PLEA FOR ACTION

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 356, 18 October 1932, Page 5

PLEA FOR ACTION

(Press. Assn.-

PETITION IS PRESENTED TO .PRESJOENT HOOVER ECONOMISTS' REPRESENTATION

— By Telegiaph — Copyclght).

JKec. -Uct. 17, 8.5 p.m. Washington, Oct. 16. Making a direct inference that the recently announced CanadianBritish tariff agreement demands immediate action, 180 leading economists. and tariff experts to-day presented Mr. Herbert Hoover with a, petition urging him to invoke the flexible provision of the> SmootHawley Act to eliminate tariff inequalities, especially those which are causing retaliation ahroad, and directly challenged the President's statement made at Desmoines that the tariff was not directly responsible for the agricultural and general depression. The petition relates extensive examples of foreign retaliation culminating in the Ottawa Conference. It states that the conference furnished living proof that the United States cannot impose- embargoes against products of her best customers without harmful reprisals against American goods. The petition also declares that many duties written into the SmootHawley Act are intended to raise prohibitive tariffs against international trade-. These methods defy all sound principles of economics. They spread blight and nnemployment and strangle commerce. They impoverish the working people of all nations while deluding them with false promises of an improvement in their conditions. "It is our earnest belief that farmers, wage earners and business men have infinitely more to gain from reductions than from an increase of tariff rates," state the petitioners. "It is clear to us that either recovery in the country or abroad will be extremely diffieult so long as excessive arbitrary restrictions are imposed on world commerce." The petitioners remind the President that they are among more than 1000 economists who in 1930 warned him of the dangerons results that would follow the signing of the bill.