The Press Monday, December 3, 1923. The Teaching of Economics.

Press, Volume LIX, Issue 17936, 3 December 1923, Page 8

The Press Monday, December 3, 1923. The Teaching of Economics.

Not the least interesting part of Mr W. J. Jenkin's address to the Industrial Association last week was his vigorous attack upon a disquisition on Protection which appears in a text-book oa Civics used in the public schools. Tho writer of tho article criticised by Mr Jenkin gave an account of the working of Protection. An industry is established, and appeals to the Government for tariff protection. The duty asked for is imposed, and, of course, this raises the price of the article, for it makes the imported article dearer, and, as Mr Weston pointed out in his address to tho Employers' Federation, there cannot be two prices for tho same article in the same market. Of course, the writer in the text-book pointed out, the local manufacturer promises that prices will not rise, and may oven fall. All ho requires is a chanco to establish his factory, and nobody grumbles at a temporary rise in. prices for the sake of establishing an industry which ultimately will provide cheaper and better goods than those imported. But the- years pass, and the duty still remains as a permanent barrier to cheapness. ' All this the writer in the text-book explained very clearly and very well, and he then asked whether it was really to the country's advantage that men should be engaged in an industry which cannot, oven after yea?s of fostering, even after it has long passed the stage of infancy, stand oji its own legs, rather than in such industries (primary industries) as can. He concluded his argument with these remarks: "Protection of local industries certainly does make tho Dominion more self-contained, but it takes men from moro vital and more profitablo industries which need no artificial protection. New Zealand is a very heavily protected country. All sorts of infant industries are protected by a high 'tariff wall' of duties. Over-protection will assuredly injure a young country by making it fritter away its energies on a multitude of trivial articles of production. From a scientific viewpoint, then, there is not a good word to say for Protection. It is quite unsound, but it is retained and extended mainly for sentimental and political reasons. Were the protective duties in New Zealand suddenly abolished many men would be tin own out of employment because the industries would not pay." This lesson, as we have said, was vehemently attacked by Mr Jenkin. He did not point' to any misstatement of fact in it, or to any error in the deductions from the ftlcts,| but denounced the whole article as "misleading rub- " bish," and "distorted and pre- " judiced." The new executive of the Association, he added, would be asked to have tho offending matter expunged, and replaced by "a clear, con- " cisa definition of what Protection "is," We know what the enthusiastic ex-President of the Association would praise as a clear, concise definition of Protection, and although we have not perfect faith in the Education Department, we feel confident that whatever it does to Mr Bottrill's arliclo it will shrink from printing the clear, concise definition which Mr Jenkin desires. The truth of the matter is, as members of the Industrial Association can ascertain for themselves, that there is no theoretical case for Protection at all, and that Protection cannot moro easily be developed as a general theory than mathematics can be taught on tho basis of such an assumption as that two and two are three. The most that can ever be urged in favour of tariff barriers to trade is that special interests of some kind may make protection expedient. Whether childres* should be instructed in economic theory at all is another question. We think that this is not the function of the Education Department, and this for a Bpecial reason. The article by Mr Bottrill happens to be sound, but we have no guarantee that some cranky enthusiast might not some day get the ear of the Department, and construct a lesson full of errors and follies. As a matter of fact, some cranky enthusiast ha 3 managed to capture the Education Department for the purposes of Prohibition propaganda. Safety, therefore, lies in the avoidance, in our schools, of matter which is the subject of controversy, and on these grounds Mr Jenkin's protest seems to us to be justified.