“FREE TRADE DOOMED"

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LV, Issue 17408, 5 November 1930, Page 2

“FREE TRADE DOOMED"

U.S. WHITER ON BRITAIN MASS OUTPUT MIRACLE NEW YORK, Sept. 12. “Britain Turns to Tariffs,” is the title of a striking article in this week’s Saturday Evening Post by Mr Isaac E. Marcosson. It informs its readers that Free Trade in England is doomed—a change of mind attributed to the combined influence of Viscount Rothermere and Lord Eenverbrook. “No longer,” Mr Marcosson writes, “do Iho great mass of the peoplo si.<‘ iT.ttection as a nostrum. The one-time die-hard Free Trader, from hard-boiled London banker and merchant to the humble hop-grower in Kent, envisages an era of rigid Customs barriers as tho only way out of the plough of economic despair.-” Turning to Free Trade Cobden, who twice visited the United States, Mr. Marcosson says: “Seer and thinker though he was, he could not foresee that America would arise ns the vast dynamo of modern industry, planting its products wherever the trade winds blew. “He could not comprehend in that far-away day the miracle of mass output that would change the face of international economy. “He did not dream of a world conflict whose aftermath rvould stimulate the mightiest of all efforts for reconstruction and make tariffs an instrument no less potent in bloodless effect than the actual weapons of war.” After analysing tho conditions which have led to England's present difficulties, ho says: “It is obvious that Britain in reversing her Free Trade theories. Slowly but surely a considerable part of the nation is bringing itself To the belief that if the business situation is to bo saved, Empire Free Trade, re-enforced by a protective tariff, is the remedy.” And lastly: “One final deduction is Obvious.' Britain will henceforth stake her hope of economic recuperation upon lier own kith and kin.”