The Sketchee.

Otago Witness, Issue 1488, 22 May 1880, Page 21

The Sketchee.

PROTECTION TO NATIVE INDUSTRY. Being as. Account op the Adoption and Growth of Protection in Victoria, with an Illustration of its Painful Effects ; as given by Vicjtorian in the Daily Times

The very best illustration of whether Protection is advantageous or not is practically given us by the Colony of Victoria. In that Colony there wore two cries raised during many years, and they ultimately became quite intimately connected. One was, " What shall we do with our boys?" and the other, as in answer to it, was, " Give us Protection to native industry."

Politicians of the day were compelled by the public voice against their better judgment to declare for Protection, so that local trades and manufactories might be assisted in their young struggles for existence, and thereby, after becoming strong by reason of protection granted them, they were to be the means of absorbing the unemployed of "the boys " and also tho girls of the Colony. This view of the case was so persistently put forward by a certain class of politicians and their following, that at last the Freetrade section of the people's representatives gave way, and, as a matter of fact, were the first to introduce a policy of Protection to the Parliament. This occurred about 12 years ago. The protection afforded at that time did not go nearly so far as it has done since, and for sometime the people really did seem to be advantaged by the operation of the measures adopted ; but the real prosperity of the Colony was not so much the object desired as a fiscal revolution which would, by its operation, place adventurers and popularityhunters in power. The so-called Protectionists therefore combined to extend their views, and took every means available to harass the opposite party. At length Mr, now Sir C. G. Duffy, got into power, and with him the greatest demagogue these Colonies ever 6aw or heard tell of— Graham Berry— a man who had been bawling "himself hoarse at mob meetings; whose utterances, at first laughed and jeered at, gradually took the ear of the people, whose fiercest passions had now been aroused by continual iteration of fancied abuses said to have been performed by the Freetraders, merchants, bankers, and other such "oligarchs" upon the liberties of the working man. This man, then, with a shrewdness _ and cunning worthy of a Mephistopheles, saw his advantage ; others not less unscrupulous followed in his wake, and gradually but surely the "Stonewall party" was formed in the course of years. Many representatives whose proclivities on behalf of Free- Trade had never previously been doubted, suddenly declared themselves converts Jto the new political dogma; and a definite party arose out of an apparent impossibility. This did not, of course, occur without pressure by the various manufacturers. Oh, no 1 One who was already protected was doing so well, that another seeing it, must have a share of the plunder, and so one followed the other. In the meantime the demagogues were not at all inclined to do all the work for nothing, and a bill for payment of members— £3oo a year each— was passed through the House, and the unfortunate taxpayer had now on his back Protection like a young and growing octopus, and the experiment for three years of payment of members. This latter measure settled Victoria. From the moment £300 per annum could be got, persons with "cheek" gradually supplanted persons with brains, and such was the feeling engendered and fostered by the former at all possible and impossible times against the better-to-do portion of the community that a political war of classes of the very bitterest kind set in, and gradually grew until to be anything much short of a loafer was calculated to call down upon one the condign punishment—by hoots and yells— of a now almost infuriated mob. By this time many of the "boys" had grown to manhood, and they were eagerly seized upon by the Protectionists, enrolled as voters by the Reform League, lectured into the proper grooves, and taught how to establish " King 800-hoo." By this latter simple process any public speaker whose political views did not come up— or rather down— to their standard could be entirely debarred the opportunity of expressing himself in any public meeting. This formed one part of the machinery used to conduct the elections of 1877, when Mr Berry went in, as you say in your leader of Saturday, with the largest majority ever a Colonial premier had, viz., 34 in a House of 80 : and for a length of time after that no Freetrader was altogether safe from assault in some of tho constituencies, should he only have dared to express his political views, however mildly. Men have been hunted from the workshop, off the building, out of the factory, out of the place, because they would not join with their fellows in going " the whole hog" for Protection. All this time the so-called Liberal members of Parliament, headed by the Ministry, were urging the people on by appealing to their worst passions. One Minister— Mr Longmore— boldly boasted at a public meeting that the Ministry had " now got their hands on the throat of capital." Another— Mr Berry— declared that he would carry his reform measure, otherwise there would be "broken heads and houses in flames." Sir Brian O'Loghlen, another Minister, would deport the Governor and Legislative Council ; while still another, Mr Patterson, tried to throw oil on the troubled waters, and naively assured his hearers that all the Ministry wanted was to be able to " put its hands into the Treasury in a free, easy, and accessible manner"; and so on throughout, and the people rejoiced for a time. _It would take up too much space to render into narrative form all that each member of that Ministry was guilty of ; it would shock and terribly distress your readers to relate one-half of the awful sufferings the whole people of Victoria have had to undergo in consequence of their first departure from the straight path of political integrity. I will therefore go on to show simply that " the people," having had time to think, at last fully realised the poet's statement that " Joy's recollection is no longer joy ; but sorrow's memory is a sorrow still."

The three principal heads under which Protection came in, and then nourished, in Victoria, were :— l. Employment for the rising generation ; 2. Protection for the industrial pursuits of the Colony ; 3. Down with the merchants.

Of the first there is much to be said, but not much space to say it in. If the youth— male and female— of the Colony of Victoria had been taken by their parents on to the land— which was made only too easily available to thorn— this cry would never have been heard. As it happened, however, the parents as a rule were not capable of farming; the great majority of them were simply clerks, shopkeepers, diggers, and the like, and their livelihood could of necessity only be obtained in the great centres of population. Nearly all of them stuck by Melbourne, Ballarat, Sandhurst, and Gcclong, and with growing families, but no corresponding increase of trade, business, or income, they naturally felt tho pressure of their heavy families, and as naturally asked the quosion, "What are we to do with our boys ?" The fertile brain of some sapient agitators of the day suggested Protection as a sure means of increasing work in the Colony, and tho fallacy was swallowed by anxious parents without a grimace. " Yes, yes ; give us protection to native industry : wo will then be able to do our work for ourselves, employ our boys and girls, save the money from going out of the Colony, and make Victoria a perfect paradise for the working man !" And they got it ! But in warning them of its evil consequences some of the leading men of the day paid them tho high compliment of supposing they would take the trouble to understand them, and then arose— 3. "Down with the merchants." Now, as regards No. lit is evident where the cure lay. As for No. 2, 1 shall shortly endeavour to show its fallacy and trace up some of tho disastrous results that have followed upon its adoption just as certainly as effect follows cause. Protection to native industry is wrong, on the fundamental principle that it interferes with the liberty of the subject. No Government or body of persons in the .State has any right to dictate to the wage-earner what he shall do with his earnings. To interfere and say, " You must spend your money here or there " is tyranny, and wherever it has been tried It has failed. Napoleon Buonaparte came to violent grief over it. Sir Robert Peel, the greatest Protectionist statesman that ever lived, had to abandon it. America is gradually but surely " rubbing it out," and Victoria will most assuredly follow : Sir Service, the premier, will probably, lht>tof all, settle tho question of reform, and then the I'rotectionibto' tariff will be handled by enlightened men, whobc transactions as merchants throughout the world enable them to .see how trade has been fettered in that Colony during the past, 12 years, by reason of everything the people required being taxed for the benefit of a few producers. Yes ; it has come t to that in Victoria. The merchant, banker, and well-to-do tradesman is no longer to be put "down." The people recognise at last that by protecting a Irashol of maizo with a six*

ttence, that sixpence comes out of the pocket of thd person who requires the maize; and where doe* ft go 7 Into the pocket of the grower, it will bo said, and so it apparently does, for a time ; but it cannot abide there, for he has to disburse it again on protected ploughs, harrows, carts, trousers, boots, shirts, socks, hats, neckties, braces, belts, drawers, singlets, waistcoats, coats, crockery, towels, soap, candles— everything on himself, his wife, and children, everything in his house or on his farm— in short he is taxed in every conceivable way, just as the unfortunate jackdaw of Rheims was cursed, according to Barnaul, but with this difference : he is ever so much the worse. The farmers were probably the first to see this in Victoria, and they commenced forming unions to protest against it all. But, bless you 1 the mighty Berry could not be induced to bate one tittle, and when a deputation of cabmen, carters, and other horse proprietors waited upon him to point out how heavily the tax upon maize would fall upon them, and through them on the community in general, by enhancing the cost of carriage of every load of goods. That great man admitted all their arguments, but declared his determination to have maize grown in Victoria "if it took 20 years to accomplish it ;" although, observe you, maize will not grow to advantage in Victoria, by reason of its climate. The fact is, the Ministry of Revenge, as it has been called, after its muff-engineer, Mr J. Woods, Minister for Railways (who, by the way, was dismissed the Civil Service of the Colony in disgrace for tarring over certain cracks in the main pipes of tho Coliban water-supply works, with the view of deceiving his superior officer), could not let the opportunity slip of having a fling at New South Wales, from whence came almost all the maize used in Victoria. The same or similar feelings actuated them with regard to the stock tax. Mr Lalor— another of the incompetents-when in Sydney let it all out to Sir H. Parkes. This tax raised the price of meat in Victoria by excluding from the market hundreds of bullocks and thousands of sheep from Riverina (tho country lying along the N.S.W. bank of the Murray). The two railway lines from Melbourne to the Murray ceased to carry stock to the Melbourne market, and from paying a small dividend of profit to the State, were, and have been ever since, worked at a loss. On the North-Eastern, 186 miles from Melbourne to Wodonga, there used to be train-loads of cattle and sheep coming in daily and nightly; but now all this is altered, and the meat-preserving establishments are all shut up, as are also the boiling down establishments. Most of the tanneries are also closed, wool-washing is almost a thing of the past, and what consequences follow this one wrong step ? With the closing of the meat-preserving places the oity trade in tin^working was flooded with men seeking a job, and wages came down of course. The same thing applied to all the other branches of business con' cerned. Here it may be said that a stook tax, or any such thing, can never interfere with New Zealand., But Protection is an insidious commercial poison, pleasant enough to take,,but terrible in its operation and very difficult to eradicate. Now, as for boots, slops, and candles : these three items represent the important points of attack by most writers on this subject. When boot factories were established a great many youths were absorbed into the trade. Some were made clickers, others_ one thing, and others another ; but in no instance did the boot factories turn out a thorough tradesman. This was a thing it took time to find out ; of course, moantime, large stocks of Colonial-made boots were accumumt* ing in the hands of the manufacturers, whose objeoft seems to have been to obtain colossal stocks at the lowest possible price. The boys and young men who mode these boots were paid from 2s 6d per week up to £2 or so— and only one or two of the latter as head men— but as stocks increased, even this very low rate of remuneration was reduced; and when a lad at 2s 6d could replace one at ss, the 5s one had to go, and so on all the way through. One consequence to Melbourne was the crowding of her streets with larrikins or hoodlums of both sexes, because the same kind of arrangement of affairs had gone on in the shirt and clothing factories as had taken place in the boot shops, ana this is how work was secured for the rising generation of Victoria. The young people certainly had work of a sort for a time. By doing the kind of work they did in the way they did it, they did not truly learn a trade and thereby materially benefit themselves, but by being unduly thrown into the struggle of life and pressed forward in one branch only, they have become precocious, uncontrollable at home, and defiant, if not quito vicious, abroad. Moreover, they have so flooded the labour market as to make it almost an impossibility for their fathers to get employment at any paying rate. Homes that used to be happy are "now wretched ; the breadwinner can no longer earn sufficient for the requirements of the family, and gaunt destitution is staring many an honest hard-working citizen point-blank in the face. Manufacturers meantime have grown rich. Articles put on the market by them are nominally cheaper, but less the duty, they are a 9 dear as ever they were, especially when quality is taken into account. And i now for the exports. Much has been made of this item by the Protectionists. They delight in throwing a lot of figures at the head of any antagonist, and by that means stop any argument ; but this line of proceeding was recently nipped in the bud on one occasion by Mr Service, who most conclusively proved that the Apollo Candle Company exported candles to Sydney, and after paying freight, insurance, commission, and all other commercial charges thereon, sold them in New South Wales for less money per pound than they were charging for them in Victoria ! A considerable newspaper war ensued upon Mr Service's exposition of this matter ; but the fact remained uncontroverted, the Company admitting that they were over-producing, and were therefore bound to find a market at any price. The same kind of thing has occurred with slops and boots ; and so the export item is made up in a great measure by the workmen of Victoria producing articles that are exported and disposed of in foreign markets for less than they are sold at in the place where they are manufactured ! But still the craze went on, and many believed Mr Berry and his crowd of place-hunters that Protection cheapened things to the consumer— as if that could bo possible. The article honey alone will show how the duty must fall on the consumer. Honey for the Melbourno market comes in great part from Albury and round about that quarter (N.S.W. ). A duty of 2d per lb was put on it. Before the duty honey was worth 4d per lb retail ; since then the dealer having to pay 2d duty charges a profit on his outlaid cash, and honey is now 7d per lb. This is a sample of how things are done. The working man with reduced wages has to pay higher for everything he requires— for his bed, board, body, and business, and yet during nearly all the timo the country was misruled by Protectionists, these men were the main support of the politicians whose business it was to hoodwink and rob them.

But " Down with the merchants 1" gradually began to sound weaker and fainter. It was becoming abundantly manifest to fall that the cry and its meaning were both a huge mistake. Properties could no* be sold, because the persons who had money to purchase would not do so. Confidence was almost entirely destroyed ; it was only those who could not get away that stayed on, until finally some of the miners at Sandhurst went out on strike because tho mine-owners took 2s Gd per week off the wages, and in doing so explained that the increased taxation upon fuse, powder, machinery, tools, candles, rope, &c, &c., used in the mines just turned the scale, and left them losers as compared with their previous position ( which was very nearly on the balance. Th miners held out for £2 5s per week, and interviewed the largest mine-holder in tho district ; but he put the matter clearly to them. He showed that while some of his mines were paying others were losing, that up to then he had kept all on, making the paying mines carry on the others ; but that as he was debarred from using the gold he got to the best advantage by a Govenment that insisted upon a black mail to its pet manufacturers, he was compelled to reduce wages to £2 2s 6d ; but if they preferred it, he would stop entirely until a repeal of tho tariff could bo effected. This was too much for tho extremely virtuous Berry Government, and Mr Lanscll was notified that unless his various mines were worked continuously, the leases would bo liable to forfeiture !— a piece of tyranny that did more to open the eyes of the working men than anything else. They then began to see that tho capital of the Colony was quite intimately mixed up with the labour interests, and " Down with the merchants !" was not much heard afterwards. In fact it became only too apparent that the merchants were supporting the Colony in spite of the many disabilities they were compelled to labour under. Gradually it began to tlawn upon the people also that if the markats were to bo slutted with goods, thereby doing away with the necessity for labouring hands and skilled workmen, it would be far better they should be made to overflow by tho foreign meichant who would then be the sufferer, as in 1856-7, than by the local manufacturer ! In short, people had at last begun to think, and thinking, they cast out the high priest and all his following on the 28th of February last, from which date a degree of confidence was planted, like a mustard-seed, that from the smallest grain becomes a large tree. Confidence is growing rapidly in Victoria. Houses and land that were for sale for anything they would bring sometime back are now held for a fair price. But it will be many yoars boforo the £16,000,000 of nionoy said to hayo

!

been frightened away from the Colony isagain Invested therein, for capital is slow to move when investments SSvoMfa best men, and it will yet be seen that with a revised tariff the shipping that was driven from Us bay to Sydney, the money that was frightened out of its coffers to all parts of the world, the talent that has wandered off to other lands, the good name that has been foully tarnished, the people who have been Sly msused, and all that has been put wrong will be set in the straight track to enable them all to return and make Victoria once again a paradise for the working man.-I am, &c. Victorian.