"Ottawa Poker"

To shoot holes in the trade of other nations with the British Commonwealth is the aim of the Imperial Economic Conference at Ottawa, whether or not any bull's-eyes are hit. As between the U. S. and Canada, what hits may be made? Last week anxious traders . analyzed Canadian-U. S. trade as follows, using statistics of 1930, the last approximately normal trade year:

Exports from the U. S. to Canada were worth $10,000,000 or more in each of 13 categories:

Millions of Dollars

Bituminous coal 50

Iron & steel mill products 49

Industrial machinery 47

Electrical machinery & apparatus 31

Crude petroleum 26

Agricultural machinery & implements 24

Anthracite 24

Automobile parts (except engines) 24

Gasoline, naphtha, etc 15

Automobiles 15

Advanced iron & steel manufactures 14

Cotton, unmanufactured 13

Oranges 10

Exports from Canada to the U. S. in the same year were worth $10,000,000 or more in each of eight categories:

Millions of Dollars

Standard newsprint 116

Copper 28

Boards, planks, deals 26

Sulphite wood pulp 21

Wheat 19

Pulpwood 15

Fish 13

Nickel 12

Grand total Canadian imports from the U. S. were $600,000,000 while the U. S. bought $400.000,000 from Canada. Obviously the above 21 categories of U. S.-Canadian trade are among the biggest bull's-eyes the Ottawa delegates have to aim at. They were just getting their hands in last week. Ten days after its first session the Conference was barely under way.

The Conference Week:

P:Canada and Australia, having introduced a general resolution in which the Conference ''denounced the trading methods of Russia" were persuaded to withdraw the resolution which was referred to a special subcommittee organized on the spot.

P:The Mother Country, faced by concerted Canadian, Australian and New Zealand demands that she place an embargo on Soviet wheat and timber, declared this to be "impossible," but hinted that a partial embargo might be placed on Argentine meat.

Since Edward of Vales as "Empire Salesman" has visited Argentina and has not visited Soviet Russia, the Mother Country's stand last week was somewhat grotesque. At once her No. i delegate, the Rt. Hon. Stanley Baldwin, was furiously attacked in England by the Hearstian papers of Baron Beaverbrook, himself Canadian-born.

Above his own signature on the most prominent page of his London Sunday Express, Baron Beaverbrook clarioned that Mr. Baldwin has no intention of accepting "the fair offers made by the Dominions."

"What a tragic thing," he mourned. "that leadership of the Empire has passed from Great Britain to Canada!"

"What a splendid thing," he exulted, "that it has passed from the uncertain and faithless hand of Baldwin to the statesmanlike grasp of [Canadian Premier] Bennett!"

This bludgeon-blow so distressed well-meaning Stanley Baldwin that he went to the expense of having editorials in British papers which remained favorable to him self cabled to Ottawa and there released by his delegation's press contact man, Malcolm MacDonald, toothbrush-mustached son of Prime Minister MacDonald.

P:If Canadian Premier Richard Bedford Bennett could be said to have "seized leadership" of the Conference last week, he did so by demanding that the Mother Country and other parts of the British Commonwealth join Daughter Canada in stipulating that the "Empire-content" in materials & labor of Empire goods shall be not less than 50%.

In the Mother Country, in the Irish Free State and in South Africa an assembled U. S. product (such as a motor car) can now get by as "British" with an Empire content of only 25%. New Zealand like Canada stipulates 50%. Australia is the most patriotic of all in this respect: 75%.

P:Typical of press releases from the studiously secretive Conference last week was this:

"The committee on meat is discussing pork."

Instantly Danish correspondents were on their toes, cabled reams of rumor to Scandinavia's big bacon barons.

P:When the Conference got around to electing the chairman of its Committee on Currency last week, it chose Canadian Minister of Trade & Commerce Henry Herbert Stevens, famed for his perennial plea, "Remonetize silver!"

Unable to speak for himself to the public last week because of Conference se crecy, Mr. Stevens was much in the company of Col. Leopold Stennett Amery, onetime Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs in Great Britain, today a lobbyist. "We," said Col. Amery. "are not advocating anything so extreme as the old Bryan formula of 16 to one.* But much would be accomplished if governments would put a better silver content into their subsidiary coins and if they would allow their central banks to hold some silver as a backing for their currency issues."/-

P:Also lobbied was the notion of an Empire Super-Bank, chief lobbyist for this being Director John Ford Darling of England's mighty Midland Bank. Urging that the London pound sterling be made the Empire currency, Mr. Darling ex pressed his opinion that "the pound now has greater relative strength than at the time it was placed on gold [in 1925] and the American dollar, though backed by gold, is relatively much weaker."

Except by lobbyists no new Empire monetary policy was publicly mentioned at the Conference. Moreover Mr. Baldwin. Premier Bennett and Chancellor Neville Chamberlain of the British Exchequer were understood to have no sympathy with such proposals. South Africa's delegation had already come out in favor of restoring all Empire currencies to the gold standard (TIME. Aug. 1).

P:Taxed with reports that he had offered to mediate between the Mother Country and the Irish Free State (see col. 2) dignified Canadian Premier Bennett firmly said:

"I have never made any such offer and have never said anything that could be construed as such an offer."

P:Speaking for India (though strictly speaking India is represented by the Baldwin delegation), cheerful old Sir Atul Chatterjee said:

"India is not anxious to injure her trade with the United States. . . . India is making large plans for extension of her trade with the United States. . . . We must keep this in mind."

P:Through devious channels the news leaked that negative Mr. Baldwin had made, as almost his only positive proposal last week, a suggestion to Mr. Bennett that Canada discriminate heavily against U. S. chemicals, of which the U. S. sells nearly six times more to Canada than does the Mother Country.

P:More & more as the week wore on. the Ottawa Conference began to be nicknamed "Ottawa Poker," each group and delegation doing its best to bluff the others.

*In market price the ratio of silver to gold today is 76 to one. /-The silver in a U. S. silver dollar is worth today 21-c-.

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