WHAT FREETRADE MEANS TO ENGLISH POTTERS.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXX, Issue 8440, 14 May 1907, Page 3

WHAT FREETRADE MEANS TO ENGLISH POTTERS.

The report of the Tariff Commiss- * ion on the potteries industries shows in a striking manner how the English pottery trade is injured by free imports and hindered in its expansion by the hostile tariffs erected in foreign countries. "The imports of foreign china amount to over half a millon pounds' worth per annum," one manufacturer states in his evidence. "Owing to this being, brought from abroad - instead of being made in this country working potters lose in wages £250,000 per annum, or £5,000 per week; millers lose the grinding of 5,500 tons of bone, 3,500 tons stone, 750 tons flint, and 8,000 charges of glaze; fire brick makers lose'-the sale of 1,000,000 bricks, irrespective of kiln, quarries, and sundries; and marl owners lose lie sale of 20,000 tons of marl." The United States continues to be the chief export market for the British industry. British to that country have, however, declined especial y since the imposition of the McKi'iley and Dingley tariffs. The decline in the last 15 years has been 40 per cent. German exports to the United States have, on the other hand, increased 160 per cent., in the last six years, and now exceed £1,500,000, as agahist British exports of little mpre than £500,000. Foreign tariffs are indicated as a pjrime cause of the establishment of British pottery firms in Germany and the United States, and the emigration of skilled British workmen to those countries. Thus one large Staffordshire earthenware firm is said to have invested £50,000 in Germany. Those concerned in the pottery industry arp practically unanimous as to |the qejsd for a change in the British fjgcpl system.