THE TARIFF: Embargo

Last week Andrew William Mellon again unsheathed a sharp economic sword against Soviet Russia. He forbade any lumber or any pulpwood from four great areas of North Russia to enter the U. S.

Last summer Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Seymour Lowman embargoed Russian pulpwood on the ground that it was produced by convict labor. Within a week he was forced to lift the ban for lack of evidence that pulpwood workers of U. S. S. R. were legal convicts (TIME, Aug. n).

What new evidence had convinced the Treasury that Soviet convicts worked the Soviet spruce forests, U. S. Commissioner of Customs Frank Xavier Alexander Eble refused to reveal. Unable to investigate conditions for itself the Treasury had obviously accepted as substantial proof affidavits from independent observers, labor camp refugees, casual visitors. Under the Treasury's order an importer can bring in Soviet lumber and pulpwood only if he establishes by a preponderance of evidence that these commodities are produced by free labor—an almost impossible requirement.

Lest the Treasury's embargo look like a political discrimination against Russia, the State Department last week instructed its consuls throughout the world to report on convict-made goods in their respective areas with a view to including other countries in the embargo. Complaint by U. S. tobacco producers, feeling the pinch of competition, that-Sumatra cigar wrappers from the Dutch East Indies were convict-grown caused the Treasury to start investigating. Under, study also were rubber imports from slave-ridden Liberia, phosphates from Morocco.