A MODEST REQUEST.

Evening Post, Volume LXVIII, Issue 82, 4 October 1904, Page 4

A MODEST REQUEST.

♦ The request of the West Coasts Timber Trades Association for exemption from the operation of the Trade Monopolies Bill 'was, of course, based upon the dangers of foreign competition and the need of fostering local industry, but the Premier was wise to hold out no encouragement to the deputation from the Association which waited on him at Greymouth last week. It was stated by the spokesman of tho deputation that within the last month 780,000 ft o{ Oregon timber had been landed at Lyttelton from one boat, and that he believed the freight from America to Lyttelton ,\vas less than that charged to the local

sawmillers from Greymouth to the same port. It was also mentioned that other cargoes of Oregon timber were already on the way for Dunedin ahd Wellington. The request of the deputation was not primarily for protection against the American producer ; its main object is to maintain the right to exploit the New Zealand consumer by artificially raising prices, and with this right the Trade Monopolies Bill would interfere. But as free importation of American timber would also interfere with the sawmillers 1 monopoly, protection is again needed here for the monopoly at the consumers' expense. Protection within reasonable bounds and of a discriminating character we have always advocated, but the demand of the West Coast sawmillers is very like protection run mad. In the* United States the tyranny of the trust has been established under a protective tariff, and this unforeseen result constitutes a terrible set-off to whatever advantages local industry has derived from the tariff; but protection is openly advocated by the unsophisticated timber men of Westland as a necessary step to the consolidation of their monopoly, and as another essential they claim at the' same time an exemption from the legislation which proposes to protect the consumer from unlimited exploitation and oppression at the hands of organised capital. The chief interest of the people, and especially of the poor, in the timber trade is that it shall give them cheap houses, and increasing the dividends of a timber trust will be no consolation to the poor man whose house is made dearer thereby or perhaps put quite beyond his reach. It would be better to drop the Trade Monopolies Bill altogether than to make a farce of it by tolerating any exceptions.