FOREIGN TRADE AND FOREIGN FOOD
We have heard a great deal lately about the danger of losing our foreign
trade, and it has been very openly suggested that the only hope of
keeping our foreign trade lies in reducing the wages of our British
workers. Sometimes this idea is wrapped up, and called "reducing the
cost of production."
Now, if we must have foreign trade, and as much of it as we have now,
and if we can only keep it by competing against foreign dealers in
price, then it is true that we must try to reduce the cost of
production.
But as there are more ways of killing a dog besides that of choking him
with butter, so there are other ways of reducing the cost of production
besides that of reducing the wages of our British workers.
But on that question I will speak in the next chapter. Here I want to
deal with foreign trade and foreign food.
It is very important that every worker in the kingdom should understand
the relations of our foreign trade and our native agriculture.
The creed of the commercial school is that manufactures _pay_ us better
than agriculture; so that by making goods for export and buying food
from abroad we are doing good business.
The idea is, that if by making cloth, cutlery, and other goods, we can
buy more food than we can produce at home with the same amount of
labour, it _pays_ us to let the land go out of cultivation and make
Britain the "workshop of the world."
Now, assuming that we _can_ keep our foreign trade, and assuming that we
can get more food by foreign trade than we could produce by the same
amount of work, is it quite certain that we are making a good bargain
when we desert our fields for our factories?
Suppose men _can_ earn more in the big towns than they _could_ earn in
the fields, is the difference _all_ gain?
Rents and prices are higher in the towns; the life is less healthy, less
pleasant. It is a fact that the death-rates in the towns are higher,
that the duration of life is shorter, and that the stamina and physique
of the workers are lowered by town life and by employment in the
factories.
And there is another very serious evil attached to the commercial policy
of allowing our British agriculture to decay, and that is the evil of
our dependence upon foreign countries for our food.
Of every 30 bushels of wheat we require in Britain, more than 23 bushels
come from abroad. Of these 23 bushels 19 bushels come from America, and
nearly all the rest from Russia.
You are told at intervals--when more money is wanted for
battle-ships--that unless we have a strong fleet we shall, in time of
war, be starved into surrender.
But the plain and terrible truth is that even if we have a perfect
fleet, and keep entire control of the seas, we shall still be exposed to
the risk of almost certain starvation during a European war.
Nearly four-fifths of our bread come from Russia and America. Suppose we
are at war with France and Russia. What will happen? Will not the corn
dealers in America put up the price? Will not the Russians stop the
export of corn from their ports? Will not the French and Russian
Governments try to corner the American wheat?
Then one-seventh of our wheat would be stopped at Russian ports, and the
American supply, even if it could be safely guarded to our shores, would
be raised to double or treble the present price.
What would our millions of poor workers do if wheat went up to 75s. or
100s. a quarter?
And every other article of food would go up in price at the same time:
tea, coffee, sugar, meat, canned goods, cheese, would all double their
prices.
And we must not forget that we import millions of pounds' worth of
eggs, butter, and cheese from France, all of which would be stopped.
Nor is that all. Do we not pay for our imported food in exported goods?
Well, besides the risk and cost of carrying raw material to this country
and manufactured goods to other countries across the seas, we should
lose at one blow all our French and Russian trade.
That means that with food at famine prices many of our workers would be
out of work or on short time.
The result would be that in less than half a year there would be
1,000,000 unemployed, and ten times that number on the borders of
starvation.
And all these horrors might come upon us without a single shot being
fired by our enemies. Talk about invasion! In a big European war we
should be half beaten before we could strike a blow, and even if our
fleets were victorious in a dozen battles we must starve or make peace.
Or suppose such a calamity as war with America! The Americans could
close their ports to food and raw material, and stop half our food and a
large part of our trade at one blow. And so we should be half beaten
before a sword was drawn.
All these dangers are due to the commercial plan of sacrificing
agriculture to trade. All these dangers must be placed to the debit side
of our foreign trade account.
But apart from the dangers of starvation in time of war, and apart from
all the evils of the factory system and the bad effects of overcrowding
in the towns, it has still to be said that foreign trade only beats
agriculture as long as it pays so well that we can buy more food with
our earnings than we could ourselves produce with the same amount of
labour.
Are we quite sure that it pays us as well as that _now_? And if it does
pay as well as that now, can we hope that it will go on paying as well
for any length of time.
In the early days of our great trade the commercial school wished
Britain to be the "workshop of the world"; and for a good while she was
the workshop of the world.
But now a change is coming. Other nations have opened world-workshops,
and we have to face competition.
France, Germany, Holland, Belgium, and America are all eager to take our
coveted place as general factory, and China and Japan are changing
swiftly from customers into rival dealers.
Is it likely, then, that we can keep all our foreign trade, or that what
we keep will be as profitable as it is at present?
During the last few years there have emanated from the Press and from
Chambers of Commerce certain ominous growlings about the evils of Trade
Unionism. What do these growls portend? Much the same thing as the
mutterings about the need for lowering wages.
Do we not remember how, when the colliers were struggling for a "living
wage," the Press scolded them for their "selfishness"? The Press
declared that if the colliers persisted in having a living wage we
should be beaten by foreign competitors and must lose our foreign trade.
That is what is hanging over us now. A demand for a general reduction of
wages. That is the end of the fine talk about big profits, national
prosperity, and the "workshop of the world." The British workers are to
emulate the thrift of the Japanese, the Hindoos, and the Chinese, and
learn to live on boiled rice and water. Why? So that they can accept
lower wages and retain our precious foreign trade.
Yes; that is the latest idea. With brutal frankness the workers of
Britain have been told again and again that "if we are to keep our
foreign trade the British workers must accept the conditions of their
foreign rivals."
And that is the result of our commercial glory! For that we have
sacrificed our agriculture and endangered the safety of our empire.
Let us put the two statements of the commercial school side by side.
They tell us first that the workers must abandon the land and go into
the factories, because there they can earn a better living.
They tell us now that the British worker must be content with the wages
of a coolie, because foreign trade will pay no more.
We are to give up agriculture because we can buy more food with exported
goods than we can grow; and we must learn to live on next to nothing, or
lose our foreign trade.
Well, since we left the land in the hope that the factories would feed
us better, why not go back to the land if the factories fail to feed us
at all?
Ah! but the commercial school have another string to their bow: "You
cannot go back to the land, for it will not feed you all. This country
will not produce enough food for its people to live upon."
So the position in which the workers are placed, according to the
commercial school, is this: You cannot produce your own food; therefore
you must buy it by export trade. But you will lose your export trade
unless you work for lower wages.
Well, Mr. Smith, I for one do not believe those things. I believe--
1. That we can produce most of our food.
2. That we can keep as much of our trade as we need, and
3. That we can keep the trade without reducing the wages of the workers.
In my next chapter I will deal with the question of foreign trade and
the workers' wages. We will then go on to consider the question of the
food supply.
For the argument as to our defencelessness in time of war through the
inevitable rise in the price of corn, I am indebted to a pamphlet by
Captain Stewart L. Murray of the Gordon Highlanders. I strongly
recommend all working men and women to read that pamphlet. It is
entitled _Our Food Supply in Time of War_, and can be ordered through
the _Clarion_. The price is 6d.