PROTECTION V. FREETRADE.

Temuka Leader, Issue 2396, 8 September 1892, Page 4

PROTECTION V. FREETRADE.

TO THE EDITOR. (1.) Sik,—ln your footnote to my letter in your Thursday's issue you say : ( \ Our correspondent no doubt means Protection —not Prohibition." In using the word prohibition my meaning was sufficiently obvious. If the amount of protection is not sufficient to prohibit the foreign manufacturer from underselling us in out own market, what is the use of it ? (2.) You say it would not do to prohibit foreign labor because there would not be enough men in the country to do the work. Just so! And if you are the friend of the working classes which you profess to be would you not b 8 pleased to see it? If work became so plentiful as to absorb all the labor in the country, wages would go up with a bound. If this is not •what you want, it proves the truth of ■what I said about protectionist employers. (3.) If working men think they can permanently benefit themselves by putting a restrictive duty on foreign goods without a corresponding duty on foreign ■workmen, they are laboring under a great delusion. Surely they are not foolish enough to think they can raise the •standard of wages and keep the market to themselves. They might as well make a hole in the ocean and expect it to stay there. (4.) Your objection to a duty on laoor ia, to say the least of it, frivolous. If work became too plentiful for the men already in the colony the matter could be very easily remedied. (5.) You say we want more population. If that is the case, what is the rea«on of the outcry about the scarcity of employment'/ Surely the way to better the condition of the working classes is not by bringing others here to compete with them for the little work there is to do ! You tell me I Am narrowing the question down to a class. Sll am. lam narrowing it down to the working class, who constitute nine-tenths of the population of the country, and I think the other tenth should be, like General Booth's, "submerged." (6.) You trot out the old argument about the pair of boots made abroad at 7s 6d, and the pair of boots made in the colony at 7s 6d. This little piece of logic has done duty too often, and ought to get a rest. If you would rather pay 10s than 7s 6d for a pair of boots, I am sure the bootmaker will have no objection. You carry that principle into practice in all departments of trade, and you will hand your name down to posterity as a regular 18-carat philanthropist. The first time you come across a protectionist out shopping, you keep your eye on him and see if he doesn't go " smelling about to see where he can get the most for his money. But the protectionist is nothing if not inconsistent and illogical. I am not advocating a duty on foreign labor; I am only pointing out the inconsistency of protectionists in not doing so ; that is, assuming them to be what you say they are —mostly working men. (7.) Protectionists tell us that choap goods are a curse. Well, if cheap goods are a curse, cheaper goods must be a greater curse, and the greatest curse of all ■would be goods which we could have « free, gratis, and for nothing !" If some wealthy philanthropist were to supply all our wants for the asking he would be inflicting on us the greatest injury! Where do protectionists draw the line between dear goods on the one hand and cheap goods on tho other'/ At what point does dearnoss cease to be a benefit and cheapness an injury ? (8.) However, I am not going to be drawn into a loug discussion on this question. Ido not attach a great deal of importance either to the one system or the other. The time was when I held very pronounced opinions on these matters, but after observing for a good many years the miserable condition of the working classes under both systems I have come to the conclusion that their miseries spring from quite other causes. My belief is that until both land and labor are communised there will be no real or permanent improvement in their condition. Every man should reap the full profit of his own labor.—l am, etc., Consistency.

[(I.) Protection admits goods at a priee. That price may be regulated so as to give an advantage to the local product, while at the same time preventing prices becoming too high. Foreign goods would atill regulate prices where local competition failed to do so. There would also be no danger of a dearth of any commodity. Prohibition would shut out all foreign goods; the local manufacturers could charge what they liked, it would •reate monopolies, perhaps cause famine, and also famine prices. (2.) We should be glad to see every man in the colony profitably employed, but we should not like to see a dearth of labor any more than a dearth of anything else.

(3.) Of course; the way to maintain the standard of wage 3 is to open our ports and let the sweaters of Europe come into competition with them ? Can't you see it ? We shall make it clearer presently. (4.) Of course you nay so. " I'm Sir Oracle, and when I speak let no dog bark!"

(5.) We only suggested that £3,000,000 worth of work done at present iu foreign countries ought to be done at home. We never suggested to import a human-being, but, as you have raised the question, we nay this : If all the work-people to whom we pay this £3,000,000 a year for doing our work in foreign countries were lauded to-morrow in New Zealand and set to work at once in manufacturing the goods we import there would not be one unemployed in the colony next Saturday, even if not one of our own people obtained employment in the new industries. The £3,000,000 we pay away to foreigners yearly would give nearly £IOO a year to 30,000 men. How many would be required to prepare the necessaries of life for these 30,000 new chums ? At least ten times the number of our unemployed. Labor gives labor, and the reason there are so many unemployed in this colony at present is because the 30,000 men we ought to have manufacturing the goods we import are working in other countries. If they were here our potatoes would not "be rotting without anyone to eat them. (6.) We do exactly carry that yery principle into practice absolutely. We never spend a farthing outside our own customers when we can help it, and, what is more, we do not lay claim to philanthropic motives for doing so. We do it purely as a matter of business. Let us explain. Supposing a local tradesman paid us £5, and we went sniffing and smelling about like a Freetrader looking for bargains and bought an article for £4 10s which we «ould have got from our own customer for the £5 he paid us, what would be the result 1 We saved 10s, but we reduced the purchasing capacity of our customer by that £?. It »ay be

that that £5 was all our customer had to spare at the end of his year to spend with, us, and as we had spent it elsewhere instead of with him he, of course, could not renew his purchases with us. Thus we gained 10s and lost £5. You may laugh at this, because £5 is such a small sum, but millions are made of smaller sums. What we want to show is this : By purchasing from our own customers we augment their purchasing powers to that extent, and thus put them in a position , to continue purchasing from us. By that means our trade is improved and we are benefited, whereas if we spent the money elsewhere it might happen that we would not have any customers at all in the end The people of this colony are the customers of each other, and just as we find it beneficial to deal with our own customers so would they find it to their advantage to deal with each other. (7.) Dearness becomes a curse when woodp reach a higher price than what is proportionate to the cost of production —that is, allowing fair wages and profits to capital. For instance, if prohibition were adopted local producers might not be able to produce sufficient for our requirements, and the result would be dearth of goods and famine prices. Dearness would then be a curse, for the workers' purchasing means would not be equal to the price. Now, Protectionists say that cheapness becomes a curse when prices are the result of starvation wages, as is too often the case. We hope you wont say they are wrong; but whether you do or not it will not alter our opinion on the subject. We hold that tie price of goods should be in proportion to the rate of wages, and that the working man who earns 8» per day cuts his own throat in purchasing goods produced by men earniug 2s 6d per day—that is, provided I they are goods capable of being manufactured in his own country. Sooner or later he will bring down his own wages to the same level, because it is impossible to have dear labor and cheap goods. The working man, therefore, who wants to maintain the standard wages must not expect cheap goods. If he wants to maintain a rate of 8s per day he must protect himself against competition with the 2s Gd a day men, and that he can do only through the customs. Dearness ceases to be a benefit when the profits of capital are unreasonably high, for then the workers have to pay more than what bears a fair proportion to their wages for goods. Cheapness becomes an injury when it is the result of starvation wages. Now are you satisfied 1 Think next time before giving yourself away like this. (8.) " So this is only much ado about nothing." Why have you not written about what you attach importance to ? We know as well as you can tell us that Protection is an expediency useful only to bolster up present conditions, and render them tolerable for the time being. We know all this, and a great deal more than we care to say, but we know also that it is the only means of developing our resources, increasing our measure of prosperity, and securing fair wages and more permanent employment to the workers. We also regard it as a means to an end, inasmuch as that it will increase the numbers of the workers, and give them more constant wages, and thus greater independence, which are the conditions necessary to enable them to secure reforms, which will better their position. —Ed.]