PROTECTION.

Temuka Leader, Issue 2399, 25 August 1892, Page 2

PROTECTION.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir, —I don’t know what will be the verdict of the majority of your readers, but my opinion is that you have made your case worse by your nine footnotes to my letter. We seem to look at this question from very different points of view, and I presume my ideas will appear as nonsensical to you as yours do to me. One of us is wrong, either you or I. If it is me I am open to correction, but I can only be convinced by argument. In lieu of that you give me something like insulting personal abuse in the opening sentences of your fifth paragraph, at least, a less good-natured person than I would resent them as such. Dan O’Connel angered Biddy Moriarty most by using words she didn’t know the meaning of. I don’t know the meaning of hifalutin’, and i have a big dictionary that does not contain a word like it, therefore, I conclude that it is of your own coinage. Now, using words that plain folks cannot find the meaning of is not argument. I look at Protection from a working man’s point of view and can see no good in it at all, You say that he would get better wages and more work, Now that depends upon what we call better wages, and I doubt we differ greatly on that point. I said in my last letter that a man who has forty millions now is not so rich as one that had ©ne million fifty years ago. And allow me to tell you here that a man who gets two pounds a week for his labour now, is not so well paid as the man that got ten shillings a week fifty years ago. Do you ask why ? Because a given number of laborers, with the aid of machinery, can produce ten times as much in a given time as they could do then, while two pounds is only four times ten shillings. Before you tell us again that Protection would increase our wages you must show us how we would be benefited by the increase of a few shillings in wages and what we require increased in price in the same ratio. We have reason to believe that prices would increase in twofold ratio to the increase of wages. Superficial thinkers may conclude shat there is a flaw in ray argument here, and say that we are better off now than working men formerly were because we get more for money now than they could then. But by natural laws our wants increase with the facilities for suj plying those wants, and it is good that it is so, as we would have been in a worse plight than we are under the alternate Government of Tories and lip-Liberals, who seem to think that working men are an inferior species of animals. You make a great show of contradicting what I never suggested ; I did not say that Protection was the cause of the evils I pointed to in Victoria or elsewhere, all I meant to convey was that Protection does not prevent them. You say it is the back-bone of Victoria. Well the Victorians may have plenty of back-bone by-and-bye, but they will have very little belly if they cannot buy potatoes at a price that leaves nothing to the grower. You admit that it cannot bring any country to the brotherhood of man, and further on you tell me if I want to realise the goal of my dreams to give the poor the sinews of war—that is cash. The brotherhood of man would be the realisation of my dreams, but not the brotherhood of Osin and Abel —we have that already. Being one of the poor I am honestly desirous of procuring for the poor a more equitable share of the cash although not a money worshipper, I am not insensible of its real value—not to be used as sinews of war, but to make life enjoyable. There can be no equitable distribution of wealth where millionaires are possible. Protection would give the poor money with one hand and strip them of it with the other. I don’t know what you mean by Government on humanitarian principles. All I want is justice. If you or any one else can prove to me that the working class are getting political justice I will never lift my pen again. I hold that the sol© function of Government is to hold the balance even. That is all I want from Government. If we are not to get that, for God’s sake give us clubs apiece, or Gatling guns if you like, anything that will place us on an equal footing, and we will settle all the trouble. Business is business, as you say. Again, it is you, not I, who speaks of Freetrade England, and then you give figures that conclusively proves she is not. a Fre,©trade country at all. That is the basis of my argument, there is no Freetrade, hence the wrongs we endure. Customs duties, are the foundation of all political corruption and tyranny. It is customs duties that enable dishonest politicians to put their hands into unthinking men’s pockets without letting them know what they are taking out. We get plenty of fads and fine speeches from lip-Radicals, but we are beginning to want something more substantial now. Our Tory friends would coerce us into thinking by keeping us from eating and drinking, and that would be better even than pauperism and fine promises, to bo fulfilled 300 years hence. —I have, etc., Working Man.

[The only idea in the above of which we can form any clear notion is that we were offensive. “ If a jest you cannot take, Then a jest yon should not make.” Our corres,pendent wanted to show off his own smartness at our expense, but does not like to be hit back. In reply to* him in our last issue \rc stated that we were paying at present 30 per cent, taxation on imported goods, and even with that £3,000,000 was going out of the colony. We asked him, would it not be better to pay a little more and keep these £3,000,0,00, in the colony. Wo asked him so,yoral_ other questions, but instead of answering one of them he has gona beating about the bush. We cannot waste time in beating the air, but wa shall ask him another question. Ho wants Freetrade and wo shall ask him to see how > would it suit. We get about £360,d00 a year from taxation, an w p '>.Uh, and about £1,500,000 from customs duties. If wo were to take oft the customs wealth would have to pay six times what it pays now. How would that do ! Then if we were to take off the customs duties, every factory in the colony would have to shut np at once, and the thousands employed in them would be thrown out of employment. How would that do ! Ireland has no millionaires, no industries, and much poverty. Herpopulation, which was once 8,000,000, has dwindled down to 4,500,000, and last year 750,000, people emigrated from her. The land there is settled chiefly in from 5 to 100-aore farms Where are all the Irish gone ? To Protectionist America. As regards the above letter it has nothing to do with the question of Protection. Tho great injustice from which working men suffer is to be found under Freotrade as well as Protection ; that has nothing to do witl^

the question at all. The working man has a vote, and if he used it properly he could manage things his own way, but ho is a miserable, slavish toady, who thinks he is lifted into the second heaven if a rich man shakes hands with him, and for the sake of that shake of the hand or a pot ot beer he gives his vote. In 1885 Mr Gladstone extended the franchise to working men in England, but the first use they made of it was to turn him out of office. In 1887 John Ballance was settling the unemployed on the land, but the working men turned him out of office. What is the use of talking of lip-Radicals ? What can Radicals tlo with such cattle 1 But all this is not Protection. One word on that point. Four years ago New Zealand was Freetrade and Victoria Protection. The amount of taxation New Zealand paid per head through the customs was one shilling per head; and the amount Victoria paid was sixpence per head. Freetrade in New Zealand meant a tax of a shilling per head. Protection in Victoria meant a tax of sixpence per head, and you will find this in Hayter’s year book. Would you rather pay one shilling and have the work done in England, or sixpence and do the work yourself I —Ed.]