SOME EFFECTS OF PROTECTION.

Evening Star, Issue 8578, 27 July 1891, Page 3

SOME EFFECTS OF PROTECTION.

TO THE EDIXOE Sm,—A few nights ago you published a long list of the ruinous effects of the M'Kinley tariff. After looking it oyer carefully, the question suggested to my mind was: Well, if strikes and reductions of wages have taken place since the passing of the high tariff, are there not other and better reasons why they have happened I Assuming that .they happened since the tariff passed, it is like a person taking a couple of pills, and a day or two afterwards is taken ill; he at once puts it down to the pills. Allowing the long list to be true (which I very much doubt, as no authority is quoted by you), I oan reasonably account for them. They were caused by one of the occasional paralyaations of trade that pass over the States. But can you or any other man show how the high tariff on foreign manufactured goods should cause the home manufacturers to redace the wages paid to their hands ? Suppose, for example, our Government were to put 20 per cent, more on woollen goods imported into the colony, would this additional tax cause the Moagiel and other mills to reduce wages ? Nay, would it not enable them, by causing such an increase in business, to raise wages ? The only possible way in which it might hurt present millownew is by the high tariff &uflipfcoJher mills to start; an'd wfere Is plenty of room

for them, for I am assured that we do not manufacture one-third ot what is used to the colony. The additional mills would cause keener competition among the colonial manufacturers, and the publio at large would get the benefit in that case. Let me remind vou of statements tha appeared in the Evknino Stab, that the M'Kinley Tariff bad thrown many thousands of artisans out of work in Birmingham and other English cities ; besides, we might add, hundreds of thousands out of work on the Continent. Does not this play into the hands of the American manufacturers? Then how can it cause a reduction in the wages paid ? Please explain.-l am, etc, Dunedin, July 25.