GREAT BRITAIN AND THE UNITED STATES [To the Editor of
THE SPECTATOR.]
Sia,—In your columns of April 2nd, Janus states that it will be a folly hardly distinguishable from crime if a trade agreement with the United States is not reached at the price of the lowering or abolition of duties against American agricultural (why only agricultural ?) products ; in other words at the cost of the sacrifice of British agriculture, already crippled as it is for the benefit of the shipping, financial and distributive interests. Today, when we are told by experts that we could produce up to 90 per cent., we produce somewhat less than half our food ; as a result our soil is deteriorating and going out of cultivation, agricultural labMirers (one of the finest and worst-paid classes in the country) are drifting in to form the slums in our towns, while we are faced with a chronic unemployment problem and are spending at least one hundred million pounds abroad which would more profitably' be spent here.
With a proper use of our resources we could employ a million more persons in agriculture and allied industries (it is reckoned that for every ten so re-employed only one would be displaced in the shipping and docking industries) and our manufacturers would find an expanding and more stable market at home than they could hope to find abroad. Under a rational system of distribution it would be possible to pay a fair standard price to the home agriculturist with little or no extra cost to the con- sumer, while the distributor, though he would retain less on each unit handled, would be able to recoup himself as the result of handling a greater number of units. It is hard to believe that Janus considers that our whole countryside should, for the future, be relegated to the status of a National Park reserved entirely for the pleasure of motorists and hikers seeking a refuge from their urban amenities, but it appears that this would be the rational result of the policy he advocates. And must our citizens be contented for ever to obtain their food under condi- tions which leave them at the mercy of the vagaries of the American climate and cosmopolitan financial manipulators in peace, and of hostile submarines and aircraft in time of War ? Surely it is unjust to those who deprecate such a policy to impute either crime or folly. —I am, Sir, yours truly, H. WHITFORD-HAWKEY, Hon. Executive Secretary. Rural Reconstruction Association, 35 Gordon Square, London, W.C. r.
{Janus writes : " Every trade agreement involves a lowering of duties, which inevitably produce an outcry from the industry from which some measure of protection is thus withdrawn. The idea of an economic agreement with the United States, with its immensely valuable political effects, must be abandoned altogether if every quid pro quo is promptly vetoed by any industry affected.'-']
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