PROTECTED INDUSTRIES.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXX, Issue 4402, 29 April 1875, Page 2

PROTECTED INDUSTRIES.

(Erom the Globe, January 12.) Some of the principles of political economy have by this time become axiomatic amongst us. The old fallacies have been exploded so often and so successfully that they do not reappear. We should not now think of protective legislation or of forbidding imports from foreign countries in order to promote the production of the same commodities at Home. We recognise the general principle that the true interests of commerce require each country to barter rather than to produce for herself, and a sound economy decrees that every nation shall devote its capital and labor to push its natural trade, and hot todevelop abnormal manufactures.- Thus, it is possible that we could-introduce into England the silkworm, and at a greater cost produce an inferior class of silk; but we recognise the true policy which confines our operations to the manufacture of cotton, and leaves to Erance the industry in which that country most excels. An exception to this general rule has, however, just been afforded in the case of an entirely exceptional country. A very short time ago Russia did not possess a single mile ; of railroad, with the exception of the little line of St. Petersburg-Tsarkod. But when the Grand Russian Railway Company was established, a question came to be eagerly debated—How were the rails for making the railway to be obtained ? Russia was rich in iron mines, but then she had no factories, no appliances, no knowledge of the manufacture. It was conceded that iron rails would be better made in England, and could be imported at

about a quarter the price of their home manufacture. In England we should have let the ordinary economic laws prevail. Russia is, however, governed in a very’different way. If Peter the Great established a fleet in a conntry which had scarcely any available seaboard,, why should not las successor “force” iron manufactories 'within his dominions ? This ■was the reasoning of the Emperor and the Grand Duke sixteen years ago. The iron mines of Siberia were worked vigorously. Factories were erected throughout the country, and Russia was able to produce not only its own lines of railway, but its own locomotives. Only the other day the great factory of Kolomna delivered over to one of the companies its 200th engine. The fact has been noticed triumphantly in the Moscow papers. It does not follow that the occasion is one of triumph. Two hundred locomotives have been built at the admitted cost of eight hundred. So much capital has been not merely unproductive, but wasted. It has been withdrawn from sources where it would have produced its 50 or 100 per cent.; it has been devoted to a manufacture which yields a loss of 75 per cent. The Moscovians point triumphantly to their Russian rails and Russian locomotives. The retort is very simple. If they had dealt with Germany or England, they would have had .four times as many miles of railway and fourtimes as much rolling stock.