STOP THAT DUMPING

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 714, 13 July 1929, Page 5

STOP THAT DUMPING

SAFEGUARDING MEANS SECURITY OF EMPLOYMENT AND NATIONAL PROSPERITY A wise citizen would not allow a rich storehouse to remain wide open and unprotected, inviting the world to enter and help itself to the wealth it contains. To do so deliberately would indicate the j need for mental treatment: to do so unwittingly would be inviting . | ruin and bankruptcy. Our own market is the main storehouse of wealth for our 134.000 producers | employed in manufacturing indus | tries. Safeguarding it means j security of market for their goods. i A security of market means surety of employment for our workers, and assured employment means national or trade prosperity. I While other countries are busy in* | creasing the measure of safeguarding j their productive sources of wealth, i bolting and barring the door to pred.i----i Tory and often unscrupulous rivals, j New Zealand is still satisfied to n - | main the dumping ground where those competing with our workers here for j their jobs find an almost open market | for their surplus goods, and our idle ! artisans may walk round our wharves ! and watch shipload after shipload of ! rival products beiug dumped here to keep our factories half-idle and our skilled workers walking the streets. They arc told by learned economists and profound primary producers that, this is necessary iu order to keep down the cost of living, but our woyi ers and their families arc far more concerned in finding a job and keeping it as a first consideration. New Zealand might be made the cheapest country in the world to live in, but what satisfaction would that give to those who could find no means of a livelihood? And every load of manufactured goods dumped here, and every shilling we spend in buying outside goods which might be made here, means doing our factory workers out of their jobs. CLOSE THE RIGHT DOOR Safeguard their markets and you assure the manufacturers’ workers of permanent and increasing employment. Leave that market wide open to the commercial raiders of the world and you are banging shut the doors of our factories, mills aud workshops. The open door in trade means the closed door to the second greatest source of our national wealth. The “cost of living” argument of the theorists is fictitious and fallacious; an illusion which fades on close test. Since there lias been increased safeguarding for farming implements our farmers get them cheaper, because the productive cost has fallen with greater output. The same would apply to clothing, boots, and millions of pounds worth of other articles now clumped here, which our own workers can produce, in our own industrial plants, from our own good and genuine materials. A FEW REMARKS ON RENNET Let town and country readers study briefly our rennet industry. Rennet is a by-product of the veal and calfskin industry. It is an essential for our cheesemakers and “juuketeers. ’ Only recently, in his presidential remarks to the annual meeting of tho National Dairy Association at Whaugarei. Mr. Morton told us that the local manufacture of rennet began as a “war industry” 15 years ago. Before the war the price of rennet here was almost prohibitive at £35 a keg from a foreign combine. Our own manufacturing has reduced the price until today it is £3 13s a keg! The old foreign firm quotes rennet on the London market today at £5 13s. but is so fond of our cheesemakers and junket eaters that it pays freight, charges, duty and commission to dump its calf juice bere at £3 13s a keg; although it charges the cheese factories of Canada and Australia £6 a keg! Our farmers must have cheap rennet, and the security for that is to safeguard our own industry; not let it be crushed out by the dumping devices of a foreign cartel. How long would our farmers be able to obtain cheap rennet if our own factory Lad to close its doors? FREE TRADE FALLACIES Rennet is but one opposite instance where the economic theorist and free imports fanatics fall down flat. Things don’t work out in trade practice jn the way the theorists prophesy, and what applies to rennet and fertiliser drills is equally applicable to other industries. The greatest protective barriers we have against foreign trusts and combines are our own manufacturers. Safeguard them by bolting the doors against dumpers; buy the products of our own workers and watch our industries grow by leaps and bounds, reducing prices ana defying outside rings who would strangle our young industries; close our factory doors and we throw our workers into the growing army ot unemployed. But until that barrier becomes effective, we must remember that we. the people of New Zealand, are the real employers of our factory workers, and it is only the people who can keep our manufacturers busy by buying their goods. While we leave the door open for dumping, and spend our money keeping other countries busy manufacturing for us, we are manufacturing paupers out of our ldie skilled workers.