The Daily Telegraph. TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 1895. HOW IT WORKS.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 7479, 25 September 1895, Page 2

The Daily Telegraph. TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 1895. HOW IT WORKS.

Ii? is as easy for incompetence to ruin a nation as for wickedness to do it. And as incompetence rarely suspects Its' own existence, the evil which is wrought for want df ihoiight is usually much more abundant than that arising frum want of heart. One instance of this, illustrating the bad results that must grow out of the present stupid tariff tinkering will not be out of place. The set of poor creatures who claim to represent the people in Parliament by backing up the Ward-Seddon combination but who are so fatuous as to constitute an argument for the reasonableness of the theological doctrine of invincible ignorance, have placed a tax of a penny a pduiid upon imported raspberries. Let us see how that works out. There are several jam factories in the colony. That these factories should be run at a profit, it is necessary that they should turn out a given quantity of raspberry jam per annum. The output of the jam factories is packed in cases of assorted fruits, including gooseberry, currants, and the cheaper kinds of jams, and each case to be saleable must contain a given proportion of raspberry jam. To kill the raspberry jam trade is to practically kill the whole trade. Now raspberries are not grown in anything like sufficient abundance in New Zealand to meet the demand for jam and preserve making; and consequently h&ve to be imported. The imposition of a penny a pound upon imported raspberries, used to make jam which is retailed at sixpence per pound, will simply stop a large portion of the trade. That nieans the throwing out of employment of a number of hands. One .firm in the colony expect to be compelled to discharge at least three-fifths of the hands they have been employing, solely because of the stupidity which taxes the firm's raw material with a view to bolster up a fruitgrowers' monopoly. In addition to these people being thrown out of work, the revenue will lose from seven to eight hundred a year out of the fifteen hundred pounds now paid annually by this firm for duty upon the sugar they consume.

Thus far we have only spoken of jams as if all those made were consumed in this colony. But the reverse is the case. Most of the jam factories here have agencies in all the Australian colonies, in Fiji, and other places in the Pacific. A large quantity of jam, especially raspberry jam, is exported. But if the material of which the jam is made is taxed to the amount of a penny per pound, as Parliament in its mad unwisdom has determined shall be the case, the. export trade in jams must die. Even the jams made of locally grown gooseberries, currants, cherries, and so on, cannot be exported except in cases of assorted fruits with a stated proportion in each case of raspberry jam. Moreover, if we tax the raspberries of Tasmania and Victoria, they will certainly retaliate by taxing our jams if we send them over there, so that taking the matter " bye and large," as Captain Cuttle would say, it appears that the poor stupid creatures now parading at Wellington as legislators have done their best to kill a very profitable industry. That they did not mean to do this is possibly true. The simple fellows no doubt look upon themselves as clever, rather than otherwise, but what they tkink will not etave off the awkward result of their foolish action. It is really pitiable to see a fine country like New Zealand under the heels of a crowd of well-meaning but dangerous incapables. There is not a single trade in the colony that will not suffer severely as the result of their tariff tinkering of the last week or two. And those who will ultimately suffer the most will be the working classes. No juggling, either in Parliament or on platforms, can alter the working out of the law that the consumer pays all taxes upon articles of consumption. The ideal of the Government and their majority is simply that to tax is talent, but that to tax heavily is genius. How long will the people stand this costly fandango of folly ?