Taranaki herald. WEDNESDAY JULY 24, 1907. THE NEW TARIFF.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LIV, Issue 13483, 24 July 1907, Page 4

Taranaki herald. WEDNESDAY JULY 24, 1907. THE NEW TARIFF.

The Commissioner of Customs ha 8 frankly confessed that the Government's policy in relation to

the Customs tariff is protective, or to find work for its own people before finding it for anyone else. It does not matter that local bodies are spending large sums of money on water and electric light and power supply, and that the raising of the duty on cast iron pipes from five to twenty per cent., and on electrical machinery from ten to twenty per cent, is calculated to seriously embarrass their* finances ; locat industry must be protected the .colonial manufacturers be given the opportunity to build up fortunes at the cost of the community. In order to curry favour with the masses the Government proposes , to remove the duty from svgar — the 'only genuine concession made to 'the poor man — and to reduce the duty on a number of other articles such as washing blue, which now pays twopence a pound and is to pay a penny. This latter means a concession of abeut £1,000 a year, which added to concessions on numerous other articles of greater or less importance brings the total reductions to a considerable sum. In jvery few cases, however, will any benefit be received by the working man, and what benefit he does derive will be- discounted by additional impositions on other articles. If his wife wants a pair of cheap felt slippers she will have to pay, under the new tariff, a duty of 100 per cent., while on similar slippers for the 1 children the duty will be 150 per cent. At least that is what Mr. Robert Hannah, of Wellington, says. If the working man sends his son to a gymnasium for physical training, and wants a pair df rubber-soled shoep for him, there will be a 65 per cent, increase of duty to pay on them, while on a special kind of gymnasium shoes obtainable only from America the duty is to be raised from 27^ per cent, to 14& rpef 'cent., making the retail price 7s 6d instead of 4s 6d. What is the use of reduping the duty on blue and maizena and similar articles, for the benefit of the trader instead of the consumer, and imposing higher duties upon boots and slippers, which will cost . the customer even a greater advance in price than the amount of the higher duty? If there is genuine desire to help the workjng man, why not take the duty off bicycles instead of motor-cars ? If the reason is that the colonial cycle manufactories must be protected, then we would point out that the duty paid on imported bicycles would more than provide the wages paid for making cycles in the colony, and that it would be an actual economy to the community to pension off the hands employed in the colonial industry and import bicycles free

of duly. The -same- might be said:>f various other colonial industries, which, only exist under forced treatment, but if we once mibark upon a discussion of that subject we shall never have finished. We started out to show that the Government, according to the Hon. Mr. Millar, has definitely adopted a policy of protection, which is likely to cost the country pretty dearly, to the adr vantage of manufacturing industries in the cities. Even Mr. Millar probably does not realise where this policy is going to lead him, but we hop^e that, when the revised tariff comes before the House for debate some of the members will take care to be furnished with full information as 16 its probable effect.