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Labor. The American Federation of Labor supports the Smoot-Hawley bill on the theory that it will keep out the products of cheap foreign labor. Matthew Woll, A. F. of L. vice president, bitterly attacked Henry Ford for his tariff opposition, citing the fact that the motorman had moved his tractor plant to Ireland, where he makes his machines at 60% of the U. S. cost and imported them to this country duty-free as agricultural implements. But labor was not unanimous. George L. Berry, president of the International Printing Pressmen's Union of North America, last week flayed the bill as "the most atrocious and indefensible tariff revision ever considered by Congress."
Reprisals. The threat of foreign tariff reprisals alarmed big exporting industrialists as much as the prospective disruption of the world trade cycle. Thirty nations have filed 161 specific protests against items in the Hawley-Smoot bill. Canada, best U. S. customer, has made a provisional upward revision of its tariff which would adversely affect 25% of the goods imported by the U. S. and give British imports a much higher preference rating. Cuba was moving in the same direction.
In Italy a boycott movement was started against U. S. cotton. Don Alejandro Padilla y Bell, Spanish Ambassador to the U. S., publicly complained that his country would be hardest hit by the new tariff, cited the fact that out of 81% exports to the U. S., the duty on 42 of them would be upped, including cork, olives, onions, almonds, peppers and imitation pearls. Swiss watchmakers posted throughout their country such notices as: "ONE FOR ALL. ALL FOR ONE. ... We ask all manufacturers, craftsmen, merchants and consumers to banish ... all merchandise of U. S. origin."
French Threat. Antitariff feeling against the U. S. ran particularly high in France. There U. S. Ambassador Walter Evans Edge who as a New Jersey Senator had consistently voted for all maximum duties, got a bitter taste of the foreign by-product of his party's tariff policy. Last week at a Chamber of Commerce dinner in the Roubaix-Tourcoing woolen district, Ambassador Edge heard this direct threat from a potent French speaker: "European nations stand together on one point—if the United States closes her markets, these countries will consider themselves justified in following the same steps." In reply the Ambassador reversed the usual G. O. P. argument that a high tariff produces a high living standard by declaring that the high cost of living necessitates a high tariff to preserve it.
"Unprofitable venture." High-tariff Republicans in Congress could see nothing but the self-interest of foreign producers in these threats of tariff reprisals. Chairman Hawley of the House Ways & Means Committee voiced this congressional complaisance as follows:
"The tariff as an American problem. . . This is the largest market in the world and it is a cash market. . . . The nations of the world of course desire to trade in this market to the fullest extent and of course would like to have our tariff barriers removed so that they could ship their goods made by low-priced labor to this country in enormous quantities. . . , In the long run they will find tariff reprisals an unprofitable venture."