The Northern Advocate SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 1913. PROTECTIVE TARIFFS

Northern Advocate, 8 February 1913, Page 4

The Northern Advocate SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 1913. PROTECTIVE TARIFFS

Tariff-mongers all over the world received an unpleasant shock by Dr. Woodrow Wilson's election to the presidency of the United States, for he and his supporters had, in appealing to the people, placed particular stress upon the moral and economic evils of a protective tariff. In England the verdict of the States upon this momentous question was particularly distasteful to the leading tariffites who for several years past have been engaged in drawing morals of various kind from American experience. To the people in this country it should be an unmixed pleasure to see the Democratic party in the ascendant at Washington, for by a lowering of duties — and the President and Congress now stand pledged to this—a very valuable market will be opened for New Zealand wool, meat, and dairy produce. It is not a little amusing, however, to find some of the Protectionist newspapers in New Zealand fussily endeavouring to show that Dr. Wilson and; Mr. Bryan and the American Democrats generally are " not Free-traders in the Cobdenite sense." It is not at all clear to us what our friends mean by " the Cobdenite sense," but if the agitated defenders- of ruinous Customs duties wish to bring the men who now. control the Government of the American States to support of their doctrines, we are very much afraid their knowledge of either Dr. Woodrow Wilson or Mr. Bryan and of the character of the economic platform adopted by these gentlemen is exceedingly limited. The Auckland "Star," for instance, is telling its readers that " the Democrats are no more likely than the Republicans to undermine the foundations of national industry,'' and that] '• in America the operation of protec-i tion is very largely obscured by the baneful activity of the trusts and the monopolies that have been built up for selfish purposes, regardless of the public welfare and in defiance of the law of the land." The answer to this |is that the " baneful activity " of I trusts and monopolies is due entirely |to the tariff behind which these mon- ! strosities shelter themselves. With no tr.riff there would be no steel trust, no boot trust, no hat trust—nor any one of those thieving organisations which | plunder the citizen of his income. Dr. ! Wilson's estimate of the tariff as a foundation of national industry has been so clearly expressed that the use of his name in connection with such a phrase amounts to sheer foolishness. Instead of regarding the tariff being a foundation of industry the President has denounced it as " a dam that restricts the activities and earnings of the American people." Before his election, while fighting what was' really an anti-protectionist campaign, he over and over again enunciated] clearly in his speeches the fundamental truths of Free Trade, and exposed ruthlessly the fallacies of Protection, and more especially the fallacy of the pet argument that the protection of the products of labour protects labour. In one of his most important speeches he said:— I want the men out of a job to know that there are fewer jobs in America because of the tariff, be-cause-the great combinations limit the output, limit the production, limit the number of those who produce, and, therefore, there are hundreds of thousands of poor fellows out of employment on account of this very thing. As a matter of fact, some of the most highly protected industries in this country pay very much lower wages than the unprotected industries, and some of the most highly protected industries pay wages that are below the living sca'e at the same time that the profits they are making are so great that they can build new factories out of their surplus every second year. It is one of the grandest pieces of bluff and humbug that has ever been known in the history of political deception.

Obviously people who want to rely upon Dr. Woodrow Wilson for support of protection are summoning a hostile witness, and their case is made no

better by appeal to the platform of the Democratic party, for there we find it laid down that

We declare it to be a principle of the Democratic party that the Federal Government, under the Constitution, has no right or power to impose or collect tariff duties, except for the purpose of revenue, and we demand that the collection of such taxes shall be limited to the necessities of government, Jionestly and economically administered.

It might possibly be conceded if we knew what the implication is, that the American Democrats are" not Free-traders in the Cobdenite sjjnse," but in the meantime any invitation to regard them as opponents of Free Trade or even supporters of Protection, is only entitled to ridicule. Indeed, the revolt against the sophistries and humbug by which Protection has been • hitherto butressed is one of the great outstanding features of contemporary^

political history in the United States, Great Britain, and Germany. America has polled heavily against the tariff. The British electors refuse to touch Protection on any terms at all, and in Germany the last general election turned upon the very question of such food taxes as the Tariff Reformers want to impote upon the Unit m! Kingdom, and resulted in an unprecedented increase of the Anti-Protec-tionist element in the Reichstag. The representation of the Free Trade Socialist party, now the largest in that Chamber, was more than doubled, aud, together with the Radicals and ether Anti-Protectionists, now constitute a powerful minority that is only v some forty votes short of a majority. The German Socialist vote of four and aquarter millions, everyone gi'/e/i by "ST" man. over twenty-five years of ag;e. is more than all a protest against the present protective system which imposes . burdens almost intolerable upon the mass of s the people.