AMERICA AND PROTECTION.

New Zealand Times, Volume L, Issue 8274, 3 January 1888, Page 6

AMERICA AND PROTECTION.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE NEW ZEALAND TIMES. g lK> —ln reply to a communication in your 'paper of 30th December by Mr J. Dranßfield, on the effects of Protection, I quite agree with the secretary of the British Iron and Steel Institute, when he says that "if the American tariff were abolished tho industrial prospects of England would become very much blacker." I speak from the standpoint of an American manufacturer employing a very large number of workmen, and I Bay that if England would kindly adopt the Protective system and the United States eo to Freetrade, we would shut up half the factories of England and sweep most of her commerce from the oceans. Unaer present conditions, with the high prices of raw materials causrd by the American combinations protected by the United States tariff, we fairly well compete with England only in goods having much labor expended in their manufacture, and there we take tho difference out of the wages of tho working men. Quantity "f product and quality of finish being considered, our American factorylabor i 3 much cheaper than in any country in Europe. Our workmen earn more per day, and get more, but they producemDro in proportion to their pay. Protection in tho United States has been, and is, an unmitigated evil to working-men as a class, adding largely to their living expenses, but not adding a penny to their wages. We have absoljte Freetrade among our States, inhabited by G 5,000,000 Englishspeaking people—the great majority of tho race ; and it is to that absolute *reetrade, backed by the natural wealth of the countrv and the energy of its inhabita"ta. that' the United States' manufac turfrß a«d business men owe their succeaeTand tho working-men their employment. As Mr Dransfield says, we are increasing our exports to Canada, and never exported so largely till after Canada crippled her own manufacturers by high tariffs, against which the Eastern provinces aro almost in rebellion. Canada has too smi.ll a market within its own borders to withstand the incumbrances and burdens of tariffs for Protection, and manufacturing stocks average more under par since Protection than before, and emigration over tho border is no leas but ureater to the United States That Protection has made a very large number of the protected producers of metals very rich there is no doubt. Iron rolling mill companies have combined in their national associations to get enormous profits, backed by the tariff. Manufacturers have at times also fleeced the people by the same moans, and will continue to do so, but they pay no higher wages than that earned in industries nonprotected —such as farming, building trades, rail-roading, and the thousands of trades carried on locally that cannot be protected. The high tariff on wool, averaging over 50 percent, and a tariff on woollen goods, averaging 75 per cent, has resulted in a decrease of 25 per cent in the number of sheep in the great wool-producing States, whoso members of Congress log-rolled with the iron, steel, and copper States members, and saddled the high tariffs of 18GG 7 upon the country. The manufacturers of good woollen goods, who were silenced in their opposition to the wool tariff by being given a larger one on their woollen goods, have all gone to the dogs ; and while we do not import much Australian wool as wool we do import an immense amount of it in the form of Engli-h-made woollens, the manufacture of which Protection ha'* taken away from our working men. Many of the late woollen manufacturers are anxiously hoping for Freetrade in wool, and in woollen goods also if a necessary sequence. President Cleveland, in his recent message to Congress, advised the repeal of all duties on raw materials, and especially the placing of wool on the free list. A fair test vote of the people, uninfluenced by party ties, and free from the control of monopolist employer', would wipe Protection from our laws.—l am, &c., J. B. Sargent. Occidental Hotel, Wellington.