NEED FOR PRODUCTION

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 263, 2 August 1919, Page 9

NEED FOR PRODUCTION

MANUFACTTKKff AS WELL AS AGRICULTURAL. Sir—Wo luivo so frequently been told that wo will luivo to try and grow more liroduco in order lo pay our increased liabilities that most people take it as a matter of course that it can bo done by agriculture alone. People forget that no purely agricultural country has ever, under modern conditions of financing, been able lo liberie itself from tho toils of tho absentee manufacturer and financier except by turning manufacturer itself, and thus keeping at homo the money formerly sent abroadi China, India, and Canada, in spite of ihoir immense production of foodstuffs, hovo to be ever borrowing to pay their interest .on foreign loans. South Africa, in spite of her gold, Argentine and Australia, witn all their immense flocks, have to be periodically spoon-fed from the European and American Stock Exchanges. Tho fact is the agriculturist is always tho weaker side, hence it is an easy matter for the captains of industry and finance to exploit him most mercilessly. The manufacturer and financier can always regulate their prices to their own advan tago, and they never forgot to use their power to the utmost.- That is why the countries mention-id above are every year getting deeper into debt to the manufacturing and mo-ieylending qountnes. That is why the latter are using the power of the creditor to extract one economic and even political concession after another, till the' simple agriculturist finds himself a more dnidge' to the manufacturers and financiers of far-off lands. If ive do not wish to be added to the number of nations in this easo, then obviously it is high time we were iip and doing. The first one we want to deal with is the foreign manufhcturing profiteer, bv either doing without his goods altogether, if we can, or, if not, set to work to manufacture them ourselves. The writer is not a believer in protective tariffs; but I think much might be done bv State subsidies, and, above all, by at once enacting laws that will protect all concerned against unfair competition. The present commercial anarchy must give way before State control, not of prices, but of profits., Impossible, say some. So also might the barons of the middle age* have said when it was suggested to them to settle their boundary disputes by the. science of the Surveyor, •instead of'by main force, as they were then- in tho habit of doing. Well, what tho science of the surveyor, has dono for rural peace, it is quite possible -nay,' absolutely necessary—that tho science of the political economist must at once sot to work to do for commercial and industrial peace. Until there is pence there oan 1)9 no genuine progress, except the progress of the commercial brigand—l am, etc., H..C. THOMSEN.