PROFESSOR HADLEY ON PROTECTION.

Waikato Argus, Volume I, Issue 47, 27 October 1896, Page 3

PROFESSOR HADLEY ON PROTECTION.

♦ I'UOFKSSOR HADLEY has published a manual on economics. He is a freetrader and lias brushed awaj popular arguments for protection as illusory. Though moderate and measured in his language, he speaks of the " fatuity " of trying to increase a country's supply of gold by statutory restrictions on the movements of that metal or of commodities. The so-called creation of new industries is generally a diversion of capital. " The popular argument, that by admitting goods free of duty we subject ourselves to the competition of pauper la" our, ignores the fact that the chief reason for the differences between American and European wages lies in the difference of efficiency of American and European workmen. , . What is apparently the dearest labour is really the cheapest." Mr Hadley puts the ca«c for free trade as strongly as it can be put when he says, "It is undoubtedly true that a nation can hurt foreigners by its tariff; but there is not one whit of evidence to show that it helps itself individually by legislation devised with such a purpose, and every reason to believe that the attributes of mutual hostility thus engendered involve evil commercially and politically to all parties concerned." In Mr Hadley's treatment of bimetallism there is an evident desire to be fan-, and even those who do not agree with his conclusions must own that he states accurately the chief arguments on which they rely. Hut his opinion is clear and emphatic. He joins issue on the economical arguments for bimetallism, and he shows no mercy to the sentiment underlying much of the literature on the subject—the feeling that " silver mining is an iodustry which has not been very profitable and that it ought to be helped." As Mr Hadley observes, " the theory that a man may use the power of the Government to compel people to buy a thing they do not want at the price wlr'ch it has cost him is Socialism of the extremest type."