The Western Star. (PUBLISHED BI-WEEKLY.) SATURDAY, MARCH 21, 1885.

Western Star, Issue 932, 21 March 1885, Page 2

The Western Star. (PUBLISHED 81-WEEKLY.) SATURDAY, MARCH 21, 1885.

Among the demands made by the town politicians of New Zealand in late years none lias been more common or more vehemently urged than the need of what is called “ fostering local industries,” or, as some openly call it, protection to native industrv. Yet, popular as this may be, in Dunedin, Christchurch, &c., it is in reality nothing more than a claim for robbing the country districts for the benefit of the towns. The producer in country districts, the farmer, asks for no protection, and certainly could get none if he did ; he only demands that the Government sh dl neither specially subsidise him, nor specially tax his industry, but simply leave him alone after he has paid bis just share of the common taxation. lie is engaged in work which God and nature, not any code of laws, has made valuable, and his labor is worth what he gets for it in the open market of the world. The artisan, on the other hand, demands that as his work would only bring him small wages, the amount which he thinks he ought to earn shall be made up by imposing upon the country districts. All the while he flatters himself, not merely that he is a working man, but that ho is essentially the working man. So long as the large towns do not depend entirely on their own exertions to help them, so long it is not true that their interests and onr own in the country districts are identical. How can they be identical wh°n the money the country producer contributes to the revenue is constantly abstracted and banded over to the townsmen ? On the contrary, it would be more true to say that they are diametrically opposed. They are diametrically opposed, because the town workmen require not merely that we should pay them—or subsidise their manufactures, which comes to (he same thing—large sums of money which we cannot spare, but also that they should be allowed to draft off constantly a quantity of labor which also we cannot spare, and which we could profitably employ, and they cannot. About the gravest and most important problem which our politicians—we do not say our statesmen, for we have none—can be busied about is to find out how most easily and most largely the urban population of New Zealand cm be drafted off into the country. The burning question of giving the unemployed work cannot be settled until this is done. It ought not to bo settled: and the people who obstina‘ely persist in remaining in the towns when they might get work elsewhere, must be obstinately content to remain and starve. Well said the old German writer: “ With stupidity the God’s themselves strive in vain.”

A similar folly and dishonesty to Mint of propping up manufactures which don’t pay, is that of employing mmi on public works which are not remunerative. If the Otago Central Railway, and, still worse, the proposed East and West Coast Railway, could absorb the whole unemployed population of the colony, of what use would it be if the result were, as everyone can see it would be, simply an amount added to our enormous State debt, and an increased annual taxation f tr which the country districts would have to pay? What, in the same way, we ask, would be the use of the local bodies finding work which is not required ? What the use of a return to provincialism—that gigairic defunct swindle for draining off the 1 fe blood from the extremities in order that it might settle in the heart and head; ' or, to drop metaphor, that scheme for making the country poor, in order that palatial buildings might be put up and ornamental loafers be employed, at high salaries in Dunedin ami Christchurch ? It is idle mockery to attempt to “ settle the people on the laud,” establish “ village settle*

ments,” “ import Skye crofters to unite farming with fishing,” &c., if, as soon as the people are settled, the machinery they use, the materials of

the houses they live in, and the stores they consume are all taxed, because ihcie are factories in Dunedin and elsewhere to supply inferior substitutes for the same articles, and the business of these cannot he carried on unless subsidised by die Government. This £ ‘p*o(ifion to nadvc industry,” this “fostering of local industries,” in

the sense in which die term is currently used by die Dunedin “ Herald,”

Lyttelton “Times” and other mouthpieces of the cities, is one of the meanest and mo t diwhone-f dungs w« know of. And if it were pi ailed that the local productions are intrinsically betti r than the imported articles which the country generally consumes, and should therefore be paid for at a higher rate, wo can only reply that we know r that in the larger number of. cases that is not the fact; and if it were, the proper remedy would be to sue or prosecute the fraudulent exporters not to obstruct the trade of the majority who are honest, or to tax the stores of the country settlers who get their wants honestly supplied by those wdtb whom they can' most cheaply deal. It is almost time already—it will be quite time soon, that in opposition to the various “ Trades and Labor Unions,” “Industrial Associations,” “ Protectionists Societies,” &c., Farmers Clubs should be established firmly holding free trade view's, and determined to uphold the wants of the industrial country districts.