09-04-2025
- Politics
- Wall Street Journal
MLK's Wise Words on Trade
As a trade war unfolds across the world, Americans might want to revisit a message about global commerce that Martin Luther King Jr. shared more than six decades ago.
King, the legendary champion of American civil rights, was also concerned with the ties that bound him to those living everywhere. He expounded on the theme in 'The Man Who Was a Fool,' a sermon in his 1963 book, 'Strength to Love.'
The fool, King lamented, was a character in a New Testament parable who thought his homegrown abundance made him proudly self-sufficient. In cautioning his audience against the conceit of illusory independence, King underscored how much a typical household owes to goods that cross national borders.
'Whether we realize it or not,' said King, 'each of us is eternally 'in the red.' We are everlasting debtors to known and unknown men and women. We do not finish breakfast without being dependent on more than half of the world. When we arise in the morning, we go into the bathroom where we reach for a sponge which is provided for us by a Pacific Islander. We reach for soap that is created for us by a Frenchman. The towel is provided by a Turk. Then at the table we drink coffee which is provided for us by a South American, or tea by a Chinese [person], or cocoa by a West African. Before we leave for our jobs we are beholden to more than half the world.'
King, we now know, borrowed his debt-before-breakfast anecdote from the English theologian Leslie Weatherhead, who had coined it in one of his own books in 1936. Weatherhead made his list of 'debts' even longer, also noting that his marmalade 'is passed to me by a Spaniard, my banana by a West Indian.'
As Weatherhead offered his reflections on the network of exchanges that brought faraway wonders to his door, he was aware that leaders of his time were more interested in hardening borders than transcending them. Global tensions were rising, and World War II was on the horizon.
Today's international landscape has its own shadows, with wars and trade much in the news. That's why it's worth remembering, as both King and Weatherhead suggested, that trade is a testament to our interdependence.
'In a real sense,' said King, 'all life is interrelated. All men are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.'
Mr. Heitman, a columnist for the Baton Rouge Advocate, is the author of 'A Summer of Birds: John James Audubon at Oakley House.'
