COST TO CONSUMERS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXX, Issue 21579, 25 August 1933, Page 13

COST TO CONSUMERS

MANUFACTURED ARTICLES COMMISSION MEMBER'S VIEW Comment on the position of local industries which import raw material from manufacturing countries was made by Professor B. E. Murphy at a sitting of the Tariff Commission yesterday. The occasion was one 011 which the commission was hearing; an application by Mr. C. S. Arlington, of Lee and Arlington, Otahuhu, tanners and heel stiffener makers, for duties of 25 per cent British and 50 per cent foreign, on fibre or composition stiffeners, and the maintenance of the present tariffs on leather heels and stiffoners.

Professor Murphy said he took the view that it was penalising the whole consumptive community for a very small handful, where an industry had t,o import the whole of its materials from a country where the finished article could be manufactured cheaply, and then make the article under a duty which entailed a greater cost to the consumer than did the imported article. He would need convincing that that was not a contravention of Article VII. of the Ottawa agreement. Mr. Arlington said they found thev could produce the article and, with a protective tariff, more men _ could be employed. The cost of labour in makine the stiffener was about one-third. The granting of his request would not increase the price of shoes by onehalfpenny a pair. They had the machinery and saw the opportunity of employing more people. Professor Murphy said the commission had to look at it from the public point of view. Protection would necessarily give employment, but at a cost to othef sections of the community. Witness said that between 10 and 20 people would be employed in making the fibre or composition stiffeners. That would be 011 tho assumption that thov had tho whole market.