Politika
- The Steel Pact
Politika's issue of 24 October 1926 carried a commentary headed "The Steel Pact," printed about a month after continental steelmakers formed an international cartel. The readable opening sets the agreement against a longer rivalry. It calls it an exaggeration to name the race to produce and export iron and steel the main cause of the World War. It still insists that this race lay at the root of the Anglo-German antagonism that had developed since the end of the previous century, noting that England held first place in pig iron and steel until nearly the end of that century. The rest of the commentary and a political cartoon on the same page, a dialogue between Korošec and Radić, could not be read reliably.
The page's OCR is badly corrupted, so the passage was copied from the page image. Only the opening of "ЧЕЛИЧНИ ПАКТ" is translated here. The caption of the cartoon "ИСКУСТВО", a dialogue between Korošec and Radić, is too faint to read beyond the speakers' names, and several column edges are cut off at the tile borders. How the pact was received in Yugoslavia and the Korošec–Radić dispute behind the cartoon are not covered.
Translation
The Steel Pact
It would be an exaggeration to say that the contest over the production and export of iron and steel was the main cause of the World War. But it is indisputable that it lay at the root of that great antagonism which had been developing between Germany and England since the end of the last century. Right up until near the end of that century, England held first place in the production of pig iron and steel.
Context
How the 1926 steel cartel allocated production
The "steel pact" in the headline is the International Steel Agreement, created on 20 September 1926, about a month before this issue appeared. A Council of industry representatives from Germany, France, Belgium and Luxembourg ran it. The cartel set production quotas every quarter, working out national shares from the total quantity its members produced. Each national group was answerable for its own country's compliance, and it had to pay the cartel 4 dollars for every ton produced above its quota. The scheme came under strain almost at once. From September to December 1926 Germany went over its quota by 9 to 25% and paid 2.7 million dollars in penalties. When Politika ran this commentary, then, the pact was a new arrangement among producers, and its quota system had not yet proved it could hold.
Britain's place outside the 1926 steel pact
The commentary opens by recalling Anglo-German rivalry and England's former lead in pig iron and steel. Linking that rivalry to the origins of the war is the paper's own argument. The cartel it was discussing, however, was a continental arrangement. Its founding Council took in Germany, France, Belgium and Luxembourg, and British companies joined only in 1929, when the agreement took on a global dimension through a deal with American, British and Canadian firms. British steelmakers had not always stood apart from such schemes: German, French, Belgian and British companies had formed a cross-border rail cartel as early as 1884. Within the continent the imbalance was large. At the start of the twentieth century German steel production was four times that of France. So the 1926 pact was mainly about Franco-German balance, while Britain, the country the commentary sets against Germany, remained outside it for the time being.
Louis Loucheur and the steel cartel as a peace project
The commentary ties steel competition to the antagonism behind the war. Supporters of the 1926 pact turned that argument around and presented cartels as a path to reconciliation. Louis Loucheur, a deputy for the Nord who served as a minister many times, campaigned for a European steel cartel that would unite French and German steelmakers. He regarded cartels as the only means of reconciling France and Germany and of competing with the American economy. He was very active in the League of Nations and saw cartels as a tool that could open the way to a United States of Europe. He was not alone in this. Across interwar Europe some people came to see cartels as a way to bring economic stability in times of crisis, and even as an instrument for peace. Read in that light, the paper's emphasis on the steel rivalry before 1914 shows what the pact's backers hoped it would do.
Original
ЧЕЛИЧНИ ПАКТ
Претерано би било рећи, да је утакмица око производње и извоза гвожђа и челика, била главни повод за светски рат. Али је неоспорно да је она била у основи оне велике супротности, која се је од краја прошлога века развијала између Немачке и Енглеске. Све до пред крај тога века заузимала је Енглеска прво место у производњи сировога гвожђа и челика.