HOUS TON 
O • 
2 AUGUST 1938 
2 AUGUST 1938 
The Department announced today that the Secretary had signed 
an order abolishing the Office of the Historical Adviser and 
establishing an office of the editor of the treaties. Dr. 
Hunter Miller former historical adviser was designated editor 
of the treaties. It was also announced that Mr. Carlton Savage 
assistant historical adviser had been designated assistant 
to the counselor of the Department and that in this capacity 
ho had been charged with certain research activities and with 
generally assisting the counselor. The Office of the Geogra- 
pher formerly under the Historical Adviser was placed under 
the supervision of the Chief of the Division of Research and 
Publication. 
Secretary's Letter to Senator Pope 
The Department made public today the text of a letter dated 
July 27, from the Secretary to Senator Pope regarding an 
editorial in the Idaho Farmer on the trade agreements program. 
After pointing out that certain statistical inaccuracies in 
the editorial had led to incorrect conclusions regarding the 
benefits conferred on American agriculture by the trade 
agreerients the Secretary’s letter continued: ”1 turn no w to 
another phase of the article namely that which gives voice 
to the idea contained in that familiar and high sounding 
slogan ’ The American Market for the American Farmer*. That 
slogan is indeed one which has . pXvu/iiiig sound. Doubtless 
that is why it is so widely propagated. Nevertheless it is 
worse than meaningless; it is positively dangerous from the 
standpoint of the real interests of the f amors of this coun- 
try. And the reason that is so is because the domestic market 
is in any event not big enough to absorb all of our agricul- 
tural production no matter what we do about imports. In ad- 
dition we must have foreign markets and wo cannot get them 
by maintaining embargo tariffs on imports; we can only lose 
them that way. 
”As a matter of fact we have already had enough exper- 
ience with that sort of thing to demonstrate that it is a 
pure snare se far as our farmers are concerned, y 'hcn we passed 
the Hawley-Smoot Tariff Act we almost literally .enacted that 
slogan. Although our farmers already had practically all of 
the domestic market for everything that could be produced on 
our farms at anything short of an excessive cost and were in 
addition producting large surpluses for export, duties on 
agricultural products most of thorn already high were neverthe- 
less greatly increased in an attempt to shut out small driblets 
of agricultural imports that had been getting in over the 
tariff. The attempt succeeded but at what a cost to farmers! 
In order to get embargo tariffs on their products they had to 
accept embargo tariffs on other products as well. The result 
was the annihilation of a vast part of our foreign trade as a 
whole and the ruination of agricultural markets both at home 
and abroad. In order to get every crack and crevice^ of the . 
home market farmers were lured into support of a tariff policy 
which left them without prosperous markets either at homo or 
abroad. One would suppose that such costly experience should 
suffice for at least one life time. i: 
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