SECONDARY INDUSTRIES.

Press, Volume LXII, Issue 18676, 27 April 1926, Page 10

SECONDARY INDUSTRIES.

TO THB EDITO* O* "THE PRESS." Sir, —In your leading article on Protection for Secondary Industries on April 23rd, it is pleasant to know that your views do not coincide with those expressed by Ministers of the Coates Cabinet during the Elections and since then. Your unfair method oi' attack on New Zealand manufacturers whenever the tariff comes up for discussion is well known, and creates no surprise, but I did not think that you would suppress facts to bolster your , argument. When citing the American and Australian manufacturers as examples of efficiency, you did not state that it w as made possible by a prohibitive tariff in America (that no sane manufacturer in New Zealand would ask for) and that Australia has a general tariff of JS per cent, against our L'o per cent. If a suggestion of a 10 per cent, liicrease will resurrect your "skyscraper tendencies," where does your consistency come in in asking that manufacturers should be as efficient as those iti Australia, where the tariff is 20 per cent, higher than ours? Surely, your able and successful advocacy for protection of the wheat industry is no.t. that of a "one-eyed" personage. It is a significant fact that one of the few industries in Britain that is prosperous is one of the few brought under the Safeguarding of Industries Act, which tariff is higher than in New Zealand, namely, the manufacture of artificial silk. I can cite you other instances, providing you make it worth while by playing the came. I don't know, Mr Editor, whether you are proud of the fact, but the one thing you have in common with the ' Red Fed" element is their tender solicitude for manufacturers' interests in every country excent the one of their adoption. iSurelv "The Press'' is not going "Bolshie?"—Yours, etc., 'I. WOOLF. C'hristchurch, April 26th.