H PROTECTION AFFECTS THE FARMER.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume V, Issue 1609, 14 July 1887, Page 3

H PROTECTION AFFECTS THE FARMER.

That it will be a great benefit to the people of New Zealand if we can succeed by a wise national policy in making it the seat of large and flourishing manufacturing industries is conceded by everybody, whether a Freetrader or a Protectionist ; the point in issue, as between the two political schools, being whether it pays to help to bring such a state of things about by means of handicapping the foreign as against the colonial producer. We think that it will, but at the same time hold that a wise discretion should be exercised as to the measure of protection, and as to the articles to which it should be applied. For example, we do not think it would be sound policy, for the present at least, to impose heavy duties upon agricultural implements and machinery, because to do so would be to levy a special tax upon one particular industry, and that industry one which is certainly not able to bear additional special burdens, But there are many articles of clothing and consumption used by all classes alike, which we can produce in the colony as well or better than they cau be produced ..broad, and to pay theif share of any temporarily increased cost of which will in the end, and that speedily, yield the farmer much more than an adequate return. For the development of manufactures, and the consequent profitable employment of scores of thousands of people within the colony will mean the creation of a local market for all the products of the soil, a market which will be more remunerative to the producer than those distant markets, to reach which produce, and the price obtained for it, have to be filtered through the hands of middlemen, with an inevitable shrinkage of results as the necessary consequence. This view of the case is very ably set forth in a recent article by the; " Auckland Evening Bell," which says : — " We do not know anything more heartless than trying to mislead the farmers of the colony by asserting that a protective tariff would work against them. It is they of all others that would be benefited ; for while big sheep owners and a few others can find plenty of market for their productions by sending them to England, aud thus can square exchanges, the little struggling farmer absolutely requires to have the market brought beside Jiim, or seven-eighths of his productions can have no market at all." '? No one should require to be shown (continues our contemporary) that such protective tariff will lead to increase ot employment, and the steady circulation of money among the people ; nor that the retention of money among ourselves will be a benefit to the body politic. . . . It is all very well to say that it we import French boots, we must pay for them with produce, and so bur production is stimulated by the import of French boots. But we can't pay for French boots with turnips, not do we see any prospect of sending a cargo of shingles or palings to France. Some things we may send : wool, frozen mutton it may be, and a few other things— very few, we regret to say. These they may want in France as well as in England, and a very good thing it is for those who produce them. They can afford to buy French boots. But Paris does not want loads of firewood, or pumpkins or sweet potatoes, or ox-tails, or fresh eggs, or Waikato cheese, and a lot of other things of this sort. At least, if the bootmakers of Lyons, Paris, and other places want these things, they have not sent their orders round this way yet, and our little struggling farmers have no wool or frozen meat to send them. Yet our little settlers could find a market for their milk and butter and their firewood and sweet potatoes among the bootmakers and their families in the adjoining villages j and the weavers at the woolmills in yonder town; and so the one great want which is universally admitted to be ruinously depressing to farmers, the want of a market for their produce would be met at our own doors." And the " Bell " goes on to say that the cruelty of the existing conditions is this, " that while the big and wealthy producer can send his produce and sell it in Europe, there come back in exchange for it foreign manufactures which the poor struggling farmer must buy; and so, as it too often is under our unhappy social system, the poor are made but the tools to minister to the wealth of the wealthy." The conclusion at which our contemporary arrives is, therefore, that " Freetrade in our circumstances is the doctrine of absolute selfishness, by which the poor are made to purchase what has been sent us from distant lands in exchange for the productions of our sheep farmers, and a few other wealthy producers j" and that " Protection by giving us local markets is the true friend of the ordinary farmer and the small producer ;" and it expresses its amazement that this is not so patent as to be acknowledged by everybody.