ARE TARIFFS NEEDED?

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXXII, Issue 2805, 25 November 1931, Page 8

ARE TARIFFS NEEDED?

PROTECTION AND PUBLIC INDIFFERENCE. At the present moment I cannot call to mind which of Dickens’ characters declared that the “law was an hass”; but an afternoon among the business men of any town, writes a correspondent in an exchange, convinces me that had he included the whole of the British public, he would rot have gone far astray. A gratifying feature of these particular peregrinations was the discovery that the bulk of our shops stock 95 per cent. British goods, while number of them reach the 99 per cent. mark. Drapers confess to a few French gloves, Swiss ribbon, and an odd line of American hose. Most of them stock Canterbury Interlock (cotton) underwear and Canterbury Locknit silks, made up, and in the piece; New' Zealand stockings, and, exclusively, New Zealand woollen goods — underwear, suitings, blankqts, etc. Cotton goods labelled “Made in New Zealand” are made up from British materials, and all haberdashery is hnnorted from England. Caps, hats, corsets, tics, etc., and leather and fibre suit cases, made in New Zealand, can be purchased at a price that can compete with any imported article. Our jewellers plead guilty to German clocks. Swiss watches, and trinkets of foreign make. The two former can be obtained in England, but only of a very superior quality, at a correspondingly higher price. In the latter case it is impossible to obtain in England the variety of delicately wrought, moderately priced, and highy attractive trifles that are turned out on the Continent. So runs the tale in country towns where the small men buy from warehouses and importers; but what of the big city firms, which import them? Chemists buy English drugs, toilet requisites, and cosmetics, but in the latter case the French still dominate the market.

Why? Because the great British public is an ass! It takes— What it is given. What it is accustomed to having, regardless of any alteration in circumstances. I found the business men bitter on these points. The foreign article is not always, as some seem to think, a better article at a lower price—to the consumer; but it is invariably lower priced to the importer, who can sell at a few pence below the cost of the British equivalent, and still make an immense profit. And who is to.blame? Tlv. Great British Ass! Our shops stock British goods—but it would be all the same if they did not—for not one customer in a hundred demands British goods, and not one refuses to buy foreign. If they did, there would be no song about "dumping," and the importer of for>’gn goods would automatically gc out of business. But the Great British Ass yells for tariffs—-to protect him from his own crass stupidity—or doesn’t; and goes on taking what he is given—including the dole; whereas if he bought British stockings, instead of stockings, the British workmen might work again. No acts of Parliament, and Bills, but common sense in the masses, is required to stabilise commerce to-day —common sense in the bulk that refuses foreign tftfods produced by sweated labour, wherever , the British article of equal quality can be bought at a reasonable price. This moans you! Whether you contemplate the purchase of an aereoplane or an ear-trumpot, a tractor or tin-opener-—turn it upside down, ( and look for the magic words, "Made in ” Then only will you be able to make Huit momentous decision-—to buy, or not to buy; for "By their marks ye shall know them.”