The Daily News MONDAY, APRIL 8. IMPERIAL FREE TRADE.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume L, Issue 59, 8 April 1907, Page 2

The Daily News MONDAY, APRIL 8. IMPERIAL FREE TRADE.

Sir Wilfrid Laurier is an almost isolated instance of a great Imperial statesman advocating universal free-trade in the British Empire. Unfortunately for Australasian labor leaders, who believe the salvation exists in raising wages ten per cent and raising the price of necessities twenty-live, it cannot be said that Canada, wuli an easy tariff and free-trade leaning, is pining. Canada, although a huge country, is si ill an infant as nations go, and although she has as a neighbor the United States of America a highly protected country, she does not agree that because protection makes U.S.A. prosperous, it is also the only way to make Canada prosperous. Quecrly enough, New Zealand, more infantile than Canada, and infinitely smaller, prefer, to follow where the I'.S.A. leads, hugely protecting its own industries. Now in I'.S.A. industries do exist. In New Zealand they do 110;, comparatively speaking. \y'e pay an enormous amount of money to protect a very small amount of trade. Canada manufactures largely. She has already a world market, anil yet Hie Premier, evidently voicing til • 'opinion of the people, believes in Un'versat Imperial free-trade. lie believes in giving the people of the Dominion etieap goods while lliev are unable .to manufacture goods as cheaply as their neighbors of other anil older nations. New Zealand doesn't .believe # in this sort of thing. The excessive protection given to New Zealand manufacturers, or those who have some ideas of becoming such, often results in the production of poor-quality articles.-- Imperial frcctrade is protection of British manufacture in its highest form, interchange of trade between countries flying the same Hag is and impassable bulwark to foreigners. The various parts of the British dominions produce everything that human beings desire. To build a tariif barrier up against our own kith and kin is not only not brotherly, but is haltering our own neck, or, at least, unduly unbuttoning our pockets. If we cannot manufacture specific articles we must get them elsewhere. This being so, why load such articles w-tli prohibitive tariffs? American manufactures —nay, overproduces—every item of usefulness she herself needs, and this is her sole reason for protecting herself by a great tariif wall against outsiders. New Zealand manufactures merely a fraction of the goods she needs, and builds a tariff wall against ali-comers. The tariff wall ought to some extent at least be removed because the needs of a whole people are of great importance than the needs of a section, and because New Zealand will take more than a fortnight , to be in a position to make all she needs for the consumption of her people. Some of these days when New Zealand manufacturers, by their excellence, have a 1 world market ami are over-produced, . New Zealand, like America, may build I a wall as high as Mount Egniont. But . ill the meantime the existing wall is only a stronghold for the Customs.