FREE TRADE OR LOCAL INDUSTRIES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXIII, Issue 7800, 20 November 1886, Page 3

FREE TRADE OR LOCAL INDUSTRIES.

TO TUB EDITOR. Sib, —" Colonus" can write a very good letter, bat he is not praotioal. He seem* to be quite oblivions of what is going on around him. There are neither remunerative investments nor employment for capital, nor work to be found for a large number of un« employed meohanies and other skilled labour who were brought out chiefly through, and owing to the expenditure of public loans to carry out the public works soheme. It appears to me that the time has arrived to try other means than a free trade tariff to 1 find work for the people, and if capitalists cease to employ their means in the face of free trade and imports, either propertyowners must .be prepared to be taxed till they are ruined for the support of the unemployed, or employment must be obtained by a protective tariff. It is no use orying over spilt milk. We have in the colony a vast number of people who have never been acoustomed to milk (except drinking it) or any other farming operation, and a town life they must of necessity lead, as they would be perfectly useiess and helpless in the country so, in spite of " Colonus's " opinion that the. protection of our industries would be the most withering mrse that could befall the colony, a protective tariff must now, as a necessity, be adopted, Is Great Britain a cursed country because it has been, and still is, the most important manufacturing and commercial country in the world ? We shall have to follow the example of the United States, Canada, Victoria,, and now at last even New South Wales, namely, that all. those countries finding after a time that their populations increased in a greater ratio than the demand for labour and for pastoral and agricultural pursuits, found it necessary that their surplus population over and above pastoral and farming requirements should find the means to earn a living, and deeming it a wise polioy to study their own interests in preference to finding work r for people in other countries, have adopted pro* tective tariffs, with the most satisfactory results.' Universal free trade is a ' nice theory,,but it never did and never will exist; in faot no oivilised country in the world has perfect free trade- For young -colonies to adopt free trade is perfoot madness, if they wish to become populous countries, because pastoral and agricultural countries can never support a large population. •< It is a well-known fact that in these colonies, where a free tariff exist*, nearly all attempts

to start local industries have been smothered by large imports by wealthy manufacturer! from other countries, sold at less than oost. price, Or, in other words, giving large sprats to catch larger fish of other kinds. - In reference to •' ColonusV remarks re America, are not all the States under one central head Government; so far, at any rate, as concerns s the tariff ?;• It. would :be equally absurd to say that there .is - perfect fred trade between the different provincial districts iP New Zealand, it having but one - Government and but one tariff. And •why should not every community, like a tub, sit On its own bottom? If it did not, I guess it Would, like the tub, aoon find itself empty (impoverished).., It is evident that >« Colonpa writes in the interests of the commercial community (non • producers), those who merely import and export—the men who are mere go-betweens, or agents, for the exchange of . various commodities, as he seems to think that; commerce is of such vast importance to the happiness and welfare of the people. Now, in my opinion, "coinniflroi per 86 is of no real. value jto . the colony. Its practical effect is .to [enable a few persona to make fortunes, and as » rule spend it out of the colony. I fancy he must have been dreaming when he said that every protectionist country desires to see every other oouutry also protectionist. That most assuredly is not so with England or America, as they are great exporting countries ; and, if every other country be* came protectionist, their foreign market .Would be very limited after it time, and that is what is coming. All countries are doing their best to supply their own wants; and then, to a certain extent, commerce will be at' a discount. But as the world ' contains such various climates, ■ producing articles of one kind in one part which cannot be produced m another, there, will always be something for mere traders to do. As. to the fear that England would put prohibition duties on our wool, corn, frozen meats, or any other raw material which it requires for the purpose of consumption or manufacture, the English people in England are not such fools. Who besides '' Colonus," says that the time has not arrived for the colony to become a manufacturing country. No one in their ordinary senses I should hope. Is he not aware that it is even now to a large extent a manufacturing country, and that its industries are increasing very rapidly in spite of a free trade tariff! But still they are a long way.behind the necessities of the colony, our imports exceeding our exports during the last forty years by at least twenty millions, sterling, the greater portion of which might and would have been spent in the colony as wages to the working classes, had a protective tariff been in exittencefrom the foundation of the oolony,—l am, &c., Colony,