FREE TRADE OR PROTECTION.

Hokitika Guardian, 23 August 1928, Page 1

FREE TRADE OR PROTECTION.

“There are two ways of testing such a proposal to change from Free Trade to Protection. First, there is the test of our own experience, the strict comparison by every known statistic, of our condition under Protection and our; condition under Free Trade. That any professed economist would give any but one decision on that test I shall not believe until the dissenting economist declares himself. The other test is the comparison of our total economic experience under Free Trade with that of any other country under Protection That comparison we have seen made many times over, in terms of trade, of wealth, of resources, of well-being, of conditions of labour, of working hours, of wages, of shipping, and, lastly, oi command of the sea and power to conduct a tremendous war. And out ol all the polemic there remains on foot only the one pretence, utterly unworthy of a scientific economist, that the capital and the nominal wages of the skilled workers, of the vast territory of the United States, with their enormous excess of natural resources over ours, constitute a proof that a Tarrifist policy under which they remain rich would maintain similar

riches in this island, which has to maintain more than a third of their population on a trifling fraction of their territory and a hundredth part of their stores.”—Rt. Hon. J. AI. Robertson.