COMIC VIEW OF PROTECTION.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 2921, 5 August 1882, Page 3

COMIC VIEW OF PROTECTION.

The raising of purely American elephants is perfectly feasible. All we have to do is to make a tropical jangle, and allow a few pairs of imported elephants to inhabit it. This original ‘plant’ would, of conrse.be costly. We should have to select a fertile tract of country and enclose it With an enormous building of glass and iron. There is no limit to the size of a glass and iron building, except the money and time required for its construction, and were the' Government to do its duty, a tract of 30 acres could be enclosed in.a comparatively short time. With the help of steam pipes, the temperature of this elephant "manufactory could be kept at any desired degree, and all sorts,of tropical trees and fruit could be grown in it. In fact, the. elephants would hardly discover that they were not in India, and if a few monkeys and hyenas, a half-dozen East Indian natives, and a real missionary were to be placed in .the jungle to increase the home feeling of the elephants, their happiness would be complete. The objections which would probably be made to this plan of supplying America with homemade elephants would be of course the familiar ones which these stupid and perversed people, the free-traders, bring, against any form of protection. They' 'would say that the Government has no ; right,to hire people, to engage in the' production of American elephants. Does not the Government hire men to engage in manufacturing blankets and steel rails and iron steamships P Whether the Government pays the firm of Smith, Brown, and Robinson a salary of half a million of dollars annually W make blankets, or whether it taxes every man who wants to buy a foreign blanket so heavily that he finds it cheaper to buy Smith, Brown, and Robinson’s blankets at double the price charged for blankets in England, is a mere matter of detail. In either, case the firm of Smith, Brown, and Robinson is hired by the Government to make blankets, and the manner in which the salary of the firm is paid is a matter of no importance. It can, therefore, be maintained that the Government has as much right to hire men td raise elephants as it has to hire men to engage in any other industry, and the freetrader can be wholly disregarded.—“ New York Times.”