Value of trade-agreement countries' total imports from the United States, classified by types of concessions granted to the United States; on basis of 1937 data

[Thousands of dollars 1]

1 Converted from foreign countries' currencies into United States dollars at annual average rates of exchange. Based on United States export data.

Source: Compilations from foreign countries' trade statistics and, where necessary, Foreign Commerce and Navigation of the United States, U. S. Department of Commerce.

Number of items.

Obtained. Although impossible to be counted adequately, the number of items on which concessions were obtained is certainly many times greater than that on which concessions were granted, since the United States obtained concessions from Canada on 1,000 items in Canadian statistical classification, from the United Kingdom and colonies on 1,400 rates, from Cuba on 400 Cuban tariff items et cetera.

Granted. According to the United States Tariff Commission, 1,180 United States rates have been reduced and 58 have been bound against increase, a total of 1,238 rates (not including bindings of duty-free entry of products under 120 paragraphs of the Tariff Act of 1930 nor the concessions made in the recently signed agreement with Iran).

1 Because of the war these data for 1939 are not completely available, however, domestic experts to trade agreement countries in 1939 were only $32,000,000 or about 2 percent less than in 1937.

Type of products:

Obtained. Substantial concessions have been obtained on a long list of representative United States export products, both agricultural and nonagricultural. (See memorandum "concessions obtained.")

Granted. In value of trade covered, over three-fifths of our total concessions consisted of bindings of existing duty-free entry of products; in appropriate cases, the reductions in duty on products needed to supplement our domestic production have been restricted to limited amounts of imports or to particular

seasons.

STATEMENT OF TOM LINDER, COMMISSIONER OF AGRICULTURE OF GEORGIA; PRESIDENT, NATIONAL FARM COMMITTEE, ATLANTA, GA.

Mr. COOPER (presiding). The next witness appearing on the calendar is Mr. Tom Linder. Is Mr. Linder here?

Mr. LINDER. Yes, sir.

Mr. COOPER. Will you please give your name, address, and the capacity in which you appear and any official position you might hold?

Mr. LINDER. Tom Linder, commissioner of agriculture of Georgia and president of the National Farm Committee.

Mr. COOPER. Do you prefer to make your main statement without interruption?

Mr. LINDER. Yes. I would appreciate being able to make my statement without interruption, and, of course, any questions I can answer I will be very happy to do so.

Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, I would like in the beginning to say that there are a great many things connected with not only trade agreements but with a great many other things that interlock and are inseparable with trade agreements, reaching into other functions of government, some of which, as you know, are secret and are not at this time available for public information.

Some of these things that I shall call to your attention will be things that I have only been able to get enough evidence on to point to a reasonable conclusion, because the actual written record on them is at the present time hidden in secret treaties.

The things that I shall say will undoubtedly be very provocative of questions, but I think that by the time I finish this statement I will have answered a good many questions which may occur to you in the course of this statement.

The effect and ramifications of trade treaties are so vast that it is necessary, in my opinion, for us to take an over-all picture of the things involved in trade treaties and in their relation to other departments.

Great international banking and business interests, who owe no allegiance to any country, have decreed that the American farmer shall be put down on equal footing with the peon labor of less enlightened lands. These great internationalists, without love or patriotic impulse for any country, were, I think, those the poet had in mind when he penned those immortal lines:

Lives there a man with soul so dead
Who never to himself has said,

"This is my own, my native land."

These great international interests have billions of investments from the Rio Grande River to Cape Horn and from high meridian to high meridian as the earth revolves on its axis. These internationalists and their liaison representatives shuttle back and forth between London and Washington.

Every time Congress is asked to move a man on the checkerboard, the move fits into the over-all plan for a great monopolistic industrial empire of England and the United States, on the one hand, and for a great raw material and agricultural empire in the same countries and in all other agricultural countries and islands of the sea, on the other hand.

These great internationalists have organized the Committee for Economic Development. The outline of their program is to develop industrial production to supply nonindustrial countries. For an industrialized America to supply industrial commodities to nonindustrial countries, it naturally follows that the bars must be lowered for importation into America of agricultural products and raw materials to pay for these industrial products.

The Department of Anti-Agriculture, the Department of State, the Department of Commerce, the Office of Price Administration, and other Government bureaus are being used by these great internationalists to further their great scheme for world empire. Charles E. Wilson of the War Production Board is an adviser to this great international syndicate. Jesse H. Jones of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation called together a group of businessmen several months ago and suggested that the group be organized. Chester C. Davis is vice chairman of the research committee.

The research committee also includes such men as Eric A. Johnston, president, Brown-Johnston Co., Spokane, Wash., and president, Chamber of Commerce of the United States; Thomas W. Lamont, vice chairman of the board, J. P. Morgan & Co., director, United States Steel Corporation. On the advisory board is William I. Myers, head, department of agricultural economics, Cornell University.

In its literature, the Committee for Economic Development states: If you need any additional information, you may write to the Committee for Economic Development, Field Development Division, Room 3311, United States Department of Commerce Building, Washington, D. C.

This committee also states:

Its program and its aims already have been discussed with officials of the National Association of Manufacturers, the United States Chamber of Commerce, and also with such governmental groups as the State Department, Federal Reserve Board, National Resources Planning Board, the Board of Economic Warfare, and the War Production Board.

This committee further states:

The prospects are both agonizing and inspiring; but the vigorous support promised by private organizations, plus the active interest and cooperation offered by the Department of Commerce and other governmental agencies, has given rise to a growing confidence that the contemplated program can contribute substantially to the maintenance of and development of a free, dynamic economy.

The committee's research advisory board is composed of representatives from America's leading universities. Among these are: Prof. Sumner Slichter, of Harvard University, chairman. According to Who's Who, Professor Slichter was a student of Munich University in 1910. He is a member of the American Association for Labor Legislation and a member of the National Consumers League. Another member of the research advisory board is Prof. Theodore C. Yntema, who has a long background of association as an economic adviser both to governmental agencies and to American industries such as United States Steel Corporation, the Association of American Railroads, Liggett & Myers Tobacco Co., Inland Steel Co., United States Gypsum Co., Armour & Co., and others. His name does not appear in Who's Who.

The Committee for Economic Development asks its members this question:

To what extent are we maintaining the necessary contacts abroad (where possible) and with Government to assure having the best available information on questions concerning tariffs and foreign trade policies so we shall stand the best chance of securing our share of participation in world markets after war ends?

The American farmer has been sold down the river as ruthlessly as any slaver ever sold Negroes from Africa to the settlers of New England.

Why was Mr. Prentiss Brown appointed as Director of the Office of Price Administration? Because he was defeated by the voters of his home State in 1942 due to his antiagricultural record.

Why was Mr. Henry A. Wallace named to serve as President of the Senate? Because he created the "anti-agricultural department."

Why has the administration so relentlessly, persistently, and unalterably pursued a policy of starvation prices on farm products? Because only in this way can the great international scheme for world empire be carried out.

Now, Mr. Chairman, I will take up this other statement. Special trade agreements are not war measures. The act of Congress providing for special trade agreements was first passed in 1933— I believe that is 1934, but it is the same Congress. Any attempt to claim special trade agreements as a war measure is simply an effort to prevent meritorious arguments in opposition to this scheme to lower American agriculture to the level of other countries.

It is impossible to consider adequately the question of special trade agreements aside from the general question of tariff's generally.

The question of special trade agreements, as well as the broader question of tariffs in general, is no longer a party question. Indeed we no longer have a political party in this country which in any sense represents the views and traditions of its founders. The Republican Party and the Democratic Party alike, as we have known them in the past, existed on sectional questions and differences. Protective tariff, as it has operated, was simply the use of governmental power for the industry of the East to levy a tribute on agriculture of the South and

West. As we all know, the protective tariff which was originally the child of the Republican Party was made possible as an aftermath of the War between the States.

When the legions of the North under the Stars and Stripes marched into the Southern States, the rank and file thought they were fighting for the liberation of the slaves. Nearly all the slaves were in the Cotton Belt at that time. While slavery was only a pretext used by Lincoln and other warmongers of his day, thousands of brave sons of great farm States, from Ohio to Iowa and from the Great Lakes to the Mason and Dixon line, followed the Stars and Stripes in that great conflict believing they were fighting for emancipation.

Those farmers from the great Middle West-if they had understood the purpose of protective tariff-would never have voted in national elections for legalized plunder of agriculture. The Republican farm voters would never have voted for tariffs against themselves had they understood.

The Democratic Party, as we have known it, has owed its life to the belief of its followers in the Southern States that Democratic leaders stood for low tariff, for States' rights, and in the South for white supremacy. No longer do we have a party that stands for white supremacy. No longer do we have a party that stands for States' rights and for the right of the people locally to control their own local affairs. No longer do we have a party that is opposed to high protective tariffs except on agricultural products and on raw products.

The Republican Party, which for many years controlled the States of the East and North, has been rooted out of its former throne and the scepter of these industrial regions has been seized by a new party which seized the Democratic banner and marched on leaving true Democrats stunned, helpless, and amazed.

It is easy, therefore, to see that the Republican and Democratic Parties do not longer exist except in name. We cannot, therefore, consider the question of tariffs which includes the subject of special trade agreements as a party issue in any sense of the word.

The fact of the matter is that regardless of parties, party names, or party organizations, the thinking of the masses in this country is divided into two schools. One of these schools of thought can be summed up in the term "patriotic nationalism." The other school of thought can be summed up in the term "international nonpatriotism."

There can be no international patriot. The very word "patriot” derived from the Greek and the Latin means a love of one's country. It means, literally, a father to the country.

Those who try to bring about internationalism and world rule are as great traitors and saboteurs of American liberty and American rights as were those saboteurs landed by a German submarine and who were justly executed. Those individuals who are now trying to destroy the American National Government and substitute international government should be dealt with in the same way.

I do not know whether or not in the national election of 1944 there will be any political party to carry the banner of "national patriotism," or whether it will be like a neglected stepchild, left to its own resources to keep alive the spark of patriotic Americanism through these dark ages through which we are now passing. The banner of internationalism and world empire will undoubtedly be carried by