England and Protection

Dominion, Volume 24, Issue 182, 1 May 1931, Page 11

England and Protection

Sir, —In your issue of Monday last Sir James Parr lets loose an avalanche of protectionist sophistry, but his statements are so reckless and inaccurate that no careful reader can be deceived. If free trade and cheap goods are ruining England, he might have told us how it comes about that she has fewer unemployed than the United States, Australia, or this country. If protection raises wages, why are wages being reduced in Australia? How comes it that a special session of our own protectionist Parliament has been summoned for the express purpose of reducing wages? How conies it that it is easier for travellers to land in Britain than in the United States, Australia, or New Zealand? Sir James Parr avoids these obvious questions, but seeks to obscure the issue by statements »o patently threadbare that they scarcely eall for an answer. As for the allegation that the Conservatives are united on the fiscal issue in England, we need only recall the fact that Mr. Baldwin is pledged against all food taxes, /kt the latest by-election, during which he denounced Lords Beaverbrook and Rothermere in the strongest possible terms, he insisted that food taxes must be excluded from the policy of the party. Without food taxes, however, protection is meaningless in Britain, and Sir James Parr must be aware of the fact, just as he must know that Mr. Baldwin's alleged party is hopelessly divided and politically impossible. But what of the Labour Party? Sir James Parr assures us that “the workers are turning against free-trade.” I quite agree that tariff-mongering seems to be an issue on which Tories and Socialists unite. If you scratch a Marxian you will usually find a tariff-monger, and so we find ornamental Socialists like Dr. Haden Guest and Sir Oswald Mosely, in agreement with the hereditary enemies of popular freedom. That is by no means the whole of the story, however. The masses of the people of England have a healthy instinctive hatred of food taxes, and until that instinct has been eradicated financiers like Lord Beaverbrook will scheme in vain, and though they may rope in all the Ben Tillets and Blatchfords, the masses Will remain inflexible. They will simply refuse to follow their alleged leaders. On the other hand, there are powerful mercantile interests who most pull in the same direction with the masses. Does any man whose head is bigger than a door-knob believe that Englishmen who have invested £400.000.000 in the Argentine Republic, for example, are willing to wreck their business interests for the supposed benefit of the colonies? Fortunately for international goodwill, indeed for the progress of civilisation itself, commerce serves ends higher and nobler than itself, and every lover of his kind must rejoice at the fact that it cannot be limited by merely political boundaries.

People who try to sandwich protection with Imperial sentiment are guilty of serious public disservice. Does Sir James Parr really believe that, the people of England are prepared to endure food taxes for tlie sake of the colonies? Lord Beauchamp, speaking to a Press representative at Auckland a few months ago. declared that the fiscal propaganda move being pursued in the name of Empire would make the name of Empire odious In England. Moreover, to say that our prosperity depends on the adoption of protection in England is to disclose a contemptible mental attitude. Dairyfarmers. under the inspiration of Mr. Goodfellow, sent an SOS to Mr. Forbes asking him to support preference—that is. the Beaverbrook nostrum —at the Imperial Conference, and a similar message of despair was cabled from the Hermitage. Mount Cook, where a number of our ■ mercial magnates were discussing the of nations. Surely they must have forgotten their recent denunciation of the C'.O.D. system and their insistence that it should be forbidden by law? Anyhow, before Sir James Parr and his friends address themselves to the task of promoting Imperial stability by tariff-mongering, they might take into consideration the wreck protection has made in this country and in Australia.—l am, etc., P. J. O'REGAN. Wellington, April 22.