PROTECTION AND CO-OPERATION

Temuka Leader, Issue 2399, 23 August 1892, Page 3

PROTECTION AND CO-OPERATION

TO THE EDITOR. Sib, — After reading your article on Protection and “Citizen’s” letter on Co-operation, and the foot-note thereto, I went out to see on which side the sun was rising, to make sure that the world was not revolving the other way. (1) A few years ago you used to point to Victoria asanelysium through Protection. (2) A few weeks ago you were suggesting that we should send potatoes to that happy land for nothing to feed the starving poor. At about the same time the Victorian Government were resolving to make more certain of keeping us out of their market with potatoes, by adding 10s a ton to their protective duties. (3) In the United States of America, the sensorium of Protection, it seems to have reached its zenith. When we read of the deadly struggles between starving employes and millionaire employers it does not seem that Protection has brought the Americans very near the consummation of civilisation —the brotherhood of man. (4) Is it the foundation of such conditions you wish to lay in New Zealand 1 When we have enough Protection to sufficiently enrich the few and impoverish the many, who will grow potatoes to feed the starving poor ? Surely you cannot be so absurd as to think that countries or individuals can be enriched in any other way than by the impoverishment of others ! You must know that rich and poor are only comparative terms. The man with forty millions to-day is not as rich as he was with one million fifty years ago. No matter how much or how little money may be in the world, or in a country, it is only its unequal distribution that constitutes wealth and poverty. No country can have its millionaires without a corresponding submerged tenth. Protection can only lead to such conditions and the alternative of civil war and the extermination of the wealthy classes. Protection adopted by every country can have no other effect than that of suppressing commerce. (5) By the letter and foot-note I have referred to we are led to infer that your correspondent and you are anxious not only to suppress commerce between countries and colonies, but to confine it to the limit of narrow localities. Such ideas are fit for conditions that may have existed antecedent to history and the dawn of civilisation ! (6) We must look forward —not backward —for the solution of our social troubles. It seems to me that they all proceed from a misapprehension of the uses and value of money. There seems to be an insatiable thirst for more money. No matter how much one may have he always wants more. (7) One way of curing this mania would be to give everyone as much money as he wants. To accomplish this it would be necessary to change the standard of value to something less rare than gold. Corn, cattle, hides, pieces of stamped leather, and base metals have all served the same purpose that gold does now, without its baneful effeets. The Protection fad is an effect of this gold fever, and cannot cure it. The country in which it is first cured will attain everlasting greatness. You say EnglandGreat Britain I presume you mean—is practically the only Freetrade country in the world, and that she is gaining nothing by it. (8) I admit that she will lose wealth. To the grovelling mind that can see nothing greater than the Almighty Dollar, to which every sentiment—social, moral, and religious—bows, that may seem a great calamity. But who or what can deprive man of the only essentials to his preservation and wellbeing—the fertile brain, the brawny muscle? Nothing but money-worship and the effeminating luxuries and debauchery of a semi-barbarian age like this! It is not wealth—it is principle that has given Britain her place among the nations, and principle will retain her in the van of civilisation when the last vestige of all the pomp and pride that wealth e’er gave has left her. When her cities, her monuments of misrule so destructive to health and morality, the abodes of vice and misery, are no more; when her deer forests, her parka and manors are the happy homes of millions of human-beings—Great Britain will be greater than she has ever been, and God’s kingdom will have come and His Will will be done upon the earth ; and when other nations will have attained the same height universal peace shall reign, and ~ , (9) Man to man the world o er Will brothers be, an’ a’ that. I am, etc., Working Man, August 16th, 1892.

n v—. Common sense very often has that effect on some people. It turns their heads, so that they often think the sun has gone wrong. (2). —Land boomers and swindlers ruined Victoria. Her industries, developed by Protection, are her backbone. She knows this, and is going in for more of it. £3). —The more reason we should project our industries against hers. (4).— It cannot bring any country to the brotherhood of man. Have not strikes taken place in Freetrade England ? Are strikes a product of Protection ? Rubbish. /4). —We are absurd enough to say you are talking hlfalutin’ nonsense. You want Government on humanitarian principles. Is that possible ! Not for a long time yet, until you, and the likes of you, give up dreaming and attend to the practical work of life. “ Self-preservation is the first law of nature.” « Charity begins at home.” Very well. Create a Brotherhood-of-man feeling within your owu score first, and then extend your charity. * There are »t least £3,000,000 sent out of this country annually for <roods which could be manufactured locally. You are at present paying about, 40 per cent, through the Customs, and y©t this money js slipping through your final's. Would it not be better to pay a little more and keep these £3)000,000 in the country ! You are paying 30 per cent and the work is done in foreign countries. Would it not bo better to pay a little more and do the work yourself ! Say these £3,000,000 wove spent here, working men would g?t Joftst £1,000,000 —more likely £2,000,000 of It —would not that be better for working men ? You want to jump, boots and all, into that ready-made Paradise you have been dreaming about. Would not the handling of this money assist you ? Are not well-paid artisans in a bettor position to do battle with capital than starving peasants ? If you want to realise the goal of your dreams give the poor the sinews of war——that is, cash and that t my cannot have so long as it is going to foreign countries. It cannot be in two places at once. (6) This platitude is very atalo, Don’t .use it for a whjlo again. (7) Just so, and that is exactly why your humanitarian dreams are iroprac-

ticable. There is no sympathy in it, Business is business.

(8) —Yes, England—Great Britain if it pleases your vanity—but she is not Free trade. She collects £20,000,000 a year through her Customs. She taxes the poor man’s tea, tobacco, and so on, and calls them luxuries. There is no such thing as Freetrade, and the great question resolves itself into this: Is it better to pay a shilling for an article and give the work to your own people to do, or pay sixpence and let men in other countries do it, and support your unemployed out of charitable aid I (9) —When all this comes about we shall be happy, we hope, but two or three generations of us must live and die in the meantime. You seem to be afraid that Protection would create millionaires. Let us suppose it would 1 Is not what you call Freetrade creating them ? This Freetrade of yours creates millionaires in foreign countries ; Protection would create them at home. The foreign millionaires never give us a penny ; the home millionaire could not make his fortune without spending ten times as much on labor. Get the whole world to agree to so many hours labor per day, and to a uniform rate of wages, and then Protection will not be necessary, but while Germans work 16 hours a day, Sundays included, for about 2s 6d a day, it is impossible for New Zealanders to compete with them, and hence the necessity for Protection. — Ed.