The Sun FRIDAY, DECEMBER 4, 1914. PROTECTION AND THE COST OF LIVING.

Sun (Christchurch), Volume I, Issue 258, 4 December 1914, Page 6

The Sun FRIDAY, DECEMBER 4, 1914. PROTECTION AND THE COST OF LIVING.

Very little has been heard duririg the election campaign of our old friend the Tariff. Candidates are too busy emphasising their burning desire to reduce the cost of living by remitting Customs to go very deeply into the effects of the tariff on the spending power of the worker, and as for the advantages to be conferred by a revival of local industry they generally ignore the subject altogether. It is rather a.pity^'because the question must be faced sooner Or later. ~- A Tariff Bill is inevitable during the next Parliament, and the electors are entitled to know not only a candidate's attitude towards the encouragement of local industry, but whether he has given the principle of Protection any serious study at all, and what qxialifications he has for passing an opinion upon it. Judging from the reports ',oi their speeches, many candidates have only the haziest idea of the true nature, scope, and operation of a protective tariff. They have a vague idea that local industry is a good thing, and they >say so, as a matter of form, and then ; proceed speedily to qualify the remark with an emphatic statement they are against any duties that increase the cost of living. Yet the condition of bur manufacturing industries is of vital importance to city constituencies. Most of'our factories are Within the confines of the principle centres of population, and if the city meniber dpes not" take a keen interest in their wel--fare ami pi:og?e.ss .it is not.to.be expected that the \ country member will' worry,'jnuch about them. Curiously enou'gh, ; fiVi» generally the city; member who prefers "to. talk in a fine, large, airy fashion about the land question, on which he is frequently an ignoramus, to the exclusion of a matter that is of real consequence to the people whose ! votes he is soliciting. The other night a local candidate, -who- shall be -'name-' i less, Avas thumping the table in denunciation of the large land-owner, and [advocated cutting that person up with igreat earnestness. A .few moments later he was complaining that many of the moneyless, landless men which the ; Liberals had taken up and placed on the land had become affluent capitalists, who rode about in motor cars and now voted for the party which, had" come in and offered' 'them the freehold! Yet he was apparently anxious to perpetuate the creation of Reform voters in this fashion-by the further subdivision of large estates. When will Liberals leim J that the most useful function the large ; land-owner can perform politically, is to ; serve a» -a bogey -for- -scaring city elec : (tors into voting for the Liberal Party? :To wipe out the large land-owner and ! fill New Zealand with small freeholder's i is the surest way of giving a country ] party a perpetual lease of political i power in New Zealand. This mania for subdivision which' the Liberals are obsessed with, is irrational and stupid when carried to extremes. Put into operation, it merely increases the ex-

portable surplus of primary products, and does nothing to cheapen the cost of food, which is determined by the prices foodstuffs fetch in the world's markets. More than that, the neglect of the tariff, and the obstacles placed in the way of. New ' Zealand manufactures have resulted in a vast increase of imported goods, vhich come back in return for our exports, when it. would .be far better business to make the goods her.c and devote some of the proceeds of our exports to. liquidating our foreign indebtedness, , The. city member, instead of talking rubbish about the land question and pursuing a senseless vendetta against the owners _ of land, would be infinitely better n employed in advocating with all the force and at his command a thorough investigation of the causes that have led to a decline in the number of persons employed in registered factories, and , the stagnant | condition of certain industries that, under more favourable conditions, should employ twice as many hands as they do at present.