BRAVELY FIGHTING

Hokitika Guardian, 24 April 1931, Page 5

BRAVELY FIGHTING

EMPIRE TARIFF ADVOCATED. “From what I have observed F am firmly convinced that the British peoples have largely themselves to blame for the present state of the Empire,” said Mr T. G. Webster, barrister, of Auckland, and a member of the council of the Auckland Chamber of Commerce, who returned from abroad, last week. “The national resources of the Dominions ami Britain are far greater than those of the United States, but whereas the States have developed as a single economic unit (although they are a collection of 49 self-governing communities), the Empire has ma&) no great effort to pull together and develop its resources as a whole. It seems that we should have on Empire tariff and only revenue on very low protective tariffs. By these means every producer in the Empire would be practically assured of an Empire market. The difficulties which beset the marketing of New Zealand butter, wool and meat Australian wool and meat and Canadian wheat would then vanish overnight. Britain our best customer, would become again, if not the workshop of the world, then the workshop of the Empire. Its great purchasing market, now slowly fading away with the prevailing industrial gloom, would once more leap into activity and consuming capacity. Even to the unimaginative, the possibilities are enormous.

“As regards 'foreign countries,’ consider the bargaining power the Empire would have to force an entry for its surplus products to any necessary foreign market. With such an arrangement; 1 feel confident the British Empire would experience such a measure of prosperity as no group of people of the modern world have ever dreamed of.”

.Britain, said Mr Webster, was bravely struggling along, carrying her immense burdens of debt and fighting for markets to keep as many plants in production as possible. She , still clung to the old 'free trade shibboleths,’and wliije her own expert workers were idle manufactured goods from, cheap labour foreign countries flooded '-her-mar-ket. English agriculture (continued to decline and almost all the vegetables, flowers and fruit sold in Britain came from the peasant' countries o'f Europe. The fetish of low prices for foodstuffs had made many thousands cl' farming folk idle. The Labour Government was not popular, said Mr Webster, and an election would, he considered, result in a Conservative victory. In his opinion only 'a change in fiscal-'policy* to protection and the reducing of the dole could stave off disaster.