Finance and Industry

Flurry in the chicken coop
“I had three conversations with Mr. Kennedy, and each time he brought up “the subject of poultry. Is he a President or is he a chicken farmer?”

Thus Dr. Adenauer, the German chancellor, rather scathingly, about the American preoccupation with chickens. So preoccupied, in fact, that the U.S. Government announced a few days afterwards that they were prepared, if necessary, to do economic battle with the whole of the Common Market to establish their right to continue exporting broilers to Germany.

Second thoughts have taken over since then and U.S. official remarks have become much less belligerent. Some unkind critics have remarked that the thaw set in immediately members of the Six began to point out that they imported three times as much from the U.S. as the U.S. imported from them and that if there was going to be a trade war it wouldn’t be the Six who would come out worst.

But why such a fuss in the first place over a cut in, of all things, chicken imports? A cut which in any case only amounted to about $46 million, 4 per cent. of total American broiler production, and a fleabite in total exports? As usual, a small upset is only the first symptom of much more serious trouble.

What the U.S. Government is really afraid of is that the restriction on broiler imports is but a prelude to bigger cuts later on. The Common Market countries in fact import about $1,200 million of agricultural products a year from the U.S., including S370 millions of cereals. “Where will the next cuts fall?” is the American worry.

The whole disturbance, of course, is yet a further reflection of the present crisis in agriculture affecting many parts of the world, the Common Market in particular. Among the Six, France is determined to make herself the chief food provide —at the expense of the United States. At the same time, Germany must come to terms sooner or later with its high cost farmers; it can’t go on protecting them with high tariff wails unless it is prepared to see retaliation against its industrial products. And the German capitalists see the red light and are already beginning to squeal.

Only a couple of months have passed since we said that we were going to hear a lot about agriculture in the months to come. It may be the poor relation of present-day capitalism, but it is going to cause lots of trouble to the better-off members of the family before they decide what to do with it. They may end up by palming it oil with a regular allowance, small, of course; or marry it off into a richer circle and make it one of themselves, big and efficient. Many of them, of course, would probably like to have it put quietly away—quite an impossibility, however, since capitalists appreciate their food even more than most.

But, by the way things are going, they will need to make a decision one way or the other before very long.

Together again
When the Allies got to work on German industry after the war, they made a brave show of doing something about the Krupps, the Thyssens, and the other steel barons. Their huge empires were broken up as “politically dangerous concentrations of political power” : never again were they to come together to threaten the peace of Europe.

The table published elsewhere on this page shows how successful all these wonderful aspirations were.

At the same time in Japan the Americans were busy dismantling the huge Mitsubishi trust. Never again was this powerful economic empire to overshadow Japanese policy and help push the country into aggressive war.

Now the three units into which the original group was broken up have just been put together again into Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. The new company will become Japan’s biggest shipbuilder and one of the biggest producers of railway rolling stock, cars, industrial machinery, and aircraft. Only Hitachi, again mentioned in our “top twenty” table, will have a larger turnover. With 77,000 workers Mitsubishi will have the biggest labour force in Japan.

Yet another example of the intrinsic drive for capitalism’s units to get bigger and bigger in spite even of difficulties deliberately put in the way.

The top twenty
Earlier this year (in our February issue) we published details of the top twenty British firms. Now Fortune, the American finance magazine, has compiled a list in its August issue of the top two hundred firms in the whole of the world, excluding the U.S. itself.

It is obviously too much for us to reproduce the full list, but readers may be interested to see the names of the top twenty. The list relates order of precedence to sales; there would be some changes in the order if net assets or net profits had been taken as the criterion. But the main pattern is here, nevertheless.

An analysis of all the two hundred firms shows that 54 of them were British or had British connections; 36 were German; 31 were Japanese; and 27 were French. More than anything else, perhaps, it shows how Japan has risen to the top rank of the modern capitalist powers.
S. H.