PROTECTION OR FREE TRADE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 177, 28 July 1934, Page 8

PROTECTION OR FREE TRADE.

Worrying about work in an age of leisure (compulsory), will not enable Mr. G. Henry to surmount his troubles. For niy part I would send all the work out of the country if that were feasible, for what I want are goods and services, not work. However, let me assure Mr. Henry that work, does not go out of the country as simply as the protectionist mind imagines, for we have to do a great deal of work here in New Zealand to produce things for export before the mercenary fellows overseas will send us any imports, the latter being the form of payment-for the'work we do here. As we cannot consume all our own production, by a long chalk, if we stop imports we stop exports automatically, taking trade ae a whole, for if we do not take imports we- prevent the overseas purchaser from paying for our exports. It is because it is easier for Tie, the line of least resistance, to import motor cars than to make them ourselves that we import; in other words, .we seek to avoid forced work if we are an intelligent community. So that's that Regarding that homely protectionist and his display of wares at the Winter Show, I suppose it was too trifling a matter to mention that this enterprising exhibitor also made the road, the railway and rolling stock, or the road and motor car that brought him and his collection to' Auckland. The candles are highly symbolical of that outfit in these days of electricity and neon lights, for if we take that line to its logical conclusion we will get back to the •era before even rush lights, away to the primeval cave habitations, when the most advanced implement was a rock lashed by a piece of natural fibre to the end of a bough broken off a tree. That assortment of "homemades" is in the wrong place; it ought to be in the museum. T. E. McMILLAN.