THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. THURSDAY, MARCH 11, 1909. PREFERENTIALISM.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 3135, 11 March 1909, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. THURSDAY, MARCH 11, 1909. PREFERENTIALISM.

In spite of the carefully spread rumours that tariff reform is impending, and "must one" in Great Britain, evidence of-the existence of one insuperable 'obstacle continues to accumulate. A lion in the path of the Chamberlain ideal of a protective tariff in Great Britain, with a preferential rate for colonial imports in

return for preferential treatment ot British goods in the colonial tariffs, is the absolute refusal of the oversea manufacturers to concede genuine preferential treatment to the competing products of British manufacturers. That refusal has been made quite clear in the Commonwealth, where • the so-called preferential treatment acorded in the last revision of the tariff to British goods is merely an elaborate make-believe, which deceives nobody. Lord Northcote, indeed, recently pointed out to the British people that they need expect no preferential concessions from the Australian manufacturers. But while the Australian preference is merely a pretence, the Canadian preference, as granted in the Canadian tariff of 1900, was a substantial reduction, amounting to one-third off the duties in the general tariff. The successful campaigns which the I Canadian manufacturers have waged ! against that preference as applied to the item of woollens, which is one of the most important articles of the British trade with Canada, are described by a writer in a recent issue of the "North American Review," who shows that as the result of attacks by the Canadian manufacturers between 1901 and 1906 on most lines of woollen goods the British preference, which in 1900 was one-third off the general list, does not now exceed five per cent. The actual rate against the British goods has been substantially raised. Lately there has been a demand for the total exclusion of Yorkshire woollens from Canada, on the ground that they were made of infected rags, and were a sanitary danger to trie peopie of the Dominion ! The formulation of such a charge shows the lengths that the Canadian manufacturers are prepared to go in order to keep out the British commodities.