The Daily News. TUESDAY, APRIL 17. OUR WOEFUL TARIFF.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume XLVII, Issue 8086, 17 April 1906, Page 2

The Daily News. TUESDAY, APRIL 17. OUR WOEFUL TARIFF.

It does not seem to the Colonial Treasurer that "money saved is money earned." The people of New Zealand may be deemed to be a joint stock company, and the moDey saved by tho man employed by them to look aftor the affairs of that company is their money. We hear a good deal about our surpluses, but we do not hear that our national debt is beiug lessened by tho payment of these habitual surpluses into the sinking funds, nor are the people requested to give their orders! as to the disposal of the odd millions that they fondly believe'are in good solid gold lying in the State Treasury. But perhaps it may be that the Treasurer is about to distribute these accumulated millions to the people whose millions they are, by remitting taxation on things that really matter to the mer., women and children of the colony. Under drastic tariff reduction these surpluses I would not of course be actually spent, but they would fill tho gap made by the reductions.

♦ * # * Mr Peddon at Rangiora spoke of that favorite myth,"a free breakfast table." He said that the proposed reduction of the duty on sugar would be 8s per ewt and that it would save to the 900,000 people in New Zealand the sum of i 09,000. tie did not say that the difference to the housewife would be so small as to be inappreciable, nor that the duty as it stands doesn't matter much anyhow, nor that people don't breakfast on Hugar, nor arrowroot, nor maizena - which are going to be reduced a farthing a pound nor that people don't eat calico—which will be reduced. One of the strongest points in the scheme of alleged tariff reduction is the cheapening of tobacco. There is only to be a trifling reduction of 2s 2d per lb. So you see bow very free the breakfast table is going to be in the near future! Any reductions spoke of up'to the present barring the reduction in the potato duty—don't [matter a bit to the individual.

Seeing that the breakfast table is likely to remain where it was before as far as actualjtariff reductions affect the individual, it may be remembered that Mr Seddon's classic advice to " keep the cradles full" may have been tendered as a sort of help to the Treasury. While tho working man will get his plug of tobacco reduced by twopence, the same working one will still have to pay thirty per cent on the peiambulatoi' he buys. Why '{ fr'o as to encourage the locil pram manufacturer to make go-carts. Also take bicycles—almost as great a necessity as tobacco. Colonial manufacturers don't make bikes; they only build them from import el parts. The man who wants a bike his to pay thirty per cent duty, because the man who made the tariff had a suspicion that someone in the rolony might someday break out into bicycle manufacturing. He has not broken out yet. It pays him better to go along the way he was going.

To iieveut to the "free breakfast table." We need cups and saucers, if we are out of the enamel patr.iikin stage. There are about two firms in the colony that make china. They don't make it as well as the outside firms and when they make it they want a bigger price than for tho imported article that pays thirty per cent duty. The poor local cup makers must be protected, and for this reason nearly a million people must suffer. The "conimutdty of interest" theory is, then, not very obvious. Most of us go to our earliest meal with our American boots on. We make a limited number of boots per year in New Zealand and for this reason the Customs Department considers it only just and right that we shall pay more than thirty-three per cent duty on our foreign boots. And the colonial boot that is so vigorously protected, do we buy.it at a cheaper rate than the American article? We do not. Why? Because labor is so dear, notwithstanding the fact that the colonial bootmaker is one of the worst-paid persons in the land.

Having got a baby in the very expensive perambulator wo want toys for it. Naturally one would think that a benevolent Government would hear the wail of the child without toys, and give it some at a cheap rate. Before the " Preferential and Reciprocal Trade Act, 1903," came into operation, fancy go»ds and toys paid 20 per cent. For some reason known only to a select few, this Act was used only to raise the tax another ten per cent. You can gauge the wages of the Viennese, German, and Paiisian toytnakers from this. But why were toys taxed so eiorniously ? To encourage Now Zealandois to rush away and make toys, of course, at a halfpenny a dozen and find your own paint! .Such a " preferential" act is too ridiculous for words. When the time comes for tho onslaught on tobacco duty, calico duty, maizena duty, and all the rest of the duties the Premier has been talking about, then will coine the time to look the tariff " in the face," and reduce the schedule very considerably. At present it shows evidence of having been compiled by a very large number of men without expert knowledge; and the proposed reforms are very inu»h like giving a little liver pill to a maniac for brain disease. The question of tariff reform also touches the question of labor, labor laws, and workers' wages, But without any interference with existing wages conditions it would be practicable to deal the unfairness that grins out of every second line of the Customs tariff a nasty blow.