EMPIRE TRADE

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume XLIV, Issue XLIV, 7 May 1924, Page 5

EMPIRE TRADE

SELF DEPENDENCE

PREFERENCE QUESTION. —— £f ■V OABLJ—P»X3B ABBOCIATIOK ~#3&YRIGHT LONDON Itfay 6. j At ths Imperial Indu'strtts Club dinner, Sir James Allen, pitsiding, Mr. F. L % McDougall sai<i> tkat, owing to the unfortunate ai'ter/mastlh of the ¥ieo»oniic Conference, AtisfcKalia would have to extend the British paper preference to Canada,

Paper, cotton, woollens and dyes well illustrated thfe deliberate shelter from foreign competition given to British tr-ade by Australian preferences. Would Britain 'i*alise that an orderly policy of Empire development might h$ thfc only safeguard Tn the era of intesaslfred -industrial competition which the Restoration of Europe must involve ? It was --essential, if Empire developa»s»fc wa s Uo be safe in the hands of British democracy. It should be made clear that an Imperial policy was never araperious, that the ideals of the empbtes of Spain or Portugal, with, their prohibitions of trade to all foreigners, could never be revived, and that we <did 'not intend to follow the 100 per cenft discrimination against foreigners ttfh'ich America and Japan now employed in their dependencies. Our ideal, added the speaker, must Tie an Emipre as self-dependent as pos•gible concerning essential foodstuffs and raw materials, a commonwealth within which British trade would reasonably be preferred, but in which foreign competition was not excluded; but it was most important that the Empire should be a union of free peoples. With this ideal of Empire development we must win the affections of British democracy and British labour.

Sir Joseph Cook (Australian High Commissioner) said Australia and New Zealand took up the position that they begged for nothing, but were conscious it was not in the interests of the Empire that they should have to betake themselves to the course that now remained open to them. They felt that if -the Empire was good enough to fight for it was good enough to trade with, and they declined to apply strict mathematical and economic considerations to the develoment of the Empire's future. - Rather they fell back upon the King's statement that it was their duty, even at some sacrifice, to develop the family estate.