PROTECTION v. FREETRADE.

Waikato Argus, Volume XXVII, Issue 4182, 27 August 1909, Page 2

PROTECTION v. FREETRADE.

To the Editor. Sir, —A friend and former neighbour now farming near Cambridge has posted a copy of the Waikato Argus oE 26th July and marked the leading article for my notice. With your kind permission I will try to answer my friend through your excellent paper. Mr Russell Kea, the American delegate to the International Congress held in England, said: “The theory of freetrade, we must acknowledge, does not appeal to the

natural uninstructed person; its benefits are diffused and general, its inconveniences are personal and visible. The theory of protection, on the other hand, as popularly presented, appeals to every unregenerate sentiment; its benefits are personal and particular; its inconveniences diffused and invisible to the vulgar, and it gives infinite play to the passions of private greed and public revenge." The disorganised state of the meat market in London is the result of hard times, bad trade, and unemployment; it is not caused by free trade. Protection will, and does, disorganise commerce, but free trade never. The protectionists will say free trade is the cause of unemployment. Let me ask them how is it that there is as much, or more, unemployment in Germany and in other protected countries than there is in free trade England? It has been said there is more unemployment in England than in any other country. This statement is worth nothing, for it is not supported by fact. You admit that meat is dearer in France, Germany and other protected countries, through the high tariff, so that the poor cannot afford it. Surely you do not wish such a state of things as that in England. Here let me say during the period of protection in England meat was as cheap as it has ever been in New Zealand at any time during the last 25 years, and there was no colonial frnzen meat sent Home then. The average wage of the labourer with a family was 9s to 12s per week, and bread Is to Is Gd per 41b loaf, and flour 5s to 5s Gd per stone. We have no conception of the misery of those protection days, and it was the landlords, and not the tenants, who got the benefit. This is what the protectionists wish to bring about again. It is nonsense to say that protection will find more employment. Lord Robert Cecil, in the British House of Commons, strictly warned his party the Opposition—not to deceive the working classes by telling them that tariff reform would find them employment.

Great Britain never need be afraid of imports; the more imports the,better. The prosperity of a country is marked by the abundance of their imports, and not by the abundance of their exports. If I take a cow to the sale that cost me £4 10s and she is sold for £5, I have exported £4 10s, and I have imported £5. Some ignorant people think Great Britain pays for her imports in gold. They do nothing of the kind; all their imports are paid for by exports, visible and invisible. Visible exports are goods; invisible exports are wages for services rendered to foreign countries, for which we are well paid, and for shipping freights, insurance, and many other things. We must remember Greaat Britain has loans and investments in every country in the world to the amount of £3,000, 000,000, and the interest of this vast sum, with all other items, finds its way back to Great Britain as invisible exports. My letter is quite long enough already, and I have not answered all the points; but trust you will accept a few lines from me again in a few days, as I wish to say a few words regarding the so-called "far-seeing and able statesman"Mr Chamberlain. —I am. etc., R. BURGON. Wesley Grove, Okaiawa, Taranaki.

A sore throat may be quickly cured by applying a flannel bandage dampened with Chamberlain's Pain Balm. A lame back, a pain in the side or chest, should be treated hi a similar manner. Pain Balm isyduso famous for its cures lK rhjinnatisrn. For sale by all cheidsUlHnd storekeepers.