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We again wish to thank this committee for the privilege of appearing before it.

Senator LONG. Thank you, very much, Miss Meikle.

I think you have made a very good statement. I have no further questions to ask.

Senator Malone.

Senator MALONE. Miss Meikle, it is a very fine statement that you made there. We are glad to have you.

Miss MEIKLE. Thank you.

Senator MALONE. IS Mrs. Walter M. Bain the chairman of the legislative program committee of the AAUW, the wife of Mr. Bain who is the secretary or holds some position at the head of the State governments of the United States?

Miss MEIKLE. I do not know the answer to that question.
Senator DOUGLAS. I can give the answer.

that I think you may be speaking of.

It is Mr. Frank Bain

He spells his name, as I remember it, B-a-n-e. He lives in Chicago. Senator MALONE. Miss Meikle, I think you were present when I asked some questions of Mrs. Laves. Perhaps you understood. I will not dwell too much on these questions.

Do you know who it was that first said, so far as I know, at least officially and he held an official position, that the economic affairs can no longer be separated from the political affairs of the country? Miss MEIKLE. No, sir.

Senator MALONE. I will quote his language exactly for the record. It was Mr. Acheson, who was Secretary of State.

That was in 1948 or 1949 at about the same time that the Marshall plan was being argued before the Senate. That same year Mr. Willard Thorp, Assistant Secretary of State, testified (and I will correct his words for the record) that there were three things inevitably tied together. The Marshall plan, which would be a temporary method of building up the foreign nations in dollar balances and in various ways to get them on their feet. You are no doubt familiar with the argument on the Marshall plan. But he said that was a temporary plan.

The permanent plan was the Reciprocal Trade Act, and he did not say so-called. I have already explained that the phrase has never occurred in any act that Congress has passed and, of course, the agreements are not reciprocal. We will go into it far enough so that you can review the record and find that out.

Besides those two things there was ITO, the International Trade Organization. Do you remember when that International Trade Organization was put before Congress about 6 or 7 years ago?

Miss MEIKLE. Very vaguely; I do not recall the discussion. Senator MALONE. Very well. If we had passed that act Congress would have approved everything that was done at Geneva. Congress has never approved it. The OTC, the Office of Trade Cooperation, was for the same purpose of approving what they are doing there and Congress denied that last year or the year before. The matter of GATT has never been put before the Congress.

I don't think the State Department thinks it would have very much chance and I think they are right.

Now Thorp said that those three things were inseparable and part of the entire program. Without taking time of the committee, I will

have to quote those two men accurately so that it will be in the record, but it is enough to say now that the Secretary of State Acheson was the first one who tied those two together.

He was not the first one, however, to make those proposals that we become dependent on foreign nations for those things without which you could not live in peace nor fight a war.

Mr. Harry Dexter White, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, was the first to make a proposal of that nature in 1945. He wrote a letter to the then Secretary of the Treasury, proposing that we give $5 billion to Russia to buy oil and tungsten and he listed 5 or 6 other materials that he said we were out of-we just didn't have them.

Of course, what he said has since been proven wrong, and everybody that knew anything about it knew then that it was wrong. But it was in support of our buying those materials from Russia that he wrote that letter to Mr. Morgenthau, his boss, who transmitted the letter, almost without change, to the then President of the United States, in 1945, and only asked for 10 million instead of 5.

Thank God Congress didn't do it, but this is to show you how these things are cooked up over a period of years and people forget who has been behind them.

Now, with that foundation, I will ask you if you know, and of course I know you do, that the Constitution pointedly separates the economic regulation of the economy of the country from the financing of foreign policy which Mr. Acheson said was no longer separated-in other words they should be tied together.

You do know that the Constitution definitely separates the two, do you not?

Miss MEIKLE. Yes, sir.

Senator MALONE. Article 1, section 8, puts the regulation of the National economy in the hands of the Congress, and says they shall regulate the duties, imposts, and excises that we call tariffs.

They shall regulate foreign commerce, foreign trade, which, of course, regulates the national economy.

Article 2, section 2, says that the President of the United States shall fix the foreign policy. It's never been questioned.

Well, do you think that those two should be tied together effectively amending the Constitution of the United States without, as George Washington said, changing the Constitution in the way set down by the document?

Miss MEIKLE. No, sir; I don't think that the Constitution should be circumvented in any manner.

Senator MALONE. I knew you didn't.

Now, you call tariffs barriers. That was a word invested along about 1934 or 1935. But, as a matter of fact, do you know that the duties or tariffs, as we have come to know them for 150 years were adjusted, awkwardly at times, because they had to work out machinery as they went along, to make the general difference between the effective wages and the cost of doing business in this country and in the chief competing nation on each product.

Do you know that was the general policy in effect until 1934?
Miss MEIKLE. Generally speaking.

Senator MALONE. Would you call it a barrier if your husband was getting $15 or $20 a day and the worker in a foreign nation such as Japan was getting 20 cents an hour, about $2 a day, where in many

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industries they worked 10 hours a day although some of them have cut to 8, with American machinery and all the know-how that we have here would you call it a barrier if a duty on the product of the factory where he was employed would just make the difference in the effective wages and costs of doing business here and in Japan? Miss MEIKLE. Well, sir, I think it is a barrier to the import of the Japanese duties, of the Japanese goods.

Senator MALONE. That is true. But would you refer to it as a barrier or would you find a milder word if it only made the difference in the effective wages?

You see, our standard of living is so much higher; I have been in Japan and I have been in all of the nations of the world. I decided when I first came here to visit all of our star boarders, and made it a point to visit all of them.

Then I went behind the Iron Curtain and I have pictures from all that area. I stayed 21⁄2 months and traveled 14,000 miles in Russia and, when I came back, I said 3 things which I think I first said from Russia.

First, in a very reasonable time Russia would be self-sufficient in everything they needed to fight a war or live in peace.

It is a tremendous country. I am an engineer and it would drive the engineers crazy the things they can produce and are producing out in those mountains.

Second, there would be no effective revolt.

Miss MEIKLE. I am sorry I didn't hear that.

If

Senator MALONE. There would be no vehicle of effective revolt because they were living so much better than under the Czar, and better than 5 or 10 years ago and that is the way we figure here. we are improving our living standard all the time nobody says much about it.

It is only when we go down that we hear arguments.

Further, then, the third thing: that all the power in the Eastern Hemisphere had moved to Russia. There is none in Europe. The colonial system died when the airplane dominated the British Fleet in 1942.

Therefore, there is no power in the Eastern Hemisphere other than Russia and nobody but us in the Western Hemisphere. There are not 5 nations, but 2 of us.

If those three things are true that I outlined to you, and I will tell you that even the State Department found that out in October of 1947, just 2 years after I had said it; when they launched the sputnik, or whatever it was, out in my State there were several suggestions as to who ought to go up in that first sputnik of ours, but it was not carried out. If those three things are true and, of course, everyone should know now that they are, wouldn't you think we would have to make our economy work here and make it strong, whatever it took to do that?

Miss MEIKLE. Yes, sir; I think we are always interested in making everything, our economy, strong.

Senator MALONE. Sure you are.

I want to leave this thought with you, without taking any more time of the committee: We are living on a war economy. Miss MEIKLE. I beg your pardon.

Senator MALONE. We are living on a war economy. If Mr. Khrushchev is half as smart as I think he is, and I met him a half dozen times over there at cocktail parties and unofficially in his own office, he is tougher than a boot and he is for Russia. Some of these days we are going to have to develop a few people for the United States of America on the same basis.

Do you agree to the fact that our President, under this act that is contrary to the provisions of the Constitution of the United States and without consulting Congress at any time whatever, can in a trade agreement lower the tariff or duty below the effective difference in wages and the cost of doing business here and in our chief competing nation on any product and thus trade to a foreign nation all or any part of it he wants to if he believes that it will further his foreign policy?

Miss MEIKLE. I think that the wage differential is not the only thing that the President takes into consideration, and that the Trade Policy Committee takes into consideration in making its recommendations to the President.

Senator MALONE. Would you believe that if he were to further his foreign policy by doing that, and we have no time to go into the wage differential, but I can do that, we have done that and it is a matter of record, and I would be very happy to furnish it to you, do you believe he should be able to trade any industry that he wants to to further his foreign policy which he can do without consulting Congress, your Senators or Congressmen? Where are you from, by the way? Miss MEIKLE. Pennsylvania.

Senator MALONE. A fine State-that your Senators and Congressmen have nothing whatever to do with fixing tariffs any more?

They can take up any product they want to, but unless they do especially, they have nothing whatever to do with it, so Secretary Dulles testified Saturday. They are not informed of what the State Department is going to do until after they have done it and they are not allowed to attend the meetings over there at Geneva, neither Congressmen or Senators or you, but after the agreements are signed, sealed, and delivered, then they furnish the copy to Congress. Are you aware of that method of doing business?

Miss MEIKLE. Yes, sir, generally, although it is my understanding that there has been an amendment to the Trade Agreements Act put in by the House which would give the Congress, by a two-thirds vote, the right to restore the Trade Commission's recommendations if the President

Senator MALONE. The Tariff Commission.

Miss MEIKLE. The Tariff Commission.

Senator MALONE. That is right. It is pretty hard to get a twothirds. Wouldn't you favor a joint resolution if it was serious enough that your Senators and Congressmen, in a joint resolution by the majority would be against going below what they call the peril point at the moment, that it ought to prevail?

Miss MEIKLE. I don't think so, sir. I think that our organization would still prefer to see the President taking all of the factors of foreign policy into consideration, having the greater discretion.

Senator MALONE. He could consider what he himself believes to be at the moment the factors of furthering his foreign policy.

The crockery business has been traded off. I could go into 40 or 50 of them. There is no need to go into it.

You believe he should have the authority to do it?

Miss MEIKLE. Yes, sir.

Senator MALONE. Then I know you are sure, you already discussed this a moment ago, that the rules and regulations of ĞATT make it unnecessary for the 36 foreign competitive nations sitting in Geneva with us as member 37, each with 1 vote, to keep their share of the agreement as long as they can show they are short of dollar balance. You believe that is all right?

Meaning, of course, that they are just short of money to buy what they want to buy on the world market and still have money enough to keep abreast of their dollar balance of payments.

As long as they can show that they are short, then they do not need to keep their part of the agreement.

Do you believe that is all right?

Miss MEIKLE. I am afraid I am not familiar enough with that portion of the GATT agreements.

Senator MALONE. I wish you would study it and if you could answer it "Yes" or "No," or a modification, I would be happy if it would show in the record.

You will allow that won't you, Mr. Chairman?

We are not trying to embarrass anybody here. You see you are representing a bloc of American taxpayers. You have a fine organization in the State of Nevada. Do you know who is the president? Miss MEIKLE. No, I do not.

Senator MALONE. It is Mrs. Bill Darling, one of the finest women you ever knew and she was just here in Washington.

Would you at your convenience or if you could as part of your testimony, furnish to the committee a list of your State presidents? You do have one in each State?

Miss MEIKLE. Yes, sir.

Senator MALONE. And your officials that make their headquarters in Washington?

Miss MEIKLE. I would be very happy to. I happen to have that with me.

(The material referred to was subsequently submitted for the record as follows:)

STATE PRESIDENTS ATTENDING 1958 STATE PRESIDENTS CONFERENCE Alabama: Mrs. Wm. R. Van Gelder, 3705 Mountain Park Circle, Birmingham Arizona: Miss Betty Leddy, 2100 North Campbell Avenue, Tucson Arkansas: Mrs. L. M. McGoodwin, Goshen Road, Route 8, Fayetteville California: Mrs. Wm. H. N. Bryant, Jr., 1815 Garden Street, Santa Barbara Colorado: Mrs. Orville Suhre, 2220 North Nevada Avenue, Colorado Springs Connecticut: Miss Margaret T. Corwin, 177 State Street, Guilford Delaware: Mrs. Louis Levinson, 206 North Cass Street, Middletown Florida: Mrs. Dave Caton, 2203 North 20th Street, Pensacola

Georgia: Dr. Bernice Freeman, 305 Park Avenue, LaGrange

Idaho: Mrs. Kales Lowe, 1830 Conant Avenue, Burley

Illinois: Dr. Jean Liedman, 813 East Broadway, Monmouth

Indiana: Mrs. Harold Donieker, Rural Route No. 2, Connersville
Iowa: Mrs. George Barbour, 629 Seventh Street, West Des Moines

Kansas: Mrs. Walter A. Meyers, 5923 Hardy, Merriam

Kentucky: Mrs. Earl W. Roles, 609 Emery Road, Louisville
Louisiana: Miss Ivey Gravette, 109 Mary Street. Pineville

Maine: Dr. Margaret Dickie, Jackson Memorial Laboratory, Bar Harbor

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