Mount Ida Chronicle. AND St. Bathans Weekly News. NASEBY, SATURDAY, FEB. 26th, 1887. THE BLESSINGS OF PROTECTION IN THE COUNTRY.

Mount Ida Chronicle, Volume XVII, Issue 998, 26 February 1887, Page 2

Mount Ida Chronicle. AND St. Bathans Weekly News. NASEBY, SATURDAY, FEB. 26th, 1887. THE BLESSINGS OF PROTECTION IN THE COUNTRY.

One of. the most unfortunate but inevitable effects of the Protectionist policy,which, -is finding so many advocates in the towns . just now is to divide the towil and country and set the ruralpopulation against their kindred in the cities, ' Naturally,, this is one of the last things we hear about from a Duhedin or any other city Protection league. Their " dazzling fallacies," to use a once!-famous pHrase, are Nearly all.conceived to catch' the city artisan and the handful- of. city manufacturers; and, for the most'part, the questiori of how Protection " is 'going to affect the farmer and the miner is wisely let alone by .the . professional workingman's friend when declaiming Protection from his native stump; There are no farmers or miners among his audience ; probablj, if. he is a politician or wants to be, there are none in the constituency he favors with his preference; why, therefore, should he* go out of his way to elaborate an answer to a parti-. cul?irly a.wkward question when he is in the lucky position of having nobody about him to.ask it? So it is all comfortably, and snugly arranged in, town, while the unconscious farmers and miners are peacefully smoking by their firesides after the toils' of the day, far from the - madding crowd of, public meetings and- the noisy demonstrations of Protectionist orators.; They—the farmers'and miners, that is, ;not the orators—are to be neatly bamboozled' into paying a sovereign where they now pay 158 .-for. all the articles of clothing and tools, implements, tents,boots Etnd'shoeo, and all the rest of the things .they require; and the extra 5 s in the pound—to which all the other taxes are a mere flea-bite—is to go into the pockets of the ingenious persons who have arranged the little business so neatly in town, for the purpose of "fostering local industries." In the excellent Bpeech recently delivered in Dunedin : by Iklr- Betjce, member for Rangitikei in the House of Representatives, that very plucky specimen of a New.. Zealand legislator' bearded tue lion in his den—or, in other words, braved the Dunedin Protectionists in their own Ball—by boldly bringing forward the claims of the miners to some little consideration while all these pleasant little schemes for enriching the city ring at their expense were getting fixed up so swimmingly. We should like to hear one single argument brought forward which could with even an approach to plausibility pretend to demonstrate that the miner has anything to gain by Protection. We have never seen it attempted; though, judging by somo of the arguments used "at recent Protectionist meetings in Dunedin—and in responsible quarters, too—.we should hardly be surprised to see a proposal ,emanate from the league to impose a duty of 25 per cent, on the importation of sovereigns by the banks, in order to raise the price of gold in the country. _ The blessings of Pro Section often arrive in as. questionable-shape. Assuming, however, that insanity is hardly developed so far as yet, where else are ..we to look for any possible advantage to the miner ? Every-

thing he wears, lives in or uses is to be raised in price by a trifle of 5s or so in the pound; and when he asks ! why, he is to be coolly told that it is because the Dunedin bootmakers and "candle-chandlers' don't 'thin k- they-were.-making enough out of him before, so the State has ordered him to "foster" those ingenious gentlemen to the tune of (say ) a'roundounce-or'so of the-preciouß.i metal every month, if he is a family man and therefore wants a lot of booiß and' things. "More than that, the State tells him it is determined his children shall get no~ more English : which heused to find carried the youngsters twice as long as the Colonial article: English boots are- tdjie -shut out of our'ports, so the children must wear leather from Ithe Kaikorai tanneries or go barefooted. We will not elaborate on this theme: it will suffice to quote about it the words of the eminent American referred to by J Mr BatrcE, that his country's policy of Protection had created a slavery more absolute and more unendurable than that which the nation poured'out millions of treasure and rivers of blood to abolish.

Again, as regards the farmer, who, equally with the tfnrepresented at the ."salvos "—the. Sal yation'Ariny will pardon our borrowing' one of their ] characteristic expressions V.fora kindred organisation—of Dunedin Protectionist battalions, we wonder if any farmer is. really prepared ■to- put • his _.hand jr. his pocket.to a-year or more, according to the size of his farm and" family; and the amount of clothes, .sundries and farm implementshe requires, in 'order to "increase 'the prosperity (say),of a.couple of. George-" street hatters, an iron foundry on the wharf, some tallow-works at "Green" Island, and so on?" The'farm'er.ihow;?'; ever, occupies a somewhat different' position from the miner in this matter, inasmuch as while Protectionists openly and absolutely ignore' the miner and all his concerns,.they \<dp,in.,a sort of way. attempt- to-furbish up a labored excuse for their' selfish -. grabbery to; catch, the supposed-igiwrahtorunth'inkirig farmer: 'though their greatest reLance as regards aoy resistance by their victim is placed, not on argument,'bufc on the insidious-. nessof th9ir method'of /filching money i out of his'pocket, is-done by sticking a shilling on to this and a half--crown pif-tothat, and' nye, shillings oh to the other,,in.'sojstealthy and bewildering a way that the" unfortunate "sufferer hardly knows he is. being <got at till he comes to balance— or fail-in balancing—nis half-yearly; account.- The pretence made to the farmer—we'don t suppose any Protectionist believes in it, but it is necessary to make one for decency's sake, and these town orators thihkany trick is good enough to take in a country bumpkin—is that somehow, grain will rise if he will only stump up. liberally to the virtuous and needy hatters and bootmakers do.vn in the .city and mike things pleasant for the trades generally .to he is : compelie'd to "go for what he requires. ' "We should like.to see a Protectionist who had sufficient faith in his own opinions to make a contract with say half-a-dozen Naseby farmers—right here, and no. platform nonsense about it —to buy their, grain ja (the autumn-of 1890 at a shilling's bushel over present" prices, delivered in Dunedin,.if they, would give their votes and voices for Protection. /.Then they might.well talk about it being-a holy- and beautiful thing for the distressed .farmer to part with the rest, and more than the rest, of his scanty earnings to divide among the hungry few in Dunedin, who are so audaciously prosecuting their determination to live and thrive in future on the enforced charity,pf the general Bat till they: do begin to talk in: some such practical way as that—of which, 'we hasten with some regre't:'tp explain to bur agricultural friends/there does not at present appear to be any immediate prospect—we venture to think, that the country farmers will prefer to continue paying 8d per pound for candles toipayinga- shilling, and .fa for'the wee booties rather than ;10s. .., !'.,,..

11 As-regards'those engaged in-the pastoral industry—an industry rapidly 'spreading, and into'which the. State, ia' doing its beat to draw a? large part of the-population by various liberal provisions for the occupation of pastoral coun'try T both on the large and on; the small are in tbe sameposition as the agricultural farmer- in this matter. We have not, it'is true,yet'seen it declared at Protectionist meetings that the adoption of a Protective poMcy by .New. Zealand-will compel the English, French and German buyers who attend the London wool sales to bid'an extra, penny or two per pp und 'so as to "foster_l' the Antipodean wool r grower3. But, ridiculous as this would be, we may "expect to see it yet seriously argued, for it is not a bit more ridiculous than the pretence that by similar means :we can raise the : price of oats in Australia or of wheat in London, which prices govern the, prices in this eountry so long as we are exporters of grain at all. And we cannot thrive as a farming or wool-growing community by merely selling to each other; we must have a market outside, or. fail; Altogether, the " disguise " of the blessings of Protection in the country must be admitted to be uncommonly effectual and complete.