SECONDARY INDUSTRIES

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 101, 2 May 1927, Page 11

SECONDARY INDUSTRIES

(Xo the Editor.)

li,>SlTf~ Not ■° J ng a, go a writel' in the pubbe Press made the assertion that it is wrong to tax the community in order to protect our secondary industries. If that js true, then it must also be wrong to-tax the community for defence of the tS"n 7'H Whl. Cr WOuld he the betteu I-1*"-----to put the defence tax in our pockets antl spend it in motor-cars or tote tickets and submit to an invasion when war comes or pay the tax and keep tho invader out? Similarly, which will cost the least in the ong run, to submit to taxation for protection and keep our secondary industries or save the tax, throw down our tariff wall, and lot outsiders (be they American, Lierman, or even English) come in uud wipe our secondary industries off tho slate by the very simple means of sellin" cheaper than our factories can sell? What would happen then? Nothing more or less than what Imppened to the Irish woollen factories over ;i hundred years ago when free-trade eaine in with the Act of Union. They have to shut up and, if Kroude is right, then over 20,000 skilled mechanics recrossed the Irish Channel. That gave Ireland cheaper woollen goods, no doubt, but for how long? Only till the Irish factories were closed and the operative* gone The sequel is one of tho darkest chapters in both Irish and English history. Thero being nothing left to the nation but primary industries, the land became overcrowded; everybody wanted hind, rents begun to rise, and kept on rising till they absolutely wiped out all chance of profitable production.

It is tlie cum! of all countries in all ages when tlicy have no secondary industries! 01 then- own, and have to pay for mamihictiirod goods with their primary products. \Ve liave seen what free-trade did lot- the Irish fanners, and we are confident it will do the same for us. 'J'lio increased demand for km! will raise prices and runts, just like it did in Ireland till at last, getting a living oil" the land will be more problematical tlmii ever. Ihose who own land that is not too heavily mortgaged will, of course, reap a golden linrve.it, until the inevitable crash conies like it did in Ireland, when the potato crop lulled, and at least two hundred thousand polished by famine, mid the poor rate ruined the land owners and the land got new owners. Equally precarious must it of necessity be for the thousands of young men anil women who are a/;nuallv being turned out of our high schools and colleges. What, I see. in the dim yet not very distant future is all professions, overstocked and overcrowded. For every operator clicking the typewriter in our mercantile oflicers there will be two, perhaps even three or more, well-educated men and women, waiting for the jub to take his or her place. Needless to miy, there will be no need to pay big salaries when this conies about. But England has free-trade; why. has she not been overtaken by the same calamities? That is easily explained. At the beginning of last century ■ Euirland became the world's principal provider ot manufactured Roods, and her merchants made such good use of their opportunities that they became the bunkers of the whole civilised woijld, providing railways and factories all over the world, besides lending large sums of money to iorcign Governments. Thus it, comes about that England pays for her excess imports with the interest and dividends of those foreign investments without sending money abroad to any great ■extent:. This lias hitherto enabled England to undersell all her rivals in the world markets. The protective laritVi! were talcen down because they constituted a iirst charge O u 1:1 m goods so imported. When wo are in the same case we may begin to talk freetrade—not till then. In the meantime it would be worse than folly—it, would bo a crime—to let our struggling infant industries be willed out, when Nature has supplied all the means lor secondary industries ho bountifully into our hands.— I am, etc.,

„ , t ■, H. C. THOMSKN. Cni-tei-ton, 2nd May. [This letter bus boon slightly abridged..]