WHY PREFERENCE TO BRITAIN?

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XI, Issue 201, 18 August 1921, Page 4

WHY PREFERENCE TO BRITAIN?

In another column to-day there appears a telegraphic report of a meeting held at Wellington by tho New Zealand Association of British Manufacturers and Agents. Included in the report is a summary of an address delivered by Mr. R. W. Dalton. His Majesty’s Trade Commissioner iu New Zealand. Ho, like the president of the Association whose members ho was addressing, lays very great stress upon the duty of the traders and people of this Dominion, as of the other British oversea Dominions, to extend all possible preference to goods of British manufacture. At the same time he gives us assurance of his confident belief, in the British manufacturers’ capacity to provide us with most of the things we want and of the best quality. Presumably, too, we are expected to infer that' the British manufacturers will bo able to supply us at prices, at worst, not appreciably higher than those at which we could get tho same good* elsewhere, although this implication is perhaps not supported by tbo

president’s hint about a discriminating tariff in favour of the Old CountryThat, however, is a question subsidiary to the main point that we wish to make. As we have had occasion already to note, Mr. Dalton obviously regards himself, and perhaps quite properly in terms of his employment, as here for the sole purpose of pushing the interests of the British exporter, and no one will want to deny that he well fulfils this function, so far as boosting British wares is concerned, and keeping us impressed with the sacred obligation to support British trade. With all this we are no doubt duly impressed, and, indeed, the Commissioner’s exhortations jump well with our own instinctive and inherited in-, clinations. But, if Mr. Dalton were a Scotchman, as mayhap he is, he would know the soundness of the old proverb that “giif-gaff maks guid f reends,” and himself make some effort to see that it was given some practical application in our dealings with the British manufacturers. They, on their part, apparently consider it our bounden duty to the Mother Country and the Empire that we should show some decided preference for, and perhaps extend the benefits of a discriminating tariff to, their finished goods. This being so, it seems only reasonable that we, on our part, should expect reciprocity in the form of an endeavour by the British manufacturers to find means for absorbing, at a decently remunerative price, as much as possible of the raw materia’, on whose disposal the prosperity of this Dominion so materially depends. We may again ask, as we did before, whether the Commissioner has evs.l put before British manufacturers this aspect of our relations with them. If so, we are not yet seeing any very definite results, for the coarser wools which form the great bulk of the product of our sheep-farms seem still to be very much neglected by the Home buyers. Before the war there were always outlets for the whole of our clips, and it is fair to assume that British manufacturers handled a large proportion of them. Now, however, and eve i since the war ended, they seem to have, and to have had, but little time to consider it, devoting their attention almost exclusively to the finer grades furnishing them with the most profitable materia.', on which to work. Beyond this, Bradford, if we may judge from its press organs, did all that was possible to bring about conditions which would have meant their getting their supplies of raw material for next to nothing at the sacrifice of the wool-growers. If the British manufacturers are not prepared to make some special effort to rind in their own mills an Outlet for our wool, then we must look abroad for it, and by way of payment for our wool we shall have to take the manufactured goods of various kinds with which the buying country can supply us. The only alternative for us is to give up growing wool, a thing which probably would not suit Bradford’s book in the end. There is nothing surer, however, than that if British manufacturers neglect our products, we shall be driven into the arms of some foreign buyeir with whom we can make terms, and that must necessarily result in a great deal of reciprocal trading. Nor will the people of the country tolerate a preferential tariff when they see that British manufacturers have so little regard for the interests of Dominion producers. This is a matter that does not concern woollen manufecturers alone, for the goods we take in exchange for our wool will cover a very wide range of variety. Consideration of the subject is therefore commended, not to the Trade Commissioner alone, but also to all the members of the Association ho was addressing. It is no use the agents of British manufacturers preaching to us the doctrine of trade loyalty to tin? Empire unless they are prepared to get their principals to show us, in some practical form, that they have a sincere belief in it—and that it cuts both ways.