THE MEANING OF FREE TRADE

Auckland Star, Volume LXXII, Issue 284, 1 December 1941, Page 6

THE MEANING OF FREE TRADE

Your correspondent "1941 Liberal* asks for an explanation of the mean* ing of "a free flow of international trade" so far as the interests of manufacturers and their employees are concerned. The answer has frequently been given and shows that the effect upon the persons to whom "1941 Liberal" refers would be an entirely happy one. Mr. Winston Churchill supplied one such explanation when he declared: "The greatest and most prolonged manifestation of economic power which the history of the whole world can show was produced by Great Britain after 70 years of Free Trade." Another Chancellor, the late Philip Snowden wrote: "Between 1850 and 1900, the period of Free Trade, the rate of wages, as shown by British Board of Trade index numbers, rose by 78 per cent and in the same period the prices of commodities fell by 11 per cent." Professor Bert rand Russell wrote in a recent book: "The average of real trade in 1874 was beween 50 and 60 per cent above that of 1850. As for the cotton trade, even at its worst moment in 1886 average earnings were 48 per cent above the level of 1850. ... In view of these facts (says the professor), the importance of Cobden in raising wages ran hardly be denied. . . . During the earlier part of the Free Trade period especially every class in England made extraordinarily rapid progress." This seems to be the explanation that "1941 Liberal" requires—good business for the manufacturers, high wages for their employees and a low cost of living for the people. G. HENRY.