DUMPING FROM GERMANY.

Auckland Star, Volume LIII, Issue 160, 8 July 1922, Page 7

DUMPING FROM GERMANY.

EFFECT OF LOWER WAGES. PREMIER FEARS A DELUGE. THE COTTON GLOVES CASE. (Br Cable.—Press Association. —Copyright) LONDON, Joly 7. In consequence of the Cabinet proposing to enforce the Safeguarding of Industries Aci, putting a duty of 33 1-3 per cent upon fabric glows, the Lancashire cotton-spinners operatives waited as a deputation upon Mr. Lloyd George and pointed out that the harm done lo Lancashire's yarn trade would be far greater than any benefit to the makers. Mr. Lloyd George replied that he had* become alarmed at the prospect of the

German people working for wages, the purchasing power of which was only 40 per cent of those paid in Britain. This was unnatural and unforeseen by tariff reformers or free-traders before the war. German goods were not yet flooding the markets of the world, but the time would come when legislation like the Safeguarding of Industries Act would be essential, not as a tariff, but as a wall against a deluge. He promised that Cabinet would again discuss the problem of fabric gloves.—(A. and N.Z. Cable.) The duty on cotton gloves has been regarded as a test case by the Free Trade opponents of the Safeguarding of Industries Act, commonly known as the Dumping Act. They maintain that the protection given to the glove trade in | England is much less important than | ihe damage done to the fabric-making trade in Lancashire. England imports raw cotton, makes it into fabric and exports the fabric to Germany. There it is made into gloves and some of th *se gloves are exported to England. "No doubt by imposing a tax on these gloves they would assist the manufacturers in a small trade in one part of the country," said a Liberal member in a debate in the Commons on May 11, "but they would prevent the purchase from Lancashire of the necessary raw material, not only for these particular gloves, but for many other kinds of gloves which Saxony exported to other parts of the world. The result was that by making an order they would benefit small interests, but they would be forced to damage a bigger interest in Lancashire."