Editor the Star:

I have just finished reading “What Went Wrong in Iran,” by our former ambassador, Henry F. Grady, in the Saturday Evening Post. Also, I have just finished reading “Chilean Copper Crisis Growing” on page 20A of today’s Star. We cannot help noticing a very similar pattern of conditions, motives, national policy or lack of it, and possible ultimate results, in these two cases.

In Iran the British government, which owns over 53 per cent of the Anglo-Iranian Oil made a net profit of 100 million pounds in 1951 and allowed the Iranian government 14 million pounds royalties. In Chile 90 per cent of the copper companies are American owned and thus the United States government is able and willing to fix the price of Chilean copper.

In Iran the people are very poor and the “Socialist” or “peoples’ ” government of Great Britain evidently takes very little interest in their welfare. In Chile the Socialist or “New Deal” government of America similarly takes little interest in the Chilean worker. The average laborer must work three weeks to buy a pair of shoes.

The British government set the price of oil sold to the British navy just as the American government set the price of copper sold to the American government, in both cases much below the world market.

Surely this great democracy of ours is not using our influence and power to shift part of the burden to our unsuspecting friends? I do not think we can allow these conditions to exist without protest.

Yours very truly,

SIDNEY C. KAIN,
Route 1, box 323.