideration, in consultation with the Government Departments concerned, to your letter of 11th December, about conditions in the Soviet timber industry, and I can now answer the questions which you put to

“Your first question was whether action can be taken under the Foreign Prison-made Goods Act, 1897; to this I must repeat what the Chancellor of the Exchequer said in the House of Commons on November 25th and December 3rd —that action under the Act can be taken only if evidence is produced that any particular consignment of goods has been made or produced wholly or in part in a ‘foreign prison,’ and that such evidence must be sufficiently detailed and conclusive to satisfy the Commissioners of Customs and Excise that any action taken would be sustainable if challenged in a Court of Law.

“The information supplied by you and others (and the evidence which has so far reached me is not all of an adverse character) does not, I am advised, fulfil the requirements of the Act or afford a basis for action under the existing law. The information, in fact, suggests that the timber industry in Northern Russia, including the felling, removing, sawing, and shipping, is at present carried on not only by means of convict labour and compulsory labour but also by free labour. It would, therefore, be impossible to prove legally that any i particular consignment of timber was made or produced in a ‘foreign prison, gaol, house of correction, or penitentiary.’ It is , I think, clear that the law, as it stands, does not give the Government the power which you wish it to exercise, and that therefore legislation would be necessary. I may also point out that the legislation would have to deal, even according to the statements which you have supplied, not only with prison labour but with labour conditions in general, and would not only affect Russia.

“This leads to your second question, whether His Majesty’s Government propose to t.ake steps which would have to be legislative steps—to put a stop to the trade in Russian timber specifically named, or in timber produced under conditions of the same nature as those alleged to be prevalent in the Russian timber camps. A general prohibition extending the ‘prison goods’ provisions and making them more definite would require to be passed, setting up standards of general labour conditions. This would be a very serious step in view of world labour conditions, and, after careful consideration of its bearing on our commercial relations, T am not in present circumstances satisfied that such a measure (the only one which would satisfy the humanitarian feeling stirred up by this anti-Soviet campaign) is practicable.—Yours very sincerely, J. Ramsay Macdonald.”