The Press Monday, November 24, 1930. Three Ways to Revive Industry

Press, Volume LXVI, Issue 20093, 24 November 1930, Page 10

The Press Monday, November 24, 1930. Three Ways to Revive Industry

According to a message published on Saturday. Mr Neville Chamberlain, who succeeded Mr J. C. C. Davidson as chairman of the Conservative Party organisation, has said that the British industrial situation should be relieved in three ways: by reducing taxation and expenditure, by protecting the domestic market, and by developing Imperial trade through "reciprocal" trading agreements. There is little new in this programme, unless, by carefully demanding "reciprocal" agreements, Mr Chamberlain implies that he has taken a long and increasingly suspicious look at offers like Mr Bennett's. The wonder is that the Canadian proposal should have survived even the first, hasty glance even of those most determined to find good in preferences. Its oue-sidodness was conspicuous to begin with, and Mr Bennett's explanations made what was conspicuous very nearly shameless. That Canadian tariffs against Great Britain were to stand was quite clear; but the 10 per cent, advant-age, which Great Britain was to snap up thankfully and pay for heavily, dwindled away to something much less. The higher duty against other countries was not to be 10 per cent, ad valorem but 10 per cent, of the tariff; so that, if Britain's goods paid 30 per cent., her competitors' goods would pay, not 40 per cent., but 33 per cent.! If Mr Chamberlain is now unobtrusively revising Mr Baldwin's too eager acceptance of preference on this basis, or on any like it, he is wise, though the wisdom is a little too late to be useful; for the Conference might have settled down to deal with realities realistically, if Dominion fancies had not been indulged and flattered in some quarters at the outset, and false hopes not been raised. Of the other two items in Mr Chamberlain's policy, the proposal of an " emergency " tariff is the more interesting, politically, because it marks the Conservatives' definite advance beyond safeguarding to a more defiant position. At the end of September Mr Chamberlain recommended taking " a "leaf out of the Canadian book."

Why should not we, in the first few months of our office, bring in an emergency tariff? It may be, perhaps, somewhat of a rough-and-rendy kind, but it will give our manufacturers a breathing space.

This Mr Baldwin confirmed hist month; but how far rough-and-readi-ness was to go he has not explained. The objection, of course, to slapping together a tariff, whether to gain a respite or to cow the foreigner into a more accommodating frame of mind, is that it generally outlasts the emergency, and becomes another permanent barrier to trade. The Economist aptly refers to the German tariff, " provi- " sionally" imposed in 1925, when fiscal freedom was regained, until a new, scientific tariff could be framed. It remains almost unchanged. Farther, Great Britain's problem of unemployment is really the problem of her great exporting industries, which tariffs of any sort will not help but can injure, and of home industries in a similar position. The home industries that would be helped by duties against foreign manufactures account for only a small part of the volume of unemployment. The truth is that nothing will greatly help Great Britain that does not enable her to expand her foreign trade again. From this point of view Mr Chamberlain's most practical proposal is to bring down taxes and expenditure. It is not easy, and it is not a delusive short cut, like a tariff; but what is of greatest practical value in national policy never is easy or a short cut. To reduce national costs is to facilitate and accelerate the reduction of industrial costs, the most important need in New Zealand as in Great Britain; and it will be interesting to see in which country faith in the promise of primrose paths is first discarded and the hard, necessary road is first followed.