AN EMPIRE POLICY

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 119, 13 February 1935, Page 8

AN EMPIRE POLICY

Mr. Walter Elliot, the British Minister of Agriculture, is reported in a cable message to-day as stating that Britain’s long-term meat policy, as submitted to the Dominions,, is not British, but Imperial in its implications. In essentials it proposes a period of 18 months, operation, with a levy of Id. per lb. on foreign and -|d. on Dominions imports, plus “a slight restriction.” Although the first meeting held to consider the new policy is reported to have been of a cordial nature, and to have made good progress, it may be anticipated that mucn discussion of a critical kind will ensue. When Mr. Elliot refers to an “Empire policy” in agriculture, he includes, as he says, British agriculture, for the rehabilitation of whicn the method of restricted imports is considered urgently, necessary. Opinion in this country accepts the proposition that Britain has flright to assist her own farmers out of tlieir difficulties, but. at the same time is acutely concerned about our own markets, for it is on the expansion of our primary industries that our prosperity depends. Any policy which threatens to restrict this expansion is naturally a matter for apprehension. The aim of the present discussions therefore is to discover a workable plan for harmonising two. difficult and conflicting problems. “Quotas and tariffs,” says a writer in the Round Table, “are alternative methods of securing local protection, each of which has its own merits and defects. The quota method is the more dangerous to good relations between the countries of the Common-' wealth. The arbitrary element that it is bound to contain, the necessity that it creates for Government intervention—at the point both of export and import—the limit it sets to the reward of enterprise and efficiency in expanding the market by reducing the costs are factors which render it much more repugnant than the tariff to Dominion producers, and gave them a grudge against the United Kingdom such as the latter method of protection would not arouse.” It would seem from to-day’s report that what is proposed for the Dominions is a proportion of each, a levy which in the aggregate will amount to a substantial sum, and “a slight restriction” of imports. If the general effect of these measures plus the protection given to the British farmer should be to raise the prices of food products the result may be a contraction in the consuming power of the public. The standard of living in Britain is still low. enough for a future allround rise to bring great masses of people on to a plane where they can eat more meat, more butter, and more fruit. This rise may be effected in two ways, by raising wages, or lowering prices. For example, since 1926 the consumption of butter by the British people rose from 5500 tons a week to 9000 tons, almost solely through lower prices.

The fundamental problem is production and distribution costs, and how these can be cut down in order that goods may be sold at prices that will expand consumption instead of contracting it: The writer above quoted makes a pertinent observation in regard to the question of reorganised marketing. “So long as it takes the form of an effort to economise in distribution costs, to the advantage of both producer and consumer, it is,” he says, “plainly unexceptionable. If, on the other hand, a so-called marketing scheme is allowed to become a producers’ monopoly aimed merely at limiting output and raising prices, it defeats its own ultimate purpose; for before long the public will round upon it and leave either worse chaos than ever or a full-blooded Socialist regimentation. It must be recognised that so long as wants go unsatisfied among the poorer classes of our people, restriction can never be more than a second-best means of dealing with unprofitable conditions in any primary industry. The alternative of widening markets not only adds to the sum of material welfare; it enlarges the opportunities of employment in the primary industries, and it gives to debtor countries (who arc for the most part primary producers) a more clastic means of paying their debts.”