Freetrade or Protection

Southland Times, Issue 8052, 6 July 1885, Page 3

Freetrade or Protection

:■-;:■ :-::-;: >; v';, i ;J:>;vxo ; THB'BDITOB..: - ;v ,' .;■'■'■ •-:;' Sib,— -At a recent meeting of the New Zealand Manufacturers' Association, the following resolution .was adopted— "That with a view of strengthening the^hands of Ministers and members of Parliament who by. their^pre-sessional speeches • clearly indicated a "leanyig towards Protection pi-ijiciples, recognising sueh f policy bs necessary to the prosperity of the. Colony, this the New Zealand Manufacturers' Association adopts Protection as one of its platforms."' That working men, who live by the sweat of the brow, can at this time j of day be misled by the specious illusions submitted by : protectionist "platforms" in this colony of New Zealand is certainly most amazing. ■ A Colonial Treasurer may naturally want to increase the revenue from taxation, but that working men should de- ' sire to have it so, is beyond comprehension. ' The community of New Zealand is a small one and from its isolated position and circumscribed limits is destined to remain a comparatively Email community. The-' progress of the |colony will much depend upon two main conditions— both comparatively slow but sure in their operation— viz., increase of population, principally rural, and secondly, the securing of outside markets for the colony's productions. The colony ought to concern itself in the first instance in the production of abundance of cheap food for people. Cheap living is promotive of other manufacturing industries and because of their being therefore necessarily lees costly they are able to compete with all comers and even fight them in their own foreign markets. When the first settlers arrived in New Zealand it would not have benefited them to put a tax on all their implements of industry. That would simply have rendered their progress in settlement more slow and the productions of their industry more costly to their fellow-colonists and less likely to command a position in outside markets. In fact snch taxeu could only cripple the expansion of colonial industry Cheap food means giving to the thrifty working man an opportunity of accumulating private , capital for independent future industrial enterprise. It is here where the shoe pinches, causing, to a large extent, the present depression. The industrial classes have, with few exceptions, been extravagant in the use of their means which more prosperouß times possessed them of. What, otherwise might have been an immense inj crease of colonial capital savings available for extended industrial work has bsen dissipated in many ways. And so we find the wholesome corrector feas made his appearance in the person of Sir Julius Yogel, who, being a clever financial legerdemainisr, proposes to take a shilling out of the rightband ponket and return a sixpence thereof tolthe left-hand pocket. Sir Julius puts the case from a Freetrade platform, when he says "tbe oonsumcr who finds it desirabie to conaurce exotic productions, Bbould on their behalf contribute something to the cost of Government." The admission, above contained, that it is in every case the oon&umer who pays the import duty, ought to open the eyes of the public to the fact that when a New Zealand manufacturing association demands the imposition of protective duties, they propose to tax the nuny for the enrichment of the few. On Sir Julius' prin* ciple 1 am entirely in favour of his increase of the duty on tea, for I know no other way of making teetotallers "contribute something to the cost of Govern meat." A fallacy of Protection is that a protective duty exacts from the foreign producer a ''contribution to the cost of the Government." This is a mere illusion. There is competition among foreign manufacturers ; each presents his price list cut down by competition to the lowest figure | — only you must look out for the shoddy trick, There are the goods and the prices ; if the colony ,takes them the duty is added in the colony and the consumer paya it. The profits added within the colony are of course a further matter of competion and sometimes of Bankruptcy Court adjustment. Sir Julias Yogel says, "a customs duty is a natural and obvious species of revenue. The Freetrader, who would specially diminish it, or the Protectionists, who would specially increase it, seek to modify natural conditions by artificial ones. Lam far trom saying that such a modification is necessarily unwise. It constantly falls within the range of the duty of Parliament to specially in'ensify or abate the application of recognised prin* ciples." I have to remark that Freetraders do not wish to ''specially ditnish" customs duties ;" they only ask them to be even all round. Freetraders do not geek to "modify natural conditions by artificial ones. 1 ' It is the protectionist frho seeks to promote special industries by artificial means, and at the expense of the great bulk of the community. The Freetrader would leave all industrial enterprise to the untrammelled effoit and intelligence of the people. It ia not within the province or the duty of Parliament to assume the position of a guidiog authority in the policy of free industrial enterprise within the colony, There might be some very fi-hy industries indeed started in that way, under the Kgis of Governmental patronage. I fear that if our Parliament attempts to promote manufacturing enterprise in the colony by the forcing method of protection,— i.e., robbing one clasß for the benefit of another — they will no more succeed than their sixpenny tea duty policy will in inducing the cultivation in the colony of the tea-plant exotic. Cheapness of production ought to be tbe policy of the colony, and in that we must commence with the agricultural, pastoral, and raining industries. We must in no *ay increase the cost of the raw materials of these industries if we want to compete with outside markets. If our producers — or manufacturers—find that owiug to local taxation burdens they cannot compete in the foreign * market, the inevitable result will be the lowering of the wages of the workmen. That result has already taken place in America, for theie the workmen have to give a ten to— in some cases — sixteen hours' day's labor. In America— l mean the Stages— all small manufacturing enterprise has been mostly wiped oat by the powerful capitalist syndicates who control manufacturing industry, and so it will be in New Zealand nnder a protectionist pelioy, and the working hire will become nothine better than the serfs of the— shall I say bloated— capitalist, who will close the mills or put the workers on half time as occasion requires ; that occasion beiog the curtailing of production in order to maintain the manufacturers' prices; the workeis being the scape goat in all such cases, with perfect Freetrade a thrifty people may always, by co-operation, compete on equal terms , without economy, retrenchment and thrift they never will. Sir Julius Yogel found the colony in a state of depression j as a political doctor he came to the rescue, proposed a stimulant — of his usual kind — to '{restore confUence" ; that failing, he now proposes a cours j of depletion for the docile patient, a fitting development of Protecrion empiricism. — I am, &c, A FBEBTBADBB, Invercargill, Ist July, 1885,