The Guardian And Evening Star, with which is incorporated the West Coast Times. WEDNESDAY, JULY 31, 1929. DEVELOP THE EMPIRE.

Hokitika Guardian, 31 July 1929, Page 4

The Guardian And Evening Star, with which is incorporated the West Coast Times. WEDNESDAY, JULY 31, 1929. DEVELOP THE EMPIRE.

The new Secretary of State for the Colonies has inaugurated his term of service in the House of Lords by moving a Colonial Development Bill. This measure which is intended to apply to “Crown colonies, protectorates and dependencies,” provides for the establishment of a fund to lie supported by annual Parliamentary grants not exceeding £1,000,000 in any line year. An Advisory Committee will be set up to recommend grants from this fund from time to time to the various Colonial Governments. In this way it i s hoped “to stimulate British export trade” by accelerating the development of the colonies, and to assist at the same time in securing employment overseas for Britain’s surplus labour. Most people on this side of the world, considers the Auckland Star, will welcome this Bill as a satisfactory proof that the Labour Government is by no means oblivious of its Imperial responsibilities. But it is clear that if the “Crown colonies protectorates and dependencies” with which Lord Passfield is now concerned, are worth developing as markets for British goods, and as a means of absorbing the British unemployed, the Dominions should he, from Britain’s point of view, infinitely more valuable for all such purposes. The Imperial Marketing

Board in its annual report lias just pointed out that the overseas Empire, “still only on the threshold of economic manluod,’’ though it comprises only a quarter of the world, yet absorbs 3 r ear by year nearly half of Britain’s exports. Nevertheless, almost at the moment when the Labour Government, through its Colonial Secretary, puts forward a scheme for the economic development of the Empire, its Chancellor of the Exchequer announces his intention of abolishing, as far as his powers will go, that system of Preferential Trade which is supplying muchneeded assistance to Britain’s producers to-day and provides their best prospect of enlarging their markets and securing permanent custom for their goods in the future. We fear that it is hopeless to expect Cobdenite theorists and doctririaries to pay serious attention to facts or statistics that do not square with their preconceived views. If it were otherwise, the history of Imperial Preference during the thirty years of its existence in its present form would already have converted Mr Snowden and his colleagues to a belief in the necessity for Imperial Reciprocity as a remedy for Britain’s economic ills. The Marketing Board’s report shows that since this century began Australia’s wool export has increased from 500 million to 809 million pounds weight, and her wheat export from half a million to two million tons. In the same time New Zealand’s wool export has 'risen from 150 million to 200 million pounds, and her butter and cheese export from 400,000 to 1,500,000 hundred-weight. These amazing proofs of economic expansion represent in a corresponding degree a marvellous growth of industrial activity and purchasing power. And these resources, whether we consider the Dominions as markets for Bri-. ish goods or means of employing Brittish labour are at Britain’s service, if she will accept them on terms that would ensure her permanent economic stability and prosperity. To quote the Marketing Board’s report again, there are “no discoverable limits” to the expansion of British trade in these directions if Britain is well advised. But to abolish Imperial Preference is not the way to develop and exploit the vast resources of the Empire.