DUMPING AND DEPRESSION [To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SK—In
your last issue you point out that the Report on Currency of the Committee on Monetary and Financial Questions discourages the idea that wholesale prices of commodities can easily be raised by mere monetary policy. This seems a logical conclusion, yet there are many high financial authorities who disagree with it. International trading rests on very narrow margins as between supply and demand ; thus, for instance, Russia, operating—to a con- siderable extent—stolen property with slave labour, can market produce in sufficient volume At prices so much below world economic costs as utterly to destroy legitimate sales between trading communities the world over. What resisting power can any monetary system have in withstanding such an onslaught on the value of commodities ? Many believe the ultimate aim of Russia is Communism, and that their immediate purpose is persistently to undercut solely with a view to reducing all competitors to bankruptcy. It seems to me, if the nations of the world permit a country so disposed to have a free run of their markets, no monetary system can avail, as their action will continue to flood the world with goods at prices as near zero as slavery can produce them. Every recognised principle of legitimate financial trading is thereby destroyed.—I am, Sir, &c., 12 Portman Square, W. 1. Joan LATTA.
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