Correspondence

Feilding Star, Volume XIV, Issue 31, 30 August 1892, Page 2

Correspondence

[.We arc not responsible for the opinions of our cor respondents. ~\ PROTECTION. TO THK KDITOH OF THE STAK. Sir, — I cannot claim to have followed closely the long course of this argument as it has pursued its devious way through your columns. Therefore if I do not ap- | pear to grasp the full compass of the questions under dispute I will ask your kind consideration while I attempt a criticism of Mr Deverell's "Defence of Protection " from a Colonial Standpoint, in your issue of the 23rd inst, Mr Deverell says that there is no danger in the event of a heavy import duty being imposed upon boots, that there would be any appreciable alteration in the price of boots. This position is clearly untenable, although the advocates of Protection will \ maintain that the local competition will keep prices at a fair level. I would like to ask Mr Deverell this: If you put a prohibitive duty upon boots of foreign manufacture what ia to prevent local manufacturer, both great and small, combining to maintain a higher price than obtained under present conditions. The thing would be quite natural and easy. The people must have boots, and if you put an import duty of ten per cent on boots, what would hinder the local manufacturers raising the price of their product, say eight per cent, thus still leaving a margin in their own favour to the buyer. My impression is that the small local manufacturer (that is the tradesman) who makes and sells his own boots requires no protection against outside manufacturers, everything being in his favor except the price of labour and against the vendors of goods of English manufacture. The leather has to be imported into England, and after passing through various agents it goes to the manufacturer and is turned

into boots. It is then transferred to the merchants, shipped again, and after undergoing numerous exchanges, each rubbing the gilt off it, it is brought into competition with the local article, which has borne none of these interests. The bankrupt stocks mentioned by Mr Deyerell as purchased in the neighbouring colonies, perhaps at less than half cost price, is reasonably enough a sore bone to local producers. But, after all, bankrupt stocks are fortunately not illimitable in quantity ; they are merely a flash in the pan. Bona fide tradesmen take but little notice of them. Mr Deverell's comments re the failure of so many of our .young tradesmen to make ends meet is grounded altogether npon a false hypothesis. It is not want of support, but rather the pressure of foreign competition, bad debt 9, etc., that brings so many to the wall. The real solution why failure dogs the footsteps of so many tradesmen and small busiuess men is not want of opportunity, but a puerile tendency to be above their station. Nine-tenths of our tradesmen (bootmakers among the rest) as soon as they find themselves in possession of a shop want to wear their Sunday clothes all through the week. It is one of the fallacies of the present age indulged in by a certain class that if anyone can get hold of a shop and stock it with a few shoes and candles, the public have a right to support them in idleness. I am, etc., Joseph G. Browne.