INDUSTRY AND OFFICIALISM.

Otago Witness, Issue 3756, 9 March 1926, Page 65

INDUSTRY AND OFFICIALISM.

HAMPERING RESTRICTIONS. By Hartley Withers. One of the important events of the present year is to be a conference summoned by a committee of the League of Nations to discuss the hampering effect on international trade of the restrictions, such as prohibition of imports and exports and the additions to high tariffs that have been imposed, especially by the new States of Europe since the war This subject is now a very old etory, on which we have heard fine resounding sentiments expressed, without the smallest practical result, ever since the famous Brussels Conference. Excellent doctrine was there preached by all the representatives of the conferring Powers concerning the necessity, in the interest of the world’s recovery, of encouraging the free interchange of goods across the frontiers, and ever since then the Powers which expressed these pious sentiments have been adding new lines of bricks along the tops of their tariff walla. The new conference is consequently awaited with a certain cynical indifference by those who would 'ike to see all the peoples get rich and prosperous again by making and selling to one another what they can best and most cheaply produce. Nevertheless there is, 1 believe, some reason to hope that this time something more than pique sentiment may be the outcome. The new European nations are beginning to see that commercial expansion is not really fostered by keeping the infant, or the patient, tied up tightlv ir. bandages, and in all countries the consumer shows a growing reetiveness and with good reason. Bled white during the war by means of high taxation and bad cunency, which put huge profits int< the pockets of producers, merchants, and retailers, he is puzzled and suspicious today, because be is always hearing about trade depression due to low prices, but does not find, when he. or she goes out to do the daily shopping, that anything like the advantage which might have been expected ie going to the benefit of the buying public After all, it is on the buying power of the general public that good trade finally depends, and if it is choked by the extortion of those who serve it, they may make big profits on a small turnover, but there cannot be that free flowing tide of general well-being that is really meant by good trade. Another fact that will tell, when the nations assemble to discuss the official attitude towards industry, is the international bitterness that is produced when Govern ments can be accused aud convicted of restricting production and trade to the detriment of the consumer in other countries. A very good example of this bitterness was provided by a discussion in the American Congress just before '"‘Lrlstmas, on the subject of the control of production and expoi tation by foreign countries. At the instiga tion of Mr Hoover, whose services to impoverished Europe at the time of after-war exhaustion give him a world-wide prestige the House of Representatives trdered an in vestigation into the effects on American commerce of the control of rubber, coffee, silk, nitrates, and other important raw materials. But as far as can be gathered the Stevenson scheme of rubbe- restriction was the target on which the heavy guns of oratory poured most of their shells. The scheme is a matter on which volumes might be written without convincing anybody. For it, it may be said that some such arrangement was essential if a large number of plantations were to be prevented from going back to the Jungle, to the ruin of their owners and to the ultimate disadvantage of consumers, because the consequent restriction would have been dr Stic and permanent. Against it, from the producer's point of view, one can point to the fact that It briskly stimulated the production of rubber in the territories where it was not enforced. But the point that concerns us now Is that If the scheme had been arranged by the industry Itself without the employ ment of the official machinery through the export tax, American critics would have bar much less reason for attacks on the British Government and for a rovival of the time honoured pastime of “ twisting the British lion’s tall ” Those Englishmen who attach the right amount of importance to the utter ances of politicians in all countries are not very deeply stirred by these outbursts, but rather amused by them, especially when they note that early in December the American Secretary of Agriculture had been sent to Chicago by the President, and, after conferring with bankers and farmors, had arranged for the granting of loans which will enable the lowa farmers to “ withold their maize from the market indefinitely, waiting for satisfactory prices.” But it is not good for good feeling between countries, when it is stated in Congress that the British Gov ernment Is “ openly proclaiming that it pro poses during the next six years to collect four billion dollars by this process, enough to wipe out Its debt to us.” As the British Government does not own or grow rubber, and as even those who grow it, many of whom arc Dutchmen or natives, do not pocket the whole of the gross price, but only tho net profit, the statement Is fairly fantastic : and there were, of course, plenty of speakers In the American Congress ready to

put the other side of the question, one of them observing that “ Great Britain, Brazil, and other countries, are simply retaliating now against our people on account of the nonsensical, outrageous, damnable rates in the Fordney-M’Curaber Tariff Law.’’

And so recrimination barks and bites anl bad blood ferments because Governments, which have not lately made a conspicuous success of doing their real job, which is keeping the peace and lightening taxation, will insist on muddling about with thlng3 that they cannot be expected to understand. The latest example is the Trade Facilities Act, which, designed to relieve the British unemployment, has been apparently used to stimulate the competition of a liue of steamers under the American control, so increasing the difficulties of British shipping, already hard hit by the competition of the heavily subsidised American mercantile ‘marine.