WHY LORD EMMOTT RESIGNED.

Taihape Daily Times, Volume XI, Issue 3354, 5 December 1919, Page 3

WHY LORD EMMOTT RESIGNED.

"COMMITTEES PACKED WITH INTERESTED MANUFACTURERS." Why Lord Emmott resigned from the Advisory Committee on Import and Export Restrictions is told by himself in an article in the current number of Ways and Means, in which he has some very strong things to say about the way imports- are at the mercy of interested traders.

The work of relaxation of export restrictions was efficiently and quickly dealt with when the Committee was unable to obtain information for months, and during that time, the President of the Board of Trade was giving pledges to manufacturers without consulting or even informing the Committee.

Finally, a Cabinet Committee, presided over 'by Sir Auckland Geddes, was formed, but directly a definite proposal was made (Lord Emmott instances the decision to remove all restrictions on paper imports on the

ground that th e people benefiting by cheap paper were more numerou s and important than the manufacturers) the manufacturers revolted, and the Board of Trade incontinently capitulated.

"Is there any wonder," Lord Emmott asks "that workers in controlled industries are constantly striking or threatening to strike when there is such a readiness to surrender to interested clamour?"

Finally, Lord Emraott and most of his colleagues of the War Trade Department resigned • when they were asked to accept a great increase of affected interests on the Committee. ' their reason being that "a new and objectionable principle was being introduced into public life. "The present system of arbitrary restrictions dictated by interested Committee is the very worst form of Protection ever invented," concluded r his lordship. "It is avowedly tempor-j ary, it includes the maximum of un- ! certainty with an unnatural scale of ! profits, and ha s no relation to the interests of the people as a whole. "At a time when high prices and the suspicion of profiteering are admitted to be the main causes fo industrial unrest ,what 'reason can be given for an arbitrary exclusion of commodities and a consequent increase j of cost to consumers?" I