INDUSTRY AND OFFICIALISM.

Auckland Star, Volume LVII, Issue 44, 22 February 1926, Page 4

INDUSTRY AND OFFICIALISM.

HAMPERING RESTRICTIONS.

(By HARTLEY WITHERS.)

Oho of the important events of the present year is to be a conference summoned l> v a committee of the League of Nations to discuss the hampering effect on international trade of the restrictions, such as prohibition of imports and cvports and the additions to high lariffa that have boon imposed, pspeeiiilly by the new States of Europe since the war. This subject is now a very old £tory, on which we have heard fine resounding 6entimcnts expressed, without the smallest practical result, ever since the famous Brussels Conference. Excellent doctrine was there preached by all the representatives of the conferring Powers concerning the necessity, in the interest of the world's recovery, of encouraging the free interchange of goods across the frontiers, and ever since then the Powers which expressed these pious sentiments have been adding new lines of bricks along the tops of their tariff walls.

The new conference as consequently awaited with a certain cynical indifference by "those wlio would like to see all the peoples get rich and prosperous again, by making and selling to one another what they can best and most cheaply produce. Nevertheless there is. I believe, some reason to hope that this time something more than pious sentiment may be the outcome. The new European nations are beginning to see that commercial expansion is not really fostered by keeping the infant, or the patient, tied up tightly in bandages, and in. all countries the consumer shows a growing Testiveness and with good reason. Bled white during the war by means of high taxation and bad currency, which put huge profits into the pockets of producers, merchants and retailers, he is puzzled and suspicious to-day, 'because he is always hearing about trade depression due to low prices, but does not find, when he or she goes out to do the daily shopping, that anything like the advantage wliich might have been expected is going to the benefit of the buying public. After all, it is on the buying power of the general public that good trade finally depends, and if it is choked by the extortion of those who serve it, they may make big profits on a small turnover, but there cannot be that free flowing tide of general well-being that is really meant by good trade.

Another fact tnat will tell when the nations assemble to discuss the official attitude towards industry, is the international bitterness that is produced when Governments can be accused and convicted of restricting production and trade to the detriment of the consumer in other countries. A very good example of this bitterness was provided by a discussion in the American Congress just before Christmas, on the subject of the control of production and exportation !by foreign countries. At the instigation of Mr. Hoover, whose services to impoverished Europe at the time of afterwar exhaustion give, him a world-wide prestige, the House of Representatives ordered an investigation into the effects on American commerce of the control

of rubber, coffee, silk, nitrates and other important raw materials. ' But as far as can be gathered from a telegram in the "Times" of December 23, describing the debate, the Stevenson scheme of rubber restriction was the target on ■which the heavy guns of oratory poured most of their shells. The scheme is a matter on which volumes might be written without convincing anybody. For it, it may be said that some such arrangement was essential if a large number of plantations were to "be prevented from going back to jungle, to the ruin of their owners and to the ultimate disadvantage of consumers, because the consequent restriction would have been drastic and permanent. Against it, from the producer's point of view, one can point to the it briskly stimulated the production of rubber in the territories where it was not enforced. But the point that concerns us now is that if the scheme had been arranged by the industry itself without the employment of the official machinery through the export tax, American critics would !have had much less reason for attacks .on the British Government and for a revival of the time-honoured pastime of "twisting the British, lion's tail." Those Englishmen who attach the right amount of importance to the utterances of politicians in all countries are not very deeply stirred by these outbursts, but rather amused by them, especially when, they note that early in December the American Secretary of Agriculture had been Bent to Chicago by the President, and, after canferriiig with bankers and farmers, had arranged for the granting of loans which will enable the lowa farmers [ to "withold their maize from the market indefinitely, waiting for' satisfactory prices." ("Times," December 3). But it is not good for good feeling between countries, when it is stated in Congres that the British Government are "openly proclaiming that they propose during the next six years to collect four billion dollars by this process, enough to wipe out their debt to us." As the British Government does not own or grow rubber, and as even those ■who grow it, many of whom are Dutchmen or natives, do not pocket the whole of the gross price, but only the net profit, the statement is fairly fantastic; and there were, of course, plenty of speakers in the American Congress, ready to put the other side of the question, one of them observing that "Great Britain, Brazil, and other countries, are simply retaliating now against our people on account of the nonsensical, outrageous, damnable rates in the Fordney-McCum--I>er Tariff Law." ar^ n< l B i° ""Nation barks and bites •* n i bd ferments because Goya c^ R nf Which hay lately made a conspicuous, success of doin* their liei latefet example ia the Trartn tt H-I& Act which! desigJe'd^eUeve Britlßh unemployment, hae been tl titlon of a line of etcamere under The American control. « 0 increasing ' the difficuJtiee of British shipping, already hard hit by the competition of the i Heavily subsidised American mercantile n marine.