The Feilding Star. Oroua & Kiwitea Counties Gazette. Published Daily. WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 3, 1894. PROTECTION A FALLACY.

Feilding Star, Volume XVI, Issue 84, 3 October 1894, Page 2

The Feilding Star. Oroua & Kiwitea Counties Gazette. Published Daily. WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 3, 1894. PROTECTION A FALLACY.

The sister colonies are gradually but surely arriving at the beliet that the once - worshipped " Protection " is a snare and a delusion. A writer in the Launceston Examiner, on the state of Victoria, remarks that the policy of that colony has been to force — not foster — industries by means of prohibitive duties, and the working man been told — and, unfortunately, he has readily believed it — that protection to the manufacturer meant high wages to the workman. The fallacy of this theory is becoming more apparent every day, but the Victorian artisan has not yet learned that a manufacturer who has to pay duty on everything he uses cannot compete in outside markets with the man who imports his material duty free. It is outside markets which Victoria requires, for her own are over-stocked. There is no import duty on tradesmen from other colonies, who flocked into Victoria allured by tbo hope of high wages, and thus whilst the artisan finds himself subjected to undue competition from his fellow workmen, his employer is forced to reduce wages in order to bring down prices or to close his establishment. When the workman learns the rottenness of the doctrine he has been imbibing during the last quarter of a century, and recognises that the same system is producing like results in France, the United States, and other protective countries, he may, by .helping to sweep away the restrictive t>arriers, hope for better times.