New South Wales Under Free Trade

Feilding Star, Volume VIII, Issue 36, 4 September 1886, Page 4

New South Wales Under Free Trade

Speaking at a meeting held at Ooulburn on July 12, under the auspices of the Free Trade Association, ifr B. R. Wise said it was a libel on N*-w South Wales that Protection was t<> develop its manufacturing industry. The following extracts from Mr Wise's address may prove of interest : — " The official records show that we have no less than 100 distinct varieties of manufacturing industries, of which forty are connected with agricultural or pastoral pursuits, and sixty are not, and these employ 38,000 hands. In the last seven years our manufacturing population has increased more rapidly than Victoria, and before long we might expect to have both niore men employed and a greater variety ©f industries than protected Victoria. . . - We had in Hudson Xtrorhers one of the largest engineering, works in the Southern Hemisphere in Dixon Brothers the lurgest tobacco factory ; Mort's dock was the largest stiipping-yard. . . . The shipwright trade was now depressed ; bnt tinder Protection it would never have existed. Protection killed shipping ; and in Sydney at least 30,000 men vrdre employed directly and indirectly Iby shipping. Before Protection in Victoria, the Victorians built three times as many ships as we did. Now ■we build fifteen times as many as they do. . . . The ironworkers toe, •were calling for Protection ; yet in America skilled iron and steelworkers were working for 5s 4d a day, 4d more than we gave to our unemployed ; and there were, in September last, 122,000 ironworkers out of work, while no less than 363,000 men in the protected New England States had nothing to do. The kerosene industry had been Quoted by Protectionists ; but although there was a tax upon that article of 6d per cent., Now South Wales impbrted for home use no less than 530,000 gallons, npon which duty was paid of £13,200, and only two factories had grown up under this employing fifty -four hands. That is to say, tie people, of New South Wales paid in 1885 £13,200 to keep fifty-four men employed."