112 THE AGRICULTURAL BLOC 



lation of imports to our own surplus. The 

 measure of protection to be given must be fixed 

 on a basis of stabilizing a price rather than 

 merely for protection from imports. 



Foreign competition is less serious to the 

 wheat-grower and while admitting that the 

 value of a tariff on wheat is largely psychologi- 

 cal it is none the less important. So long as 

 our large export surplus of wheat continues to 

 be demanded by Europe, protection will be of 

 less importance than when the wheat produc- 

 tion of the world is restored more nearly to 

 normal. But sooner or later we will suffer from 

 the competition of countries where the cost of 

 production is lower than it is in the United 

 States. 



An outstanding example of a new form of 

 foreign competition which did not exist before 

 the war is in the case of vegetable oils. For 

 a decade our cotton-seed oil has been the chief 

 oil used in food products. Suddenly there began 

 to be imported quantities of vegetable oils from 

 the Orient which competed directly with cotton- 

 seed oil. The flow of these oils was directed 

 to America by the secession of ocean shipping 

 to Europe due to the submarine campaign and 

 there developed within the United States ex- 



