WHEAT PROTECTION

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XX, Issue 197, 9 August 1930, Page 8

WHEAT PROTECTION

BRITISH CONSERVATIVE PARTY’S POLICY.

Certain interested parties are endeavouring to kill the wheat industry iu New Zealand by the removal of the duties, using the catch-Cry of ■‘cheaper bread with imported Hour.” Their argument, however, belongs to bygone days and is hopelessly out of sympathy with modern conditions. England, for instance, which ha* had free trade in its wheat and flour supplies since Cobden’s days, is now realising that cheap bread is not the only aim. and that it is more important to have increased production and employment than cheap bread and no employment. Mr. Stanley Baldwin, ex-Prime Minister of Great Britain, in June of this year, stated his party’s policy in this matter as follows; “We propose in regard to wheat to give a guaranteed price to make wheat-growing remunerative . . . Dumped or bountyfed oats must be stopped, and they shall be stopped either by prohibition or by countervailing duties.” This is a remarkable statement in it country which has so long believed in free trade, so much so that no politician previously dared speak against it. It is striking evidence of how the British public opinion is changing. In New Zealand wo already have what Mr. Baldwin is aiming at. We are growing our own wheat requirements under tho protection of e sliding scale of duties. The cost of this protection is amply repaid in many ways. In tho first place, the Dominion’s annual wheat crop is worth aproximately £2,500,000. No other crop yielding anything like an equivalent return could be raised on tho same land. On top of this, one has to consider the employment provided by the wheat industry in New Zealand to tho extent of £BOO,OOO per annum. No sane person can advocate free trade in wheat and flour and kill an industry which is such a producer of wealth and provider of employment for tho Dominion.”