WORLD DUMPING GROUND.

Press, Volume LXVI, Issue 19972, 5 July 1930, Page 9

WORLD DUMPING GROUND.

MR BALDWIN ON SAFEGUARDING. ,BMPIRE PULLING TOGETHBR. I (THOU OCB PWir tOBBESPOXDEKT.) , LONDON, May 30. Mr Baldwin, speaking at Lancashire, in continuance of his Home and Empire- campaign, made a; clear statement of liis policy of safeguarding. "Very few industries are safeguarded to-day," he said, "but the experience we have learned is worth a great deal;In. those industries that are safef .guarded you will find trade union leaders are the men who recognise, most quickly all that has been done, and are ready to fight to maintain the duties. . • ' , "I have always regarded these mat- | ters of tariffs as a matter of expediency, and not of principle. But I hare always admitted that the Utiited States and the Continent.of Europe in recent years have carried their protective systems to a height that is'making it much more difficult to conduct trade as between one nation and unothefIt is of great importance to the world that these high duties should come down, but as a man of common sense 1do not see how they can ever come down so long as we preserve the United Kingdom as a dumping ground'for the surplus of the world. • (Cheers.) "I want a free hand with safeguarding that we may use it as a weapon. It may be to obtain treaties for our own benefit, or it may be to use it as a stick wlien people are raising tariffs against us. "What have we ever done with these constantly rising tariffs but protest? What can this Government do? Nothing. The president of the Board of Trado has been to <»eneva and has signed an agreement by which ho undertakes not to improve his little weapon of wood bow and .amir if those countries which use machine-guns will kindly go on using them and not build 'bigger ones. • That is perfectly ridiculous. People will not listen to you if you have no power behind you. No one" will reduce .duties for our asking them. Power to Negotiate. "J firmly believe that if we had that power to negotiate we may live to see—never an abolition of tariffs, because that system is a natural system to many, of those foreign countries—rbut a real reduction and a more reasonable tariff which would mean freer trade for the world at large. "The economic unity of the Empire, at which we all aim and which may take a generation or more to bring about, will mean Einoire markets for Empire goods, and the Imperial Dominions are only, yet at the beginning of the glorious future which awaits" them. "That, after all, is the basis of the great scheme of preference which the country examined and decided against in 1906. We must have complete cooperation with all parts of the Empire, remembering that India is a part,' and, as she lives up to her aspirations, she must take upon herself the duties as well as the rights of a Dominion, and the duties are to pull together in ' unity- against the whole world."