Why, then, the
excitement, why the protests?
excitement, why the protests?
Soviet Union - 1931 - Fighting the Red Trade Menace
net/2027/uc1.
b3292264 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www.
hathitrust.
org/access_use#pd-google
? FIGHTING
THE RED TRADE MENACE
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? CHAPTER I
Milan:
Largest department store on earth, the Soviet Un-
ion Foreign Trade Monopoly, is conducting the great-
est permanent bargain sale in history and in fifty-two
lands its agents today are offering a thousand varie-
ties of wares at prices that bring despair to their
competitors.
What these offers mean first of all to America, one
of the Soviet Union's chief competitors for the
European market, is a principal object of this in-
vestigation of Soviet trade in Europe's chief indus-
trial cities, ports and capitals, an investigation un-
dertaken on the eve of the spring and summer export
campaign of the Soviet Union that is expected to
bring increased quantities of Soviet goods on a mar-
ket already groaning from oversupply.
Milan, Naples, Rome, Genoa, Savona, Marseilles,
Paris, Brussels, Antwerp, Amsterdam, The Hague,
Rotterdam, London, Liverpool, Manchester, Oslo,
Stockholm, Helsingfors, Riga, Copenhagen, Ham-
burg, Bremen and Berlin are the stopping points for
this investigation. All are rich sources of information
on the questions that are absorbing the attention of
the world's business men and economists, namely, to
what extent is Soviet trade expanding, how great is it
1
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? 2 FIGHTIXG THE EED TRADE MENACE
today, how great will it be tomorrow, with whom does
it come in conflict and what influence has it had on
the world economic crisis ?
Europe recognizes the "Red trade menace," but
what is Europe doing to meet it? This is a matter for
particular concern in the United States at this mo-
ment when conflicting interests at home are repre-
senting both sides of the dispute pro or contra trade
with the Soviet Union, and whether it can be estab-
lished that Europe is doing little or doing much to
check Soviet economic expansion, it remains of sig-
nificance to America to know how the rest of the
"capitalist" world is reacting to the sudden appear-
ance in international trade of this new and fast grow-
ing anti-capitalist competitor.
What is the outlook that success of the Five-Year
Plan will add to the flood of Russian petroleum,
lumber, coal, grain, flax and other raw materials a
corresponding export of manufactured articles is
another of the questions that American and Euro-
pean business men are asking and that this investiga-
tion will attempt to answer.
Finally a visit to the eleven European countries is
intended to throw light on the complex of questions
that most excites Moscow, that interests all Euro-
pean nations, that is asked by every country and
every corporation doing business with the Soviet
Union, namely: What chance is there of the forma-
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? FIGHTING THE RED TRADE MENACE 3
tion of a European economic bloc to boycott the
Soviet Union and what chance is there of the estab-
lishment of either national or international trading
centers to provide for the non-Soviet world in its com-
mercial contacts with the Soviet Union a counterpart
to the Soviet foreign trade monopoly? Depending on
the answer to this set of inquiries is the whole fabric
of Russian credit abroad, and supplementary to these
answers must be presented an analysis of Europe's
credit policies toward the Soviet Union.
This much may now be said to be fairly well es-
tablished by the investigation so far carried out: In
a period when foreign trade of all non-Soviet coun-
tries is falling rapidly, Soviet foreign trade is in-
creasing by leaps and bounds. The fact that the So-
viet Union's exports proceed in part from a surplus
obtained by depriving the population of much they
require is a fact irrelevant to the objective effect of
these exports upon the world market.
American and other producers of the great Soviet
staples are feeling Soviet competition. European
manufacturing countries profit for the moment by
purchasing cheap Soviet staples offered in competi-
tion to the products of America and other raw ma-
terial sources. They profit by their own exports
of machines and factory equipment for fulfillment of
the Five-Year Plan. They are vaguely aware of the
possibilities in store for them from an industrialized,
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? 4 FIGHTING THE RED TRADE MENACE
economically independent, militarily powerful Soviet
Union, but are acutely aware of the immediate gains
to be had from Soviet trade.
European commerical dislike of America is aston-
ishingly widespread and exerts strong influence on
European policy toward the Soviet Union. In some
countries an effort has been made to check Soviet
"dumping" by restrictive systems, but in no country
visited has the effort been successful. In most coun-
tries the realization is strong that if anything effec-
tive is to be done by the non-Soviet world to counter
Soviet economic expansion it must be done by a
united front of all nations.
In conclusion, if it must be formulated in a single
sentence, it may be recorded as the writer's unavoid-
able impression that Europe can arrive at no special
accord in respect to combating the Soviet Union
until it has arrived at a general accord on all of the
manifold questions that now divide this continent,
and that if Europe were to arrive at such a general
accord, remote though the prospect is, Europe would
do so with as much intention of directing it commer-
cially against the United States as of directing it
commerically against the Soviet Union.
Like every department store, the Soviet Foreign
Trade Monopoly has its specialties to attract cus-
tomers, cow rivals, and impress the public. Russian
coal in Pennsylvania, Russian textiles in Lancashire
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? FIGHTING THE RED TRADE MENACE 5
and Russian razor blades in Germany have been
looked upon by producing interests in the nations
in question as insults added to the injury felt from
more voluminous exports under the Five-Year Plan.
For Italy, though, the Five-Year Planners have
reserved their most audacious bit of specialty sales-
manship and here today in the Milan Fair, in the
home of spaghetti, one may see displayed fourteen
varieties of Soviet Russian macaroni--fresh, tooth-
some, unashamed!
The world at large, American and European, is
alarmed at the sales abroad by the Soviet Union at
prices below the utmost ability of their bourgeois
competitors to meet. "Russian Dumping" is a world-
wide cry and has been advanced as an explanation
for nearly every economic ill from unemployment to
the break in the wheat market. But few persons,
even among that increasing number of observers who
are keenly interested in the problem of Soviet eco-
nomic expansion and who declare it the most im-
portant development of our times, are aware, spe-
cifically and concretely, of just what the Soviet
Union is shipping abroad, of how various and volu-
minous its offers of goods upon the world market are.
An examination of the Soviet Union in European
trade, of the Five-Year Plan from the outside, of
the Bolshevik behind the counter and of efforts or
the lack of them by European nations to checkmate
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? 6 FIGHTING THE RED TRADE MENACE
the "Red trade menace" could have no better intro-
duction than a visit to the Soviet exhibit in the
Milan Fair.
A stroll around this big rectangular, two-storey
permanent building, decorated with hammer and
sickle and Soviet star and flying the red flag of Com-
munism undisturbed in the birthplace of Fascism, is
more instructive than volumes of prophecy on Soviet
foreign trade.
Two things are worth the time of the most hurried
visitor to Milan: To reflect upon the past under the
marble vault of the Milan Cathedral, grandest
Gothic structure in Europe, symbol of the oldest
Christian church; to speculate upon the future
among the crowded booths of the Red trade exhibit,
symbol of the newest economic faith.
Here at hand in the flesh, in the can, in the bale
and in the bolt, is a visible part of the inventory of
the biggest sales organization in the world, ready to
furnish anything from worm medicine for overfed
lapdogs to marble gravestones and linen doilies, ready
to meet and cut anybody's price from cotton to coal!
It is an astounding exhibition and Soviet macaroni
in Italy is only one of its revelations. There in a
corner is a stand taller than a man, brilliantly lit
with thin-necked globular electric light bulbs. They
are for sale. They are Soviet products. Three years
ago the best the Soviet Union could do in the way
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? FIGHTING THE RED TRADE MENACE 7
of producing instruments of illumination was to turn
out with the help of Swedish concessionaires poor
quality kerosene lanterns. Today they are export-
ing electric light bulbs indistinguishable to the lay-
man from the most modern products of American or
German factories. Patents, it may be remarked, are
one of the least of Soviet worries.
In another section of the building is a food depart-
ment. One wonders what the reaction would be if a
Russian worker or peasant could be transported sud-
denly and without the intermediary surprises of
bourgeois European restaurants from his table of
salt herring, dry grits and black bread to this food
department. Here are stacks and stacks of canned
goods, all with labels in English, salmon tinned and
dried, patties of fish liver, a dozen varieties of smoked
delicacies, a huge refrigerator laden with every sort
of caviar from gray-grained de luxe Beluga Malosol
to the cheaper varieties of amber. Here are long
shelves full of preserves in glass, the light glinting
from appetizing contours of strawberries, ripe cher-
ries, plums, pears and peaches. Tall jars of jams and
marmalades stand opposite other jars of candied
fruits and a hundred varieties of confections fill all
the chinks and crevices of this opulent display.
Under current conditions of Soviet popular faith
in the Five-Year Plan it is perfectly possible that
the Russian visitor might be satisfied with the ex-
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? 8 FIGHTING THE RED TRADE MENACE
planation that these Lucullan foods could properly
be spared for the sake of the lire, the pounds and
the dollars, the machines and the factories necessary
to carry out the plan.
Next door are more fundamental foods. Many of
them have virtually disappeared from Russian tables
since the Five-Year Plan began.
Here are wheat, thirty-nine varieties, and flour,
four kinds, for white bread--last seen in Russia in
1928. Here are six sorts of cornmeal, eleven of beans
and four grades of sugar. Last autumn in the con-
siderable city of Dnepropetrovsk we could find no
sugar. Distribution difficulties were to blame, we
were told, and it is true that sugar was available
everywhere else en route through the Soviet Union.
But distribution runs smoother when the outlet is
abroad and foreign currency the goal.
Here are twenty-six sorts of peas and seed vege-
tables, barley, oats, rye and finally the macaroni.
Not just macaroni though, but all calibers in be-
tween, from finger-thick noodles to hair-fine vermi-
celli. In this department is material for every sort of
nutriment, from French pastry to mast for swine.
Every department has its director, anxious to dis-
tribute literature, ready to explain that the objects
on exhibition are only a fraction of those the Soviet
Union could supply. The display is quite enough.
Description of it reads like a catalogue, and from
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? FIGHTING THE RED TRADE MENACE 9
any other country in the world its relation would be
purposeless. Lacking time for a trip to the Soviet
Union, however, an outsider interested in what the
Five-Year Plan means for his world would find it
profitable to continue a stroll through the exhibit,
observing next chair-backs, gelatine, cigarette cases
and chess boards.
One whole section is devoted to petroleum and
every conceivable variety of petroleum product, and
another to lumber and wood products, now the larg-
est Soviet exports. Here are parquet floorings, ply-
wood, ready-made doors, sashes, sawn timber, planks.
Upstairs are rugs, antique and new; forty-one
kinds of bristles; eighteen of feathers; twelve sorts
of sausage casings; twenty-four samples of hemp
goods, including ropes, mats and nets, twenty-five
kinds of horse hair; sixty-five of furs; 150 exam-
ples of fine porcelain; two shelves full of common
crockery; a whole department for peasant handwork
--toys, dolls, embroidered linen, balalaikas and man-
dolins.
Downstairs, on the other side, we came up short
before three bales of Russian cotton. In 1928, the
first year of the Five-Year Plan, the Soviet Union
imported nearly 500,000 bales of cotton, 300,000 of
them from the United States. American irrigation
engineers have been working for the last two and a
half years on vast projects for watering the Central
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? 10 FIGHTING THE RED TRADE MENACE
Asian plains, the chief source of the Russian staple.
In this, the third year of the Plan, the Russians are
exporting cotton.
I asked an American cotton broker here what it
meant.
"For the present, a daring gesture: for the fu-
ture, I don't know," he replied.
"It's possible that, because of the remote distance
of their mills in Central Russia from the cotton fields
of Turkestan, they may find it cheaper to transport
some cotton to foreign markets and import foreign
cotton by shorter routes for their own manufacture.
At any rate, as far as I know, Americans are not
selling any more cotton to Russia this year. "
The Soviet Union sent 600 bales of cotton to Milan
this spring. It was snapped up at prices averaging
$5 a bale below American cotton of the same class.
According to foreign experts who examined it it
was good staple--very bright, strict middling, a lit-
tle coarse and irregular, but very strong and of
good character. Soviet trade representatives here
offered for sale indeterminable quantities in three
classes of strict middling and three of middling, all
at prices about $5 a bale less than American cotton
and on terms inacceptable to American sellers, in-
cluding a clause that buyers could reject the cotton
before delivery.
This was at any rate an interesting forecast of
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? FIGHTING THE RED TRADE MENACE 11
what may be anticipated from the Soviet Union in
another of the world's great staple commodities. But
what of manufactured articles? The Soviet exhibit
gives a partial answer. A short distance from the
baled cotton stand cases of textile samples. More
than 300 varieties of Soviet cotton and linen goods
are offered for sale.
We hurry along past thirty kinds of hides and
leather, water-proofing oil, wax, vermifuge for dogs,
ninety-three kinds of chemicals, prepared and raw;
fifteen sorts of granite and marble, a case of semi-
precious stones and forty-five kinds of other min-
erals and pause once more before a corner full of
silk--raw silk and silk cocoons. There is much to
learn in the Soviet trade exhibit. Last year Italy
bought more than $1,000,000 worth of cocoons and
about $200,000 worth of raw silk from the Soviet
Union, where a pair of silk stockings is rarer than
white bread. At the exit nuggets, lumps and boul-
ders of anthracite and bituminous coal decorate one
side of the doorway. Don Basin coal mines are, with
the railroad system, the furthest behind of all
branches of Soviet economy under the Plan, but de-
spite the need for fuel at home, the need for foreign
exchange abroad is greater and coal is offered in a
dozen varieties.
We ask about prices. They are trade secrets and
nowhere so strictly as in trade with the Soviets. Not
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? 12 FIGHTING THE RED TRADE MENACE
here but in the markets of Milan, Genoa and Naples
is it possible to obtain an accurate picture of the
price practices of the Soviet trade delegation. Not
here but in Rome it is possible to obtain a satis-
factory explanation for the economic ties that bind
Communist Russia to Fascist Italy today and that
constitute one of the most effective hindrances to that
union of bourgeois states which the Soviet Union
has feared so long.
As one leaves the Soviet exhibit a score of ques-
tions clamor for answer. It is true that the total
Soviet exports in 1930 only reached 66 per cent
of the pre-war Russian exports. Russia under Czar
Nicholas, in 1913 sent $750,000,000 worth of goods
abroad. The Soviet Union under Stalin in 1930 ex-
ported $500,000,000 worth. From 1911 to 1913, ac-
cording to the United States Department of Com-
merce, Russia's share of world exports was 4. 1 per
cent; in 1929 it was 1. 4 per cent.
Why, then, the
excitement, why the protests?
Partly because the world for nearly a decade, from
1915 to 1924, when Russian exports sank to almost
nothing, had become accustomed to doing without
Russian goods and their place had been filled from
other sources. In this sense the Soviet Union is only
regaining the old Russian markets.
Partly, however, the world is alarmed not so much
at what Soviet exports are now but at what they may
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? FIGHTING THE RED TRADE MENACE 13
become when the Five-Year Plan is carried out and
at the use to which devotees of the world revolution
may ultimately put the proceeds from a vastly in-
creased foreign trade. For the Plan, be it remem-
bered, makes it the task of the Soviet Union not
merely to overtake but to outstrip the "capitalist
nations. " Not until the czarist total of $750,000,000
worth of exports is overtaken, outstripped and mul-
tiplied will the Five-Year Planners be as happy over
their foreign trade balance as they are now over
their petroleum production, for example.
Finally, however, the world is uneasy precisely
because of the picture given here by the Milan Soviet
exhibit. No other country on earth ever had its ex-
ports concentrated in the hands of a single organiza-
tion. This huge national department store, capable
of supplying wares not by the dozen items but by
the dozen shiploads, possesses the inestimable advan-
tage of unified organization. It can maneuver, take
losses on some goods to be recouped from profits on
others. It can play off its rivals against one another,
take bids from a world of competitors, throw its
orders here or there as economic or political expe-
dience dictates. Whatever may be the criticism of
the workings of Soviet State Capitalism as a sys-
tem of production and of domestic distribution its
virtues as an instrument of foreign trade have at
least impressed its competitors.
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? CHAPTER II
Rome:
A Fascist journalist, a Bolshevik diplomat, a Ger-
man industrialist and an American banker were
gathered for dinner at the home of an American
newspaper man. Introductions over, the conversa-
tion swept swiftly into political channels and in five
minutes the Fascist and Bolshevik had ranged them-
selves solidly against the citizens of republican states.
United in their respect for dictators, agreeing in
their contempt for democracy, these individuals be-
trayed an attitude that today has made Fascist
Italy one of the two most reliable safeguards of
the Soviet Union against the formation of any kind
of anti-Soviet front in Europe.
"To save Italy from Bolshevism," Italy turned
Fascist in October, 1922. Two years later Italy rec-
ognized the Soviet Union in February, 1924, and ex-
changed Ambassadors. Italy and the Soviet Union
signed a trade agreement in July, 1930, and by the
irony of events on May 1, 1931, premier Red holi-
day, international celebration day for the Com-
munist Party, there was announced the renewal of
this trade agreement on terms extremely satisfac-
tory to Moscow, guaranteeing a sure outlet for con-
siderable quantities of Soviet exports, no matter
14
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? FIGHTING THE RED TRADE MENACE 15
what other European countries might do, and pro-
viding on liberal credit terms for the Soviet Union
to obtain from Italy some of the instruments of pro-
duction indispensable for fulfillment of the Five-
Year Plan.
It was somewhat surprising to learn here that re-
sentment against America--ill feeling over our tariff
--had played a role in the development of Italy's
economic rapprochement with the Soviet Union.
"Offer Italy the same goods at the same price, one
set of goods from America and one from the Soviet
Union," said an American of unimpeachable reli-
ability and experience to me, "and Italy will prefer
to take Soviet goods. Chiefly because of our tariff,
which has hit Italy hard, and partly because Italy
is playing with the Soviets. "
American trade with Italy, of course, is still in-
comparably greater in volume than Soviet trade with
Italy, but in view of this sentiment the direction of
development is perhaps significant. Italian foreign
trade in general has declined since 1929, but Italo-
American trade has declined in particular and Italo-
Russian trade has increased.
In 1929 Italy imported from America $187,000,-
000 worth of goods, in 1930, $134,000,000. She ex-
ported to America $90,000,000 worth of goods in
1929, and $70,000,000 worth in 1930. Italy imported
from the Soviet Union $18,000,000 worth of goods
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? 16 FIGHTING THE RED TRADE MENACE
in 1929 and $28,000,000 worth in 1930. She ex-
ported to the Soviet Union $3,700,000 worth of
goods in 1929, and $5,000,000 worth in 1930.
In the Soviet Union not the faintest whisper of
criticism of the Five-Year Plan may be uttered with
impunity. Nor in Fascist Italy is criticism of the
Government one of the healthiest of occupations. It
is therefore difficult to determine what, if any, at-
titude the broad public here has toward the question
of trade with the Soviet Union. I talked with a score
of business men and from all received the identical
answer that they had never heard expressed by Ital-
ians the least apprehension over possible consequences
of Italian aid to the Soviet economic expansion. There
is no talk about the Five-Year Plan, for nobody
knows anything about it. References to it in the press
are meager and from a short-period of observation
it was my impression that the Italian public must be
the least informed of any in Europe on Russia.
In every other country on the continent, including
Germany, the country doing the largest trade with
the Soviet Union, there are at least groups of public
men who assert that aid to Soviet economic growth
is a suicidal policy for the bourgeois world. In its
complete lack of any critical expression, the Italian
public is unique, perhaps unwillingly silent, perhaps
merely ignorant, perhaps genuinely acquiescent in
the Government's attitude.
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? FIGHTING THE RED TRADE MENACE 17
This attitude is fairly clear: Italy, it claims, from
a purely commercial standpoint at this moment has
everything to gain and nothing to lose from trade
with the Soviet Union. The financial status of the
government with a confessed budget deficit estimated
at more than $100,000,000 and with about $150,-
000,000 payments on treasury bonds coming due in
October, 1931, does not permit Italy to let any trade
chances slip. In a period of economic depression and
loss of foreign markets Italy cannot afford to ignore
any opportunities for business.
Specifically, the American tariff has cost Italy
money and Italy hopes to make up some of her losses
by trade with the Soviet Union. Italy, it is true, buys
five times as much from the Soviet Union as she sells
to the Soviet Union, and this is serious at a time when
the Italian foreign trade balance is $250,000,000 pas-
sive, but the new trade agreement, it is hoped, may
remedy that. And, anyway, the products that Italy
takes from Russia are products Italy has to have
but cannot supply herself, four-fifths of all Italian
imports from the Soviet Union being petroleum and
wheat. As to the "Red Trade Menace," says the
Italian Government, "Fascist Italy fears no menace,
least of all Russia. "
These are the economic arguments of Italy for
trade with the Soviet Union. Political considerations
have placed at least as large a role. On bad terms
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? 18 FIGHTING THE RED TRADE MENACE
with France, distrustful in general of democratic
regimes, the Fascist Government has not yet given
up hope of establishing some kind of understanding
among the defeated nations of Central Europe, in-
cluding Germany, together with the Soviet Union
as a political counterpoise to the French post-
Versailles hegemony in Europe. As will appear later,
Italian military and naval circles are obviously in
favor of developing closer relations with the Soviet
Union, scarcely with the hope of any sort of active
alliance, but with the intention of insuring, in the
event of war with France, secure sources of petro-
leum and wheat from Russia through the Black Sea,
and this development may be observed actually tak-
ing place.
These were considerations that led up to the Italo-
Soviet trade agreement that has just been extended.
A glance at the text shows how advantageous are its
terms to the Soviet Union.
The first trade agreement of 1930 provided for
Soviet purchases from Italy of at least $10,000,000;
the new agreement provides for purchases of at least
$15,000,000 and foresees Soviet purchases next year
of at least $20,000,000. American observers here are
of the opinion that Soviet purchases will probably
exceed the stipulated figure.
There is good reason to believe that some part of
these Soviet purchases have been and will be diverted
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? FIGHTING THE RED TRADE MENACE 19
from America. Bogdanoff, head of the Amtorg Trad-
ing Agency, recently announced that Soviet pur-
chases in the United States had declined from $60,-
441,000 in the six months ended March 31, 1930,
to $33,385,000 for the six months ended March 31,
1931, and that this decline was largely attributable
to lack of credit facilities in the United States and
improvement of credit facilities in "some European
countries. " He meant, among others, Italy.
The Italo-Soviet trade agreement provides, first,
that the Soviets need only buy in Italy "in so far as
technical and commercial conditions are the same as
those existing in other countries for the products
requested. " Thus the Soviet Union is safeguarded
against losing the advantage of playing off the Ger-
man industrialist against the Italian industrialist,
of shopping around, of choosing the best quality at
the least price. Italy must deliver at least as cheaply
and excellently as any other seller.
The most important clause in the agreement is the
well-known section providing that the Italian Gov-
ernment guarantees to Italian business men 75 per
cent of the value of their sales to the Soviet Union,
enough to cover labor and materials and requiring the
seller to take the risk only on the estimated profits and
overhead. This liberal guarantee exceeds by 5 per cent
the German guarantee. It is sufficient, particularly
in a country where the banks are under Government
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? 20 FIGHTING THE RED TRADE MENACE
control, to make the question of discounting Soviet
bills in Italy of subordinate importance.
For comparison with the credit time terms previ-
ously granted in America to Amtorg, it is interesting
to note the length of time Italy grants the Soviet Un-
ion on twelve categories of products subject to Soviet
orders which were distributed by the Italian Govern-
ment in this manner in order to spread trade evenly
throughout her industry: On ships, payments must
be made in a maximum of fifty-four months, aver-
age forty-two; on ball and roller bearings, maximum
thirty-six, average twenty-four; machinery for ma-
chine shops, maximum thirty-six, average twenty-
nine; electrical machinery, maximum, thirty-six;
average twenty-nine; machinery for chemical in-
dustry, maximum thirty-six, average twenty-four;
other machinery, maximum thirty, average twenty-
one; automobiles and tractors, maximum thirty-six,
average twenty-four; auto parts, average twelve;
airplanes and airplane motors, maximum thirty-six,
average twenty-eight; precision, measuring and op-
tical instruments, maximum twenty-eight, average
twenty; metals, average twelve; chemicals and dyes,
twelve, and fertilizers, twelve months. General aver-
age payment will take place in twenty-five months.
But an Italian Government official would object if
one commented that Fascist Italy has faith in Com-
munist Russia's solvency for at least two years. He
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? FIGHTING THE RED TRADE MENACE 21
would point out that as far as payments go Italy
feels secure, inasmuch as she pays out to the Soviet
Union five times what she receives, and there should
always be a balance in the Soviet trade delegation's
treasury here.
An important item in Soviet purchases from Italy
is ships. The new agreement limits them by Italian
stipulation to $5,000,000 worth, sufficient, however,
to buy four. Two have been ordered by Soviets and
are now under construction, but do not appear yet
in trade statistics. Why Italy limited the Soviets to
$5,000,000 worth of ships is also interesting. The
Italian ship subsidy law, designed to stimulate the
creation of a merchant marine that would be of serv-
ice as well in war as in peace, has some remarkable
provisions.
There is a basic subsidy of 32 lire per gross ton
for all metal hulls and drawback, tariff exemption,
of 100 per cent on all customs duties for metal ma-
terial imported for ship construction. There is a pre-
mium for efficiency in ? fuel consumption running
from 16 lire to 12 lire per 100 kilograms of weight
for all auxiliary machinery installed. This is to pro-
mote the use of labor-saving devices. Finally, the
basic subsidy of 32 lire per ton may be increased by
30 per cent if the speed of the boat reaches fourteen
knots, and this increase scales upward until if the
boat reaches as high as twenty-seven knots, the basic
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? 22 FIGHTING THE RED TRADE MENACE
subsidy is increased by 235 per cent. These subsidies,
that apply as well to the construction of foreign
ships, mount very high and though they are limited
to a total of 114,000,000 lire a year from 1930 to
1934, they enable the Italian shipbuilders comfort-
ably to compete with older shipbuilding countries.
Hitherto, the Soviet Union has placed most of its
shipbuilding contracts in Germany. Today Italy has
made her shipyards so attractive that the Soviet
Union would like to place more orders here, but
the Italian Government will only permit shipbuilding
for the Soviet Union in proportion to total Soviet
orders at a ratio of $5,000,000 worth of ships out
of a total of $20,000,000 for all purchases. This is
a feature of Italo-Soviet relations being closely
watched by France, for the Soviet Union needs tor-
pedo boats, small cruisers and submarines for the
minimum requirements of its long neglected navy
and Italian yards are well equipped to supply them.
Another item of interest that does not, however,
appear as yet in the Italo-Soviet statistics concerns
airplanes. Early in March the Soviet Union ordered
seventy-five Savoya Macchetti hydroplanes equipped
with 750-horsepower Fraschini single motors, the
order including 150 spare motors. They were the
type of planes used by Balbo in his South American
flight and Maddalena for his rescue flight to the
Pole for Nobile.
Besides this deal, Italian manufacturers recently
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? FIGHTING THE RED TRADE MENACE 23
had almost closed the sale to the Soviet Union of
150 Savoya Pomillo planes, deliverable fifty per year,
Italy to take wheat for them, but the transaction
broke down for causes unknown. The barter feature,
however, was taken up by the Fiat Company, and
according to unofficial information, Italy has agreed
to deliver 2,000 Fiat trucks for grain, the Italian
Government Treasury giving two-year notes for 75
per cent of the sum to Fiat who are to discount
them. The Government promises to take up the notes
within a year, the Soviet Union to deliver wheat to
the amount of the sales price, and the Italian Gov-
ernment to sell the wheat and with the proceeds re-
deem the Fiat notes.
Included in the new treaty is a clause wherein the
Italian Government promises to invite the attention
of Italian engineers hitherto seldom employed in the
Soviet Union to the opportunities for rendering
technical assistance in the Five-Year Plan. Italian
industry is hopeful over the agreement and for the
moment producer interest is in the foreground of
Italian economic thinking about the Soviet Union. It
is, however, the consumer interest in Italy that is
really decisive for the Italian attitude toward Rus-
sia. And it is the Italian market for wheat, oil, lum-
ber, coal that interests most the American and other
exporters, who, under Soviet competition, have seen
or fear they may see their Italian customers slip-
ping away from them into Russian hands.
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? CHAPTER III
Savona, Italy:
Tucked away in this little Mediterranean port,
surrounded by vineyards, almost hidden in a hollow
of the hills and unknown to any except the alert
observers of foreign oil companies, there is going up
an outpost of the Soviet's Five-Year Plan in Europe.
A huge oil depot for the storage of Soviet petro-
leum and petroleum products, the Savona station
of the Soviet Oil Trust provides one of the most
impressive evidences to be found anywhere in Eu-
rope of the far-reaching plans and self-confidence
of the Soviet foreign trade monopoly and of the
hospitality the Russians have found in Italy.
Here is a bit, and a very significant bit, of Soviet
Russia in Italy. After a prolonged tour of Soviet
industrial plants in Russia under the Five-Year
Plan, it brought a flood of familiar recollections to
find in Savona just such another plant, also not
quite completed, also very large, also packed full of
meaning for the future.
Only the environment is quite different from the
bleak surroundings of most great Soviet plants in
Russia. A fast hour and a half drive along a highway
that skirts the Gulf of Genoa, past coves and bays
24
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? FIGHTING THE RED TRADE MENACE 25
improbably blue, through tunnels that pierce pro-
jecting cliffs, through sleepy towns, where sun-
browned girls sit knitting at flowery doorways,
brings one to Savona. The port is full of idle ships,
beflagged. It is a national holiday. We inquire the
way to the new Soviet oil station. The car winds and
turns through narrow village streets, walled high on
either side by gray stone, topped by nodding blos-
soms.
? FIGHTING
THE RED TRADE MENACE
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? CHAPTER I
Milan:
Largest department store on earth, the Soviet Un-
ion Foreign Trade Monopoly, is conducting the great-
est permanent bargain sale in history and in fifty-two
lands its agents today are offering a thousand varie-
ties of wares at prices that bring despair to their
competitors.
What these offers mean first of all to America, one
of the Soviet Union's chief competitors for the
European market, is a principal object of this in-
vestigation of Soviet trade in Europe's chief indus-
trial cities, ports and capitals, an investigation un-
dertaken on the eve of the spring and summer export
campaign of the Soviet Union that is expected to
bring increased quantities of Soviet goods on a mar-
ket already groaning from oversupply.
Milan, Naples, Rome, Genoa, Savona, Marseilles,
Paris, Brussels, Antwerp, Amsterdam, The Hague,
Rotterdam, London, Liverpool, Manchester, Oslo,
Stockholm, Helsingfors, Riga, Copenhagen, Ham-
burg, Bremen and Berlin are the stopping points for
this investigation. All are rich sources of information
on the questions that are absorbing the attention of
the world's business men and economists, namely, to
what extent is Soviet trade expanding, how great is it
1
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? 2 FIGHTIXG THE EED TRADE MENACE
today, how great will it be tomorrow, with whom does
it come in conflict and what influence has it had on
the world economic crisis ?
Europe recognizes the "Red trade menace," but
what is Europe doing to meet it? This is a matter for
particular concern in the United States at this mo-
ment when conflicting interests at home are repre-
senting both sides of the dispute pro or contra trade
with the Soviet Union, and whether it can be estab-
lished that Europe is doing little or doing much to
check Soviet economic expansion, it remains of sig-
nificance to America to know how the rest of the
"capitalist" world is reacting to the sudden appear-
ance in international trade of this new and fast grow-
ing anti-capitalist competitor.
What is the outlook that success of the Five-Year
Plan will add to the flood of Russian petroleum,
lumber, coal, grain, flax and other raw materials a
corresponding export of manufactured articles is
another of the questions that American and Euro-
pean business men are asking and that this investiga-
tion will attempt to answer.
Finally a visit to the eleven European countries is
intended to throw light on the complex of questions
that most excites Moscow, that interests all Euro-
pean nations, that is asked by every country and
every corporation doing business with the Soviet
Union, namely: What chance is there of the forma-
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? FIGHTING THE RED TRADE MENACE 3
tion of a European economic bloc to boycott the
Soviet Union and what chance is there of the estab-
lishment of either national or international trading
centers to provide for the non-Soviet world in its com-
mercial contacts with the Soviet Union a counterpart
to the Soviet foreign trade monopoly? Depending on
the answer to this set of inquiries is the whole fabric
of Russian credit abroad, and supplementary to these
answers must be presented an analysis of Europe's
credit policies toward the Soviet Union.
This much may now be said to be fairly well es-
tablished by the investigation so far carried out: In
a period when foreign trade of all non-Soviet coun-
tries is falling rapidly, Soviet foreign trade is in-
creasing by leaps and bounds. The fact that the So-
viet Union's exports proceed in part from a surplus
obtained by depriving the population of much they
require is a fact irrelevant to the objective effect of
these exports upon the world market.
American and other producers of the great Soviet
staples are feeling Soviet competition. European
manufacturing countries profit for the moment by
purchasing cheap Soviet staples offered in competi-
tion to the products of America and other raw ma-
terial sources. They profit by their own exports
of machines and factory equipment for fulfillment of
the Five-Year Plan. They are vaguely aware of the
possibilities in store for them from an industrialized,
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? 4 FIGHTING THE RED TRADE MENACE
economically independent, militarily powerful Soviet
Union, but are acutely aware of the immediate gains
to be had from Soviet trade.
European commerical dislike of America is aston-
ishingly widespread and exerts strong influence on
European policy toward the Soviet Union. In some
countries an effort has been made to check Soviet
"dumping" by restrictive systems, but in no country
visited has the effort been successful. In most coun-
tries the realization is strong that if anything effec-
tive is to be done by the non-Soviet world to counter
Soviet economic expansion it must be done by a
united front of all nations.
In conclusion, if it must be formulated in a single
sentence, it may be recorded as the writer's unavoid-
able impression that Europe can arrive at no special
accord in respect to combating the Soviet Union
until it has arrived at a general accord on all of the
manifold questions that now divide this continent,
and that if Europe were to arrive at such a general
accord, remote though the prospect is, Europe would
do so with as much intention of directing it commer-
cially against the United States as of directing it
commerically against the Soviet Union.
Like every department store, the Soviet Foreign
Trade Monopoly has its specialties to attract cus-
tomers, cow rivals, and impress the public. Russian
coal in Pennsylvania, Russian textiles in Lancashire
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? FIGHTING THE RED TRADE MENACE 5
and Russian razor blades in Germany have been
looked upon by producing interests in the nations
in question as insults added to the injury felt from
more voluminous exports under the Five-Year Plan.
For Italy, though, the Five-Year Planners have
reserved their most audacious bit of specialty sales-
manship and here today in the Milan Fair, in the
home of spaghetti, one may see displayed fourteen
varieties of Soviet Russian macaroni--fresh, tooth-
some, unashamed!
The world at large, American and European, is
alarmed at the sales abroad by the Soviet Union at
prices below the utmost ability of their bourgeois
competitors to meet. "Russian Dumping" is a world-
wide cry and has been advanced as an explanation
for nearly every economic ill from unemployment to
the break in the wheat market. But few persons,
even among that increasing number of observers who
are keenly interested in the problem of Soviet eco-
nomic expansion and who declare it the most im-
portant development of our times, are aware, spe-
cifically and concretely, of just what the Soviet
Union is shipping abroad, of how various and volu-
minous its offers of goods upon the world market are.
An examination of the Soviet Union in European
trade, of the Five-Year Plan from the outside, of
the Bolshevik behind the counter and of efforts or
the lack of them by European nations to checkmate
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? 6 FIGHTING THE RED TRADE MENACE
the "Red trade menace" could have no better intro-
duction than a visit to the Soviet exhibit in the
Milan Fair.
A stroll around this big rectangular, two-storey
permanent building, decorated with hammer and
sickle and Soviet star and flying the red flag of Com-
munism undisturbed in the birthplace of Fascism, is
more instructive than volumes of prophecy on Soviet
foreign trade.
Two things are worth the time of the most hurried
visitor to Milan: To reflect upon the past under the
marble vault of the Milan Cathedral, grandest
Gothic structure in Europe, symbol of the oldest
Christian church; to speculate upon the future
among the crowded booths of the Red trade exhibit,
symbol of the newest economic faith.
Here at hand in the flesh, in the can, in the bale
and in the bolt, is a visible part of the inventory of
the biggest sales organization in the world, ready to
furnish anything from worm medicine for overfed
lapdogs to marble gravestones and linen doilies, ready
to meet and cut anybody's price from cotton to coal!
It is an astounding exhibition and Soviet macaroni
in Italy is only one of its revelations. There in a
corner is a stand taller than a man, brilliantly lit
with thin-necked globular electric light bulbs. They
are for sale. They are Soviet products. Three years
ago the best the Soviet Union could do in the way
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? FIGHTING THE RED TRADE MENACE 7
of producing instruments of illumination was to turn
out with the help of Swedish concessionaires poor
quality kerosene lanterns. Today they are export-
ing electric light bulbs indistinguishable to the lay-
man from the most modern products of American or
German factories. Patents, it may be remarked, are
one of the least of Soviet worries.
In another section of the building is a food depart-
ment. One wonders what the reaction would be if a
Russian worker or peasant could be transported sud-
denly and without the intermediary surprises of
bourgeois European restaurants from his table of
salt herring, dry grits and black bread to this food
department. Here are stacks and stacks of canned
goods, all with labels in English, salmon tinned and
dried, patties of fish liver, a dozen varieties of smoked
delicacies, a huge refrigerator laden with every sort
of caviar from gray-grained de luxe Beluga Malosol
to the cheaper varieties of amber. Here are long
shelves full of preserves in glass, the light glinting
from appetizing contours of strawberries, ripe cher-
ries, plums, pears and peaches. Tall jars of jams and
marmalades stand opposite other jars of candied
fruits and a hundred varieties of confections fill all
the chinks and crevices of this opulent display.
Under current conditions of Soviet popular faith
in the Five-Year Plan it is perfectly possible that
the Russian visitor might be satisfied with the ex-
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? 8 FIGHTING THE RED TRADE MENACE
planation that these Lucullan foods could properly
be spared for the sake of the lire, the pounds and
the dollars, the machines and the factories necessary
to carry out the plan.
Next door are more fundamental foods. Many of
them have virtually disappeared from Russian tables
since the Five-Year Plan began.
Here are wheat, thirty-nine varieties, and flour,
four kinds, for white bread--last seen in Russia in
1928. Here are six sorts of cornmeal, eleven of beans
and four grades of sugar. Last autumn in the con-
siderable city of Dnepropetrovsk we could find no
sugar. Distribution difficulties were to blame, we
were told, and it is true that sugar was available
everywhere else en route through the Soviet Union.
But distribution runs smoother when the outlet is
abroad and foreign currency the goal.
Here are twenty-six sorts of peas and seed vege-
tables, barley, oats, rye and finally the macaroni.
Not just macaroni though, but all calibers in be-
tween, from finger-thick noodles to hair-fine vermi-
celli. In this department is material for every sort of
nutriment, from French pastry to mast for swine.
Every department has its director, anxious to dis-
tribute literature, ready to explain that the objects
on exhibition are only a fraction of those the Soviet
Union could supply. The display is quite enough.
Description of it reads like a catalogue, and from
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? FIGHTING THE RED TRADE MENACE 9
any other country in the world its relation would be
purposeless. Lacking time for a trip to the Soviet
Union, however, an outsider interested in what the
Five-Year Plan means for his world would find it
profitable to continue a stroll through the exhibit,
observing next chair-backs, gelatine, cigarette cases
and chess boards.
One whole section is devoted to petroleum and
every conceivable variety of petroleum product, and
another to lumber and wood products, now the larg-
est Soviet exports. Here are parquet floorings, ply-
wood, ready-made doors, sashes, sawn timber, planks.
Upstairs are rugs, antique and new; forty-one
kinds of bristles; eighteen of feathers; twelve sorts
of sausage casings; twenty-four samples of hemp
goods, including ropes, mats and nets, twenty-five
kinds of horse hair; sixty-five of furs; 150 exam-
ples of fine porcelain; two shelves full of common
crockery; a whole department for peasant handwork
--toys, dolls, embroidered linen, balalaikas and man-
dolins.
Downstairs, on the other side, we came up short
before three bales of Russian cotton. In 1928, the
first year of the Five-Year Plan, the Soviet Union
imported nearly 500,000 bales of cotton, 300,000 of
them from the United States. American irrigation
engineers have been working for the last two and a
half years on vast projects for watering the Central
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? 10 FIGHTING THE RED TRADE MENACE
Asian plains, the chief source of the Russian staple.
In this, the third year of the Plan, the Russians are
exporting cotton.
I asked an American cotton broker here what it
meant.
"For the present, a daring gesture: for the fu-
ture, I don't know," he replied.
"It's possible that, because of the remote distance
of their mills in Central Russia from the cotton fields
of Turkestan, they may find it cheaper to transport
some cotton to foreign markets and import foreign
cotton by shorter routes for their own manufacture.
At any rate, as far as I know, Americans are not
selling any more cotton to Russia this year. "
The Soviet Union sent 600 bales of cotton to Milan
this spring. It was snapped up at prices averaging
$5 a bale below American cotton of the same class.
According to foreign experts who examined it it
was good staple--very bright, strict middling, a lit-
tle coarse and irregular, but very strong and of
good character. Soviet trade representatives here
offered for sale indeterminable quantities in three
classes of strict middling and three of middling, all
at prices about $5 a bale less than American cotton
and on terms inacceptable to American sellers, in-
cluding a clause that buyers could reject the cotton
before delivery.
This was at any rate an interesting forecast of
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? FIGHTING THE RED TRADE MENACE 11
what may be anticipated from the Soviet Union in
another of the world's great staple commodities. But
what of manufactured articles? The Soviet exhibit
gives a partial answer. A short distance from the
baled cotton stand cases of textile samples. More
than 300 varieties of Soviet cotton and linen goods
are offered for sale.
We hurry along past thirty kinds of hides and
leather, water-proofing oil, wax, vermifuge for dogs,
ninety-three kinds of chemicals, prepared and raw;
fifteen sorts of granite and marble, a case of semi-
precious stones and forty-five kinds of other min-
erals and pause once more before a corner full of
silk--raw silk and silk cocoons. There is much to
learn in the Soviet trade exhibit. Last year Italy
bought more than $1,000,000 worth of cocoons and
about $200,000 worth of raw silk from the Soviet
Union, where a pair of silk stockings is rarer than
white bread. At the exit nuggets, lumps and boul-
ders of anthracite and bituminous coal decorate one
side of the doorway. Don Basin coal mines are, with
the railroad system, the furthest behind of all
branches of Soviet economy under the Plan, but de-
spite the need for fuel at home, the need for foreign
exchange abroad is greater and coal is offered in a
dozen varieties.
We ask about prices. They are trade secrets and
nowhere so strictly as in trade with the Soviets. Not
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? 12 FIGHTING THE RED TRADE MENACE
here but in the markets of Milan, Genoa and Naples
is it possible to obtain an accurate picture of the
price practices of the Soviet trade delegation. Not
here but in Rome it is possible to obtain a satis-
factory explanation for the economic ties that bind
Communist Russia to Fascist Italy today and that
constitute one of the most effective hindrances to that
union of bourgeois states which the Soviet Union
has feared so long.
As one leaves the Soviet exhibit a score of ques-
tions clamor for answer. It is true that the total
Soviet exports in 1930 only reached 66 per cent
of the pre-war Russian exports. Russia under Czar
Nicholas, in 1913 sent $750,000,000 worth of goods
abroad. The Soviet Union under Stalin in 1930 ex-
ported $500,000,000 worth. From 1911 to 1913, ac-
cording to the United States Department of Com-
merce, Russia's share of world exports was 4. 1 per
cent; in 1929 it was 1. 4 per cent.
Why, then, the
excitement, why the protests?
Partly because the world for nearly a decade, from
1915 to 1924, when Russian exports sank to almost
nothing, had become accustomed to doing without
Russian goods and their place had been filled from
other sources. In this sense the Soviet Union is only
regaining the old Russian markets.
Partly, however, the world is alarmed not so much
at what Soviet exports are now but at what they may
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? FIGHTING THE RED TRADE MENACE 13
become when the Five-Year Plan is carried out and
at the use to which devotees of the world revolution
may ultimately put the proceeds from a vastly in-
creased foreign trade. For the Plan, be it remem-
bered, makes it the task of the Soviet Union not
merely to overtake but to outstrip the "capitalist
nations. " Not until the czarist total of $750,000,000
worth of exports is overtaken, outstripped and mul-
tiplied will the Five-Year Planners be as happy over
their foreign trade balance as they are now over
their petroleum production, for example.
Finally, however, the world is uneasy precisely
because of the picture given here by the Milan Soviet
exhibit. No other country on earth ever had its ex-
ports concentrated in the hands of a single organiza-
tion. This huge national department store, capable
of supplying wares not by the dozen items but by
the dozen shiploads, possesses the inestimable advan-
tage of unified organization. It can maneuver, take
losses on some goods to be recouped from profits on
others. It can play off its rivals against one another,
take bids from a world of competitors, throw its
orders here or there as economic or political expe-
dience dictates. Whatever may be the criticism of
the workings of Soviet State Capitalism as a sys-
tem of production and of domestic distribution its
virtues as an instrument of foreign trade have at
least impressed its competitors.
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? CHAPTER II
Rome:
A Fascist journalist, a Bolshevik diplomat, a Ger-
man industrialist and an American banker were
gathered for dinner at the home of an American
newspaper man. Introductions over, the conversa-
tion swept swiftly into political channels and in five
minutes the Fascist and Bolshevik had ranged them-
selves solidly against the citizens of republican states.
United in their respect for dictators, agreeing in
their contempt for democracy, these individuals be-
trayed an attitude that today has made Fascist
Italy one of the two most reliable safeguards of
the Soviet Union against the formation of any kind
of anti-Soviet front in Europe.
"To save Italy from Bolshevism," Italy turned
Fascist in October, 1922. Two years later Italy rec-
ognized the Soviet Union in February, 1924, and ex-
changed Ambassadors. Italy and the Soviet Union
signed a trade agreement in July, 1930, and by the
irony of events on May 1, 1931, premier Red holi-
day, international celebration day for the Com-
munist Party, there was announced the renewal of
this trade agreement on terms extremely satisfac-
tory to Moscow, guaranteeing a sure outlet for con-
siderable quantities of Soviet exports, no matter
14
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? FIGHTING THE RED TRADE MENACE 15
what other European countries might do, and pro-
viding on liberal credit terms for the Soviet Union
to obtain from Italy some of the instruments of pro-
duction indispensable for fulfillment of the Five-
Year Plan.
It was somewhat surprising to learn here that re-
sentment against America--ill feeling over our tariff
--had played a role in the development of Italy's
economic rapprochement with the Soviet Union.
"Offer Italy the same goods at the same price, one
set of goods from America and one from the Soviet
Union," said an American of unimpeachable reli-
ability and experience to me, "and Italy will prefer
to take Soviet goods. Chiefly because of our tariff,
which has hit Italy hard, and partly because Italy
is playing with the Soviets. "
American trade with Italy, of course, is still in-
comparably greater in volume than Soviet trade with
Italy, but in view of this sentiment the direction of
development is perhaps significant. Italian foreign
trade in general has declined since 1929, but Italo-
American trade has declined in particular and Italo-
Russian trade has increased.
In 1929 Italy imported from America $187,000,-
000 worth of goods, in 1930, $134,000,000. She ex-
ported to America $90,000,000 worth of goods in
1929, and $70,000,000 worth in 1930. Italy imported
from the Soviet Union $18,000,000 worth of goods
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? 16 FIGHTING THE RED TRADE MENACE
in 1929 and $28,000,000 worth in 1930. She ex-
ported to the Soviet Union $3,700,000 worth of
goods in 1929, and $5,000,000 worth in 1930.
In the Soviet Union not the faintest whisper of
criticism of the Five-Year Plan may be uttered with
impunity. Nor in Fascist Italy is criticism of the
Government one of the healthiest of occupations. It
is therefore difficult to determine what, if any, at-
titude the broad public here has toward the question
of trade with the Soviet Union. I talked with a score
of business men and from all received the identical
answer that they had never heard expressed by Ital-
ians the least apprehension over possible consequences
of Italian aid to the Soviet economic expansion. There
is no talk about the Five-Year Plan, for nobody
knows anything about it. References to it in the press
are meager and from a short-period of observation
it was my impression that the Italian public must be
the least informed of any in Europe on Russia.
In every other country on the continent, including
Germany, the country doing the largest trade with
the Soviet Union, there are at least groups of public
men who assert that aid to Soviet economic growth
is a suicidal policy for the bourgeois world. In its
complete lack of any critical expression, the Italian
public is unique, perhaps unwillingly silent, perhaps
merely ignorant, perhaps genuinely acquiescent in
the Government's attitude.
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? FIGHTING THE RED TRADE MENACE 17
This attitude is fairly clear: Italy, it claims, from
a purely commercial standpoint at this moment has
everything to gain and nothing to lose from trade
with the Soviet Union. The financial status of the
government with a confessed budget deficit estimated
at more than $100,000,000 and with about $150,-
000,000 payments on treasury bonds coming due in
October, 1931, does not permit Italy to let any trade
chances slip. In a period of economic depression and
loss of foreign markets Italy cannot afford to ignore
any opportunities for business.
Specifically, the American tariff has cost Italy
money and Italy hopes to make up some of her losses
by trade with the Soviet Union. Italy, it is true, buys
five times as much from the Soviet Union as she sells
to the Soviet Union, and this is serious at a time when
the Italian foreign trade balance is $250,000,000 pas-
sive, but the new trade agreement, it is hoped, may
remedy that. And, anyway, the products that Italy
takes from Russia are products Italy has to have
but cannot supply herself, four-fifths of all Italian
imports from the Soviet Union being petroleum and
wheat. As to the "Red Trade Menace," says the
Italian Government, "Fascist Italy fears no menace,
least of all Russia. "
These are the economic arguments of Italy for
trade with the Soviet Union. Political considerations
have placed at least as large a role. On bad terms
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? 18 FIGHTING THE RED TRADE MENACE
with France, distrustful in general of democratic
regimes, the Fascist Government has not yet given
up hope of establishing some kind of understanding
among the defeated nations of Central Europe, in-
cluding Germany, together with the Soviet Union
as a political counterpoise to the French post-
Versailles hegemony in Europe. As will appear later,
Italian military and naval circles are obviously in
favor of developing closer relations with the Soviet
Union, scarcely with the hope of any sort of active
alliance, but with the intention of insuring, in the
event of war with France, secure sources of petro-
leum and wheat from Russia through the Black Sea,
and this development may be observed actually tak-
ing place.
These were considerations that led up to the Italo-
Soviet trade agreement that has just been extended.
A glance at the text shows how advantageous are its
terms to the Soviet Union.
The first trade agreement of 1930 provided for
Soviet purchases from Italy of at least $10,000,000;
the new agreement provides for purchases of at least
$15,000,000 and foresees Soviet purchases next year
of at least $20,000,000. American observers here are
of the opinion that Soviet purchases will probably
exceed the stipulated figure.
There is good reason to believe that some part of
these Soviet purchases have been and will be diverted
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? FIGHTING THE RED TRADE MENACE 19
from America. Bogdanoff, head of the Amtorg Trad-
ing Agency, recently announced that Soviet pur-
chases in the United States had declined from $60,-
441,000 in the six months ended March 31, 1930,
to $33,385,000 for the six months ended March 31,
1931, and that this decline was largely attributable
to lack of credit facilities in the United States and
improvement of credit facilities in "some European
countries. " He meant, among others, Italy.
The Italo-Soviet trade agreement provides, first,
that the Soviets need only buy in Italy "in so far as
technical and commercial conditions are the same as
those existing in other countries for the products
requested. " Thus the Soviet Union is safeguarded
against losing the advantage of playing off the Ger-
man industrialist against the Italian industrialist,
of shopping around, of choosing the best quality at
the least price. Italy must deliver at least as cheaply
and excellently as any other seller.
The most important clause in the agreement is the
well-known section providing that the Italian Gov-
ernment guarantees to Italian business men 75 per
cent of the value of their sales to the Soviet Union,
enough to cover labor and materials and requiring the
seller to take the risk only on the estimated profits and
overhead. This liberal guarantee exceeds by 5 per cent
the German guarantee. It is sufficient, particularly
in a country where the banks are under Government
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? 20 FIGHTING THE RED TRADE MENACE
control, to make the question of discounting Soviet
bills in Italy of subordinate importance.
For comparison with the credit time terms previ-
ously granted in America to Amtorg, it is interesting
to note the length of time Italy grants the Soviet Un-
ion on twelve categories of products subject to Soviet
orders which were distributed by the Italian Govern-
ment in this manner in order to spread trade evenly
throughout her industry: On ships, payments must
be made in a maximum of fifty-four months, aver-
age forty-two; on ball and roller bearings, maximum
thirty-six, average twenty-four; machinery for ma-
chine shops, maximum thirty-six, average twenty-
nine; electrical machinery, maximum, thirty-six;
average twenty-nine; machinery for chemical in-
dustry, maximum thirty-six, average twenty-four;
other machinery, maximum thirty, average twenty-
one; automobiles and tractors, maximum thirty-six,
average twenty-four; auto parts, average twelve;
airplanes and airplane motors, maximum thirty-six,
average twenty-eight; precision, measuring and op-
tical instruments, maximum twenty-eight, average
twenty; metals, average twelve; chemicals and dyes,
twelve, and fertilizers, twelve months. General aver-
age payment will take place in twenty-five months.
But an Italian Government official would object if
one commented that Fascist Italy has faith in Com-
munist Russia's solvency for at least two years. He
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? FIGHTING THE RED TRADE MENACE 21
would point out that as far as payments go Italy
feels secure, inasmuch as she pays out to the Soviet
Union five times what she receives, and there should
always be a balance in the Soviet trade delegation's
treasury here.
An important item in Soviet purchases from Italy
is ships. The new agreement limits them by Italian
stipulation to $5,000,000 worth, sufficient, however,
to buy four. Two have been ordered by Soviets and
are now under construction, but do not appear yet
in trade statistics. Why Italy limited the Soviets to
$5,000,000 worth of ships is also interesting. The
Italian ship subsidy law, designed to stimulate the
creation of a merchant marine that would be of serv-
ice as well in war as in peace, has some remarkable
provisions.
There is a basic subsidy of 32 lire per gross ton
for all metal hulls and drawback, tariff exemption,
of 100 per cent on all customs duties for metal ma-
terial imported for ship construction. There is a pre-
mium for efficiency in ? fuel consumption running
from 16 lire to 12 lire per 100 kilograms of weight
for all auxiliary machinery installed. This is to pro-
mote the use of labor-saving devices. Finally, the
basic subsidy of 32 lire per ton may be increased by
30 per cent if the speed of the boat reaches fourteen
knots, and this increase scales upward until if the
boat reaches as high as twenty-seven knots, the basic
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? 22 FIGHTING THE RED TRADE MENACE
subsidy is increased by 235 per cent. These subsidies,
that apply as well to the construction of foreign
ships, mount very high and though they are limited
to a total of 114,000,000 lire a year from 1930 to
1934, they enable the Italian shipbuilders comfort-
ably to compete with older shipbuilding countries.
Hitherto, the Soviet Union has placed most of its
shipbuilding contracts in Germany. Today Italy has
made her shipyards so attractive that the Soviet
Union would like to place more orders here, but
the Italian Government will only permit shipbuilding
for the Soviet Union in proportion to total Soviet
orders at a ratio of $5,000,000 worth of ships out
of a total of $20,000,000 for all purchases. This is
a feature of Italo-Soviet relations being closely
watched by France, for the Soviet Union needs tor-
pedo boats, small cruisers and submarines for the
minimum requirements of its long neglected navy
and Italian yards are well equipped to supply them.
Another item of interest that does not, however,
appear as yet in the Italo-Soviet statistics concerns
airplanes. Early in March the Soviet Union ordered
seventy-five Savoya Macchetti hydroplanes equipped
with 750-horsepower Fraschini single motors, the
order including 150 spare motors. They were the
type of planes used by Balbo in his South American
flight and Maddalena for his rescue flight to the
Pole for Nobile.
Besides this deal, Italian manufacturers recently
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? FIGHTING THE RED TRADE MENACE 23
had almost closed the sale to the Soviet Union of
150 Savoya Pomillo planes, deliverable fifty per year,
Italy to take wheat for them, but the transaction
broke down for causes unknown. The barter feature,
however, was taken up by the Fiat Company, and
according to unofficial information, Italy has agreed
to deliver 2,000 Fiat trucks for grain, the Italian
Government Treasury giving two-year notes for 75
per cent of the sum to Fiat who are to discount
them. The Government promises to take up the notes
within a year, the Soviet Union to deliver wheat to
the amount of the sales price, and the Italian Gov-
ernment to sell the wheat and with the proceeds re-
deem the Fiat notes.
Included in the new treaty is a clause wherein the
Italian Government promises to invite the attention
of Italian engineers hitherto seldom employed in the
Soviet Union to the opportunities for rendering
technical assistance in the Five-Year Plan. Italian
industry is hopeful over the agreement and for the
moment producer interest is in the foreground of
Italian economic thinking about the Soviet Union. It
is, however, the consumer interest in Italy that is
really decisive for the Italian attitude toward Rus-
sia. And it is the Italian market for wheat, oil, lum-
ber, coal that interests most the American and other
exporters, who, under Soviet competition, have seen
or fear they may see their Italian customers slip-
ping away from them into Russian hands.
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? CHAPTER III
Savona, Italy:
Tucked away in this little Mediterranean port,
surrounded by vineyards, almost hidden in a hollow
of the hills and unknown to any except the alert
observers of foreign oil companies, there is going up
an outpost of the Soviet's Five-Year Plan in Europe.
A huge oil depot for the storage of Soviet petro-
leum and petroleum products, the Savona station
of the Soviet Oil Trust provides one of the most
impressive evidences to be found anywhere in Eu-
rope of the far-reaching plans and self-confidence
of the Soviet foreign trade monopoly and of the
hospitality the Russians have found in Italy.
Here is a bit, and a very significant bit, of Soviet
Russia in Italy. After a prolonged tour of Soviet
industrial plants in Russia under the Five-Year
Plan, it brought a flood of familiar recollections to
find in Savona just such another plant, also not
quite completed, also very large, also packed full of
meaning for the future.
Only the environment is quite different from the
bleak surroundings of most great Soviet plants in
Russia. A fast hour and a half drive along a highway
that skirts the Gulf of Genoa, past coves and bays
24
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? FIGHTING THE RED TRADE MENACE 25
improbably blue, through tunnels that pierce pro-
jecting cliffs, through sleepy towns, where sun-
browned girls sit knitting at flowery doorways,
brings one to Savona. The port is full of idle ships,
beflagged. It is a national holiday. We inquire the
way to the new Soviet oil station. The car winds and
turns through narrow village streets, walled high on
either side by gray stone, topped by nodding blos-
soms.
