DIRECTION OF EXPORTS IN TIME OF WAR.

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

COMMITTEE ON INTERSTATE AND FOREIGN COMMERCE,

April 23, 1917.

The committee met at 10 o'clock a. m., Hon. William C. Adamson (chairman) presiding.

STATEMENT OF HON. WILLIAM C. REDFIELD, SECRETARY OF

COMMERCE.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Secretary, the committee is glad to see you, and we wish some enlightenment on the export bill, H. R. 3349.

Secretary REDFIELD. Mr. Chairman, the Assistant Attorney General, Mr. Warren, will speak of it from the legal side, and I think Secretary Houston will probably be here on another phase of the

matter.

The object of the measure, Mr. Chairman, is perhaps not best expressed by the statement which has been once or twice made to me-that it is an embargo bill.

The CHAIRMAN. That is the reason I reintroduced the bill. I reintroduced the bill in order to correct the title. The newspapers gave out a false impression about it.

Secretary REDFIELD. That would be an incorrect impression entirely. It may, I think, more nearly accurately be expressed as a bill authorizing the control and the limitation of exports. What I want to speak of briefly, then, is the necessity for such control, and perhaps to suggest certain directions which that control may necessarily take.

The CHAIRMAN. I think the caption is correct now, Mr. Secretary. The thing we want to do is to see that our exports go where they are needed for our friends and never reach our enemies.

Secretary REDFIELD. That is precisely the point. Now, then, if I may address myself precisely to the commercial aspects of the measure, there are certain things that will appear, I am sure, to you as necessary. The German Government has in its home ports, for example-this is but one case-a very large coaling concern. That coaling concern has a branch in Argentina, which branch has been in the habit heretofore, so we are informed, of coaling the German raiders in the South Atlantic. As the matter now stands, there is nothing that would prevent an export house in America, which may be friendly or which may be ignorant, from shipping coal to this German concern in Argentina, there to have it used for coaling German

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raiders. The same thing is precisely true of any form of marine supplies, rope or cordage or oil. We have no power to prevent, even though we may be morally and even certainly satisfied that the shipment of these supplies is being made to this concern for the express purpose of being used to supply German raiders. As you are aware, I presume, the Deutschland, when she came here as a mercantile submarine, carried away, not a bulky, but a considerable quantity of necessary supplies, such as nickel and rubber. It may be very necessary for us to prevent these things falling into the hands of our enemies and we have no present power to prevent it. That is one form in which the direction and control of our exports will become necessary, to control to whom they should go, and to make sure that they do not get into the hands of the enemy. It is quite possible to obtain a list of the German agencies throughout the world, and having obtained them, it would be necessary in our own safety to direct, to say the least, that exports to them be controlled. Now, that is one phase of the matter that I think I hardly need enlarge upon, because that might happen all around the world, in Asia, or South America, and the danger which would arise from it, I am sure, is perfectly obvious to you.

Mr. MONTAGUE. Before you leave that point, you say that you should have the power to control to whom they should go. I rather inferred that the power is rather to say to whom they should not go. Secretary REDFIELD. Yes; you are quite right. I should have stated it in that way. That is a wise suggestion.

Mr. MONTAGUE. I did not know whether the bill contemplated that or not, and if not I wanted to direct your attention to it.

Secretary REDFIELD. You are quite right. The next phase of the matter is one which affects our own food supply first and affects the food supply of the allied nations second, It is a fact that we are very short in this country now of tin plate, and following that we are threatened with a very grave shortage of tin cans for food containers, and we are raising heaven and earth, I might say, to find a supply not only of tin cans but to keep every tin-plate mill operating as fully as possible.

The CHAIRMAN. Aside from the commercial demand, tin cans are absolutely necessary in feeding the Army?

Secretary REDFIELD. Yes, sir. Now, the point that affects this bill as regards the tin-can situation is that there is a very large export trade in tinplate to China, to Siam, and to the Southern Orient, which it may be necessary not to stop but to limit and perhaps for a time postpone. The practical point about it is that unless we get a very considerable addition to our tinplate supply and our can supply by or before the 1st of August at the latest, the prices of foodstuffs this last winter may be considered extremely reasonable when compared with those for the coming winter. Furthermore, the very uncertainty that there will be a supply of tin cans for the coming season's crop is already endangering and limiting the planting this year in the next two weeks. Hence the necessity, possibly. of asking business houses-as we are now asking them as a matter of fact, as a courtesy, which is all we can do-if they will not please defer their shipments of tinplate to China and to Siam and other points in the Orient until such time as we can fairly approach the