Fairyland of Oratory

If the U.S. is to live in harmony with the rest of the world after the war, it must face the fact that international free competition is dead--it must join international economic cartels and make them serve the public interest. This unpopular opinion, directly opposed to that of the Administration,* was expressed in the November Harper's by New Dealing Milo Perkins, onetime executive director of the Board of Economic Warfare and heretofore a staunch advocate of free enterprise.

His argument was premised on two facts: 1) the U.S. cannot break cartels by trying to force the Sherman Anti-Trust Act on the rest of the world; and 2) foreign businesses engaged in cartels are strongly supported by their Governments. Perkins believes that much of the U.S. righteous indignation about cartel agreements is phony; that this country not only basically wants cartels, but sooner or later "the pressure of circumstances will tend to make us accept cartels because other nations accept them."

Said Perkins: "We Americans preach free competition but we don't really practice what we preach. We moralize about the competitive way, and then cling to tariff schedules so high that foreign businessmen cannot enter the U.S. market. . . . A sizable part of American business will want to join cartels after the war to protect its domestic market, and . . . popular opinion will back such a move [because] we are still under the delusion that the way to be prosperous is to sell as much as we can abroad and to buy as little as we can from abroad."

Milo Perkins did not suggest that the fight for a freer economy should go on with less vigor. But if the fight is to get anywhere, Americans must operate realistically, and "not in the fairyland of our own oratory." As a realistic start, Perkins suggested that the U.S.: 1) pass a law requiring registration of all cartel arrangements; 2) set up a Board of International Trade to review and pass on the validity of the registrations; 3) allow the board to pass on all international commodity agreements. He concluded that thus, "where we cannot eliminate the cartels, we must gradually perfect new ways to make them into instruments which will serve the public interest."

*Last week the interdepartmental Executive Committee on Foreign Economic Policy, headed by Assistant Secretary of State Dean Acheson, completed three years' work on cartels. Result: a recommendation that the Government take a firm stand against "restrictive" international agreements of all kinds, except: 1) for purposes of national defense; 2) to conserve scarce and vital commodities; 3) in cases involving public health and morals, such as narcotics; 4) in cases of acute crisis.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.