Untitled

Ashburton Guardian, Volume V, Issue 1065, 31 January 1884, Page 4

The Australasian saya :—Some of our local politicians who swear by Mr Henry George on the land questions will be rather disposed, we fancy, to take umbrage at him on account of his views with respect to protection. In an article on “ Overproduction,” which appears in the North American Mevieur, he ridicules that bugbear of the partisans of scarcity and monopoly, and then goes on to expose what he calls “ the fallacies of protection.” He tells his readers that reduced protection, low wages, and diminished profits are the natural results of these reductions which unwise legislation imposes upon freedom of exchange ; and he reminds them also that “ taxes upon the exchange of commodities are as much taxes upon the production of commodities as taxes',, directly levied upon production,” and that this is a system of taxation which‘'creates monopolies ” In c mc’usion v he admonishes his countrymen that the only thing needed to restore the industrial organism of the United States to a sound and healthy condition, is freedom. “ Idle labor, wasting capital, the glut of markets, the co-existence of poverty and nnu-ed wealth, are the results of restrictions which prevent the free circulation of productive forces.” Of course there is nothing new in thii, nothing that has not been said before by the greatest authorities on economic science in all parts of the world, but coming from a writer who is regarded by numbers of persons as a political oracle, it will probably carry conviction to the minds of some who would be otherwise inaccessible to argument.