The Geneva Protocol, by David Hunter Miller

CHAPTER VII. 29
Of course some countries are naturally richer than others and {40} must remain so. In the Delta of the Nile,
the land produces as many as four crops a year and sells for something like $3,000 an acre. Such a condition
cannot be duplicated in a climate where only one crop is possible.
But the notion that any State or any combination of States, less than world-wide, could be substantially
self-sufficient in respect of all raw materials is untenable. Even the United States lacks (mentioning minerals
only) nickel, cobalt, platinum, tin, diamonds. Its supplies of the following are inadequate: antimony, asbestos,
kaolin, chromate, corundum, garnet, manganese, emery, nitrates, potash, pumice, tungsten, vanadium,
zirconium. Outside of minerals we lack jute, copra, flax fiber, raw silk, tea, coffee, spices, etc. This mere
enumeration suggests the absurdity of the "raw materials" argument against the status quo.[13]
Without going into it in detail, the mere fact that there are no copper mines in Germany[14] or in England has
never prevented either country from obtaining all the copper that it needed by means of the exchange of its
own commodities and its own labor for the copper, say, of Spain, or of the United States, or of Chili; and from
any possible point of view that is now conceivable it is only by the continuance of such a system that the
deficiency of particular articles in particular countries can be supplied.
All that we can say is, in other words, that so long as the people in a particular country are able to produce
enough of something that the rest of the world needs, so long will they be able to supply their own necessities.
And if in any country, in Labrador, for example, the people are unable, because of the situation of the country,
to produce a sufficiency of consumable and exchangeable commodities, the inevitable result will be the
evacuation of that country by civilized human beings. If such a result could be changed by conquest, the
change would be only temporary. To attempt to change it by agreement would be to attempt a sort of
international charity by means of which {41} people would be able to live in Labrador by the use of part of
the surplus production, say, of Kentucky, given to them for nothing.
There is a very exaggerated notion in the minds of some as to the effect of what is called "control of raw
materials."
Of course, in time of war, control of raw materials has importance. But this does not mean "control" in the
sense of ownership of foreign supplies, as, e. g., British ownership of Persian oil fields or American
ownership of Bolivian tin mines. It means merely either (1) the possession of adequate domestic supplies, or
(2) safe and unimpeded access to foreign sources of supply, as, e. g., German access, during the war, to
Swedish iron ore. The military significance of raw materials, aside from purely domestic supplies, is related to
such things as naval power, blockade, "freedom of the seas," "free transit," etc., rather than to national
ownership of sources of supplies. Access to the market is the important thing, although the question of finance
may be more difficult in respect of foreign supplies than of domestic.
But in time of peace, the "control of raw materials" in the last analysis means that the owners of those
materials can do only two things with them, use them or to sell them. This is perhaps most obvious in the case
of such raw materials as are perishable, but it is true of all.
Take such a product as copper, for example. Some countries have copper mines, others have none. But the
ownership of a copper mine is of no possible advantage unless the copper produced from that mine is
manufactured into something else or is sold. Of course temporarily a mine owner may leave his ore in the
ground or may store a supply of copper above ground; but these are expedients to be resorted to only in some
time of over-production and impossible of continuance. If the product of the mine is not either used or sold, its
advantage is purely a theoretical possibility of the future. It has no more value in present reality than a bank
note on a desert island.
The really important factor, as to raw materials, is access to the market on an equal footing.