Give & Take

Since Hitler began persecuting Jews and Japanese began killing Chinese, millions of peaceful people have been fighting the losers' battles with boycotts. Fortnight ago U. S. Department of Commerce breakdowns of 1938 foreign trade figures measured the boycotts' success. Last week, to stimulate revival of trade, Germany set up a German-American Chamber of Commerce of the Pacific Coast in San Francisco; and in Chicago the German Consul General for the Midwest revealed he was trying to barter German machinery, harmonicas, barbed wire for several hundred thousand tons of U. S. lard.

The Department of Commerce figures showed that U. S. imports from Germany had dropped from $78,100,000 in 1933 (Hitler's Year One) to $64,500,000 last year, a fall of 17%. During the same period imports from Belgium rose 44%, from Norway 16%, from the United Kingdom 6%. Last year (first full year of the war in China) U. S. imports from Japan fell from 1937's $204,200,000 to $126,800,000.

Granting the general decline in U. S. foreign trade, disrupting effects of war and exchange restrictions, boycotters nevertheless claim much credit for these whopping trade losses. That credit must be divided between 1) the uncoordinated efforts of millions of individual shoppers, and 2) the organized activity that stems chiefly from two groups: the Joint Boycott Council (of the American Jewish Congress and Jewish Labor Committee) and the American Boycott Against Aggressor Nations (onetime Committee for a Boycott Against Japanese Aggression).

By & large, boycotting has been ineffective against producer goods such as German chemicals, iron pipes, tools, wire, certain kinds of industrial machines. Results show most clearly in consumer goods like gloves, furs, toys. In Manhattan, with the biggest Jewish concentration in the U. S., Macy, Saks-Fifth Avenue, Gimbel Bros., Lord & Taylor, Franklin Simon, Bloomingdale, B. Altman and many other stores have stopped carrying German-made merchandise.

To boycotters such facts are reason for gloating. Not to be overlooked, however, is the fact that foreign trade is a give-&-take affair. Last week, for example, a spokesman for the new German-American Chamber of Commerce of the Pacific Coast pointed out that German purchases of U. S. dried prunes and apricots had dwindled from 33% of the total exported in 1929 to 8.8% in 1937. And the lard dickerings demonstrated how U. S. farmers are suffering from the drop in German trade. In pre-Hitler years Germany often bought as much as 30%, of U. S. lard exports; last year Germany bought only 7%--and last week U. S. loose lard was at the lowest price in over four years (5 3/4 a lb.).

Although Germany now needs lard desperately and the U. S. has a glut, it was by no means likely that a deal could be arranged. Last week several packers announced that they would sell their lard for cash only.

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