FREETRADE AND PROTECTION IN AMERICA.

Feilding Star, Volume XVI, Issue 150, 21 December 1894, Page 2

FREETRADE AND PROTECTION IN AMERICA.

TO THE EDITOR OP THE STAR. Sir, — It is gratifying to find that Mr Goodbehere at last goes from the general to the specific— from mere statement to argument — in his treatment of the subject at issue. It is true that his last letter is, in the main, a reprint from a certain Freetrade pamphlet which is just a statistical record of Britain's progress during the past fifty years, and the figures of which are not in dispute. I have already agreed that, in a sense, the condition of the British working classes has improved, but I also said that the same statement applied to other countries. Comparatively, the British workman's condition has not improved, otherwise there is no truth in the familiar remark that "The rich grow richer and the poor poorer." Mr Goodbehere's logic is sadly abroad. Permit me to quote two of his statements. " I say, and all true Freetraders say, that excess of exports over imports is disastrous to a country." (The italics are mine.) I may explain that the excess of exports over imports goes to pay the the interest money borrowed, from foreign countries." So, excess of exports is disastrous, and yet pays the interest on loans! How does Mr Goodbehere reconcile these two opposites ? If excess of exports pays the interest, it is a kind of disaster that, individually and nationally, we can stand a good deal of just now without crying "Hold ! enough.' 1 If this is the " bhoy that pays the rint," we should "grapple him to our souls with hooks of steel." The restriction of trade fallacy I have already dealt with, but I may just now cite the case of New Zealand. When our present semi-Pro-tettive tariff was imposed in 1888 the imports naturally fell, but exports rose at a marvellous rate, until there is an excess over imports of nearly 80 per cent. Under Protection, too, American exports during the past twenty-two years have trebled, while her imports have only doubled. Instead of Protection restricting exports, it has increased them, by making it possible to establish industries, and creating a demand for the raw material which would not exist without these home industries. I am amazed at Mr Goodbehere holding on to the theory so completely demolished by the results of international commerce. There is no fixity about the laws governing political economy, except the universal principle of cause and effect. As the conditions vary, so will the results, but so far aa international commerce is concerned, the principles that control individual business apply with equal and unerring force. Inter* national commerce is but the aggregate of sales and purchases of the aggregate of individual traders. Mr Goodbehere tells us in effect that a country is richer by buying more than she sells. We know that does not hold good in the case of the individual, and if the foregoing premise be correct, no more can it be so Avith the nation. If a farmer ware to buy more food and clothing, implements, and stock, than is represented by his produce sales, how would he be adding to his wealth ? And if the nation imports (buys) more than she exports (sells) she has to pay for the difference in money, for which she has perishable goods that cannot be again exchanged. Mr Goodbehere is, perhaps, not awaie that since the period of which he writes in England things have changed for the worse. The national trade is falling off —passing into foreign hands. Let Mr Gladstone, albeit a Freetrader, speak on the subject. "Wo have," he says, " in many parts of the country not only a stationary but a decreasing rural population. There are no just sacrifices that ought not to be encountered in order to stop the process which leaves the rural laborer in a condition where he can hardly keep his wife and children, even with an insufficient supply of the necessaries of life." And then hear what an American Freetrader, writing in the Forum, has to say about the state of things on his side of the Atlantic. " There has never been a period in the history of this, or any other, country when the general rate of wages was as high as it is now, or the prices of goods relatively as to the wages as low as they are to-day, nor a period when the working man, in the strictest sense of the word, has so fully secured to his own use and enjoyment such a steadily and progressively increasing proportion of a constantly increasing product. . . Since 1880 there has been a marked increase in the rate of wages or earning* of all occupations above the grade of common laborer. This advance may be estimated at from 10 to SO per cent. The wages of the common laborer have not advanced very much, but he has been rendered able to buy more for his wages on account of the reduotion in prices. The skilled laborer has secured the highest rate of wages ever known in this or any other country, and can also buy more for each dollar. The advocate of Freetrade who denies this advance makes a mistake." I would like to give Mr Goodbehere a few more facts of the above type, bat space prevents. I am, etc., Patriot.