LABOR AND THE TRADE BILL

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

The probable effect of the passage of HR9901 upon unemployment in this country has been the subject of extensive debate among competent economists for some time now; it is unfortunate that a CRIMSON editorialist finds"...examining the Bill in rational economic terms" "perhaps...silly."

It is generally understood, by those who bother to really investigate the causes of the problem, that much of our unemployment is the result of structural peculiarities in the economy caused by factor immobilities and adjustment problems in depressed or semi-depressed areas. It is not obvious at all what effect the passage of HR 9900 will have upon this type of unemployment.

As for unemployment effects within import-competing industries, the opinions of organized labor seem to differ substantially from those of Mr. Schwartz. Does the editorialist choose to ignore the unions' general support for the Bill? Or does Mr. Schwartz feel he is more qualified to evaluate labor's interests than are labor's spokesmen?

The beneficial effects of the passage of HR9900 will hardly be limited to the sphere of diplomacy, and the dismissal of the Bill's probable positive economic effects only indicates superficiality. G. L. Rowsey.

MR. SCHWARTZ REPLIES: I regret the petulant language to which Mr. Rowsey refers, but I do not think its excision weakens my case. I argued that, for various reasons, the Trade Bill is unlikely to have any appreciable effect on this country's unemployment problem: and that to pretend it will is in effect to deny assistance to those whose needs deserve the government's first attention.

The welter of Jargon with which Mr. Rowsey lards his second paragraph does anything but add light to the discussion of this most serious of American economic problems; and his reference to statements by labor leaders is equally deceptive. To be sure, as recently as last week-end Mr. David MacDonald called for passage of the Bill, and the A.F.L.C.I.O. Convention in Miami received the President's address on it very generously. But it was at that same Convention that Representative Wilbur Mills asked the question I discussed in my article--why workers displaced by foreign competition should receive special attention. Mills left most of those present wondering why too.

But labor's support of the Bill is not a fair standard in judging their feelings about it; it is possible to favor the Bill, and still have serious doubts that it will usher in the Golden Age of American Labor the President predicts. That, Indeed, I take to be labor's position; and, for all the good it does labor, its feelings and mine coincide on this point. Union leaders must wonder, as I do, why the major place of economic legislation proposed by the President has only so tenuous a bearing on the country's major economic III.