FREE TRADE V. PROTECTION.

Southland Times, Issue 1278, 12 July 1870, Page 3

FREE TRADE V. PROTECTION.

Sib, — Considerable attention has been directed to this subject in the local newspapers of this Province. As the views of one writer may help to awaken the intelligence of another, the following from an Australian paper may not be out of place at this time: — "The national association of Wool-manufacturers and wool-growers in the "United States has petitioned Congress to admit the finer qualities of wool duty free. It has been discovered that protection destroys the very interests it professes to foster. Tt embraces its fondlings so affectionately that it strangles them. This is how, according to the wool- growers and woolinanufacturers of America, protection has operated to their disadvantage :— * To us it seems clear that this unjust exclusion •of fine wools not grown here has contributed in a great degree to the decrease of jwices of domestic wool. The price of wool in our market is governed by the price jof cloths; and while foreign manufacturers have cheap fine wools, in the absence of competition from us, they can and do import their cloths, in spite of a 45 or 50 per cent, duty, at prices below the cost of production under tibe lOO.pei* cent, duty on fine wool Give •our manufacturers fine wool at a mere revenue duty, as you do coarse wool, and the foreign manufacturer-must pay more for: his wool because, of our competition, and will: be forced to advance the price of his cloths, to the direct benefit of our own manufacturers, while our wool-growers obtain ail equal benefit by the increased price of their wools.' Common sense, assisted; bj self-interest, is proving too fltrong for the mischievous and misleading fallacies of protection; and if, as our American cousins imagine, the competition of their woollen manufacturers . ijritii those .of Europe should have the effect of raising the price of *-3fche~fiaer^descriptions of the staple, so much the better for the wool-growers of ;7 >Alfstralia2 :r Sfiriultaneously with this movement in- the': United States, the ~-?residenfc has-addressed a message to Congress, recommendingimmediate action — -with Tespectto the decline of American jCpmmerce. General Grant observes — , 7 'lt* is aioaKonal humiliation that we are .i aowieoiipelled ita pay 20,000,000d0L to So,ooo,ooo<ioL 'annually, exclusive of — pa^sa^rnioineyr. which" we should share v^^ntS, other nations, to foreigners for ; H-doipg tHe ivork which should be done by and American-manned -vessels. V : This is a direct drain upon the r resources of the country of just so much ' moneyj equal to easting it into the sea, so far as the nation is concerned.' . Protection is evidently in a very bad -'- Vayin* the United States. It has *; .destroyed ithe mercantile marine of the J "country,* and is filling "the large cities and it is, high time the -^giftnt4aiqai^shouldr be-knocked on the head." — Yours j&e., Index. — — 5u1y5,1870.