The Press Wednesday, February 9, 1927. The Tariff Problem.

Press, Volume LXIII, Issue 18921, 9 February 1927, Page 8

The Press Wednesday, February 9, 1927. The Tariff Problem.

The increasing attention winch is being given to the tariff question seems to guarantee iliat any alterations proposed by the Government in the nest session ot' Parliament will be closely scrutinised i'rom points o£ view which were not taken in earlier years. Yesterday we printed a useful and illuminating bulletin issued by the Chamber of Commerce in en junction with the Economies Department of Canterbury College, and an account of some important resolution.? io be discussed by the New Zealand Drapers' and Clothiers' Federation. To-day we have a report of speeches delivered by the Acting-Prime Minister and the linn. A. 1). MeLood in which there is u warning to the manufacturers to take heed of the position of the primary producer. Mr McLeod pointed out that in a country dependent upon ita exports ot primary products prosperity cannot, be achieved through the erection of high tariff walls, the shortening of hours of labour, and the fixing of wages on any other basis than the cost of production. While the great basic exporting industry, he added, remained in a depressed condition as to-day there could be no real prosperity for local manufacturers or workers. Exactly the same idea is expressed in the Chamber of Commerce bulletin:

But tho big export industries securine thoir incomes from the sale of their nr 'nee overseas provide the purchasing power which governs the market for tho goods and services produced by the rest, of the country. However complex and interwoven our industrial and commercial relations, and however indirect our dependence, our whole superstructure of commercial, political, and professional, as well as of industrial life, rests at bottom on tho wealth extracted from the soil by our primary , adiicts. Consequently the general welfare of all our business and industry is sooner or later determined by Hie prosperity or depression of the primary industries.

We ourselves pointed out last month to the Canterbury Manufacturers' Association thnt it "does not nppear to " realise how closely interwoven are all "our industries and occupations" or to understand that even " the duty on "the boots worn by the town worker "increases the cost of raising a lamb "in the country." Although this has gradually been making its way into the consciousness of all who can think upon public questions there are some manufacturers who cannot grasp the facta at all. One of them, for example, wrote to us the other day, in the manner of one asking a "poser," to enquire what duties increased the farmers' production costs. He ought to have known that the answer was what we gave him, namely, all duties. The growing distrust of ever higher protection—expressing itself alike in the Chamber of Commerce's adoption of a tariff bulletin recommending a revision downward father than upward, in the proposal of the Drapers' Federation that tariffs should be reduced, and in Mr Downie Stewart's warning to the manufacturers to go very cautiously—ought not to be taken by the manufacturers as a challenge to fight. It ought to be accepted by them as a sign that in the future they must rely upon improved technique and lower production costs, and must not expect any additional protection unless they can make out a very strong and clear case for it