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Chorus of Dissent. Despite this historical precedent and veiled assurances that the President would flex out imperfections which even 'the Republican National Committee admitted were in the bill, a great new sector of U. S. industry called imperiously for a veto. Normal protestants against tariff upping are importers (i. e. department stores) who bear the brunt of higher rates, and political opponents who plead in the name of the ''consumer." Now the chorus of tariff dissent was swelled by a third and more potent group, composed of big industrialists who have saturated home markets with their production and require ever expanding foreign markets to absorb their high-speed manufactures. Seeing their business in the light of world economics (as taught by Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover), they feared their foreign customers would cease to sell over a higher tariff wall, would thereby suffer reduced income and buying power, would of necessity stop purchasing U. S. merchandise. If U. S. export trade drops, potent manufacturers envisage a corresponding drop in their production, their profits, their employed labor. Only about 6% of U. S. production is exported but to tycoons whose business has outgrown the domestic market that 6% represents the difference between good and bad times. The fact that U. S. foreign trade dropped $500,000,000 in the first three months of this year has filled many a U. S. manufacturer with serious forebodings.
Chief objector to the Hawley-Smoot bill was the motor industry whose enormous foreign trade speeds many a factory wheel. Alfred Pritchard Sloan Jr., General Motors president, summed up the industry's basic argument thus: "The economic position of the U. S. has completely changed during the past two decades. We cannot sell unless we buy. Additional restrictions in the way of raising the height of the tariff wall are bound to have an adverse influence on our domestic prosperity through reducing our ability to produce. . . . The failure of the tariff bill would have a helpful influence."
Alvan Macauley of Packard, Albert Russell Erskine of Studebaker and Charles W. Nash of Nash flayed the bill in chorus as "a great menace to our foreign trade."
Rubber. Harvey Samuel Firestone and James Dinsmore Tew (B. F. Goodrich Co.), as representatives of the rubber industry publicly prayed for the bill's defeat by Congress or President Hoover.
Edward A. Filene, Boston merchant, denounced the measure. Shipping men lamented the prospect of reduced foreign trade in their bottoms, spoke of upping ocean freight rates to offset their loss. Theodore Gary of Kansas City, whom Senator Moses appointed as Republican Senatorial campaign cash collector, declared the bill was "highly detrimental" and that U. S. industries would lose more than they would gain from it.
G. 0. P. Retort. In the House of Representatives Congressman Knutson of Minnesota, Republican whip, gave the standard G. 0. P. reply to these criticisms: "Big business wants free and unrestricted commerce between nations. They want to manufacture in the cheap markets and sell in our markets. General Motors owns and operates large automobile factories in Germany and to bring their products into the U. S. they must have low import duties."