South Canterbury Times. THURSDAY, MARCH 11, 1897.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 8776, 11 March 1897, Page 2

South Canterbury Times. THURSDAY, MARCH 11, 1897.

The Premier has come back from Australia with some stronger notions in favour of an Imperial Zollverein, or fair trade policy between Great Britain and her colonies, with protection against the world. It is an idle dream. The House of Commons will never agree to it. In January the House discussed a Bill to extend the foreign trade marks Act, which requires foreign made goods to be stamped “ Made in Germany ” and so forth, and the tone of the debate showed that the majority considered the Bill a proposal to enlarge a blunder. The Act was intended as a measure of protection to consumers. It has operated to increase the imports of foreign goods. Distributing merchants are taught by the marks where things made, are they open up direct communication with the manufacturers, and making better terms than with the middlemen of London can sell cheaper and increase their sales. Experience at Home is the same as experience in this colony: the consumer does not care where things are made so long as they suit him and are cheap enough. The representative of the Government in the House of Commons suggested that the time had arrived to inquire whether such marks as “ Made in Germany ” were not doing more harm than good.

The Premier appears to be particularly enamoured of the idea of reciprocity with South Australia, but the arguments he used in the reported interview are not such as will appeal to the people of New Zealand generally. All he found to say in favour of it, it appears, was that South Australia could take large quantities of our timbers and other produce, and supply us in return with grapes and wines. This means that New Zealand is to denude its forest lands to allow the well-to-do residents of a few towns to eat cheap grapes, and well-to do people who like them, to drink cheaper winesIt must be a bad bargain for the colony to barter a material which is lastingly useful for mere luxuries. The place to send our timbers and other produce is the country where we owe so much money that must be paid in produce.

The Registrar-General should revise the principle on which the census returns are summarised to obtain the classification of the population into breadwinners and non-breadwinners. A table has been issued in the usual form which shows;— Breadwinners, males 239,862

females 53,070, total 292,932. Dependents or non-breadwinners, males 130,729 females 278,006, total 408,735. Occupation not stated 1693. A note is attached to these figures : “ The dependent population consists chiefly of wives, relatives, and others employed in household duties, but unpaid, children, persons supported by charity, etc

The male dependents were mostly under 15 years of age.” Now it is unfair to classify “ wives, relatives and others employed in household duties, but unpaid,” as dependents and non-bread-winners. Persons who are so employed as servants and paid wages, are classed as breadwinners, and there is no sense at all in making the receipt or nonreceipt of wages a ground of separate classification for people doing preisely the same kinds work. A widower’s housekeeper who is paid so much a year, is no more a bread-winner than a married man’s wife, doing just the same duty. And so on for other cases. This branch of the census enumeration might be really interesting and useful if it dealt with real facts of occupation, and told us how many people in the colony, (excluding those at school, invalids, and other incompetents), are truly idle dependents.