INDUSTRIES & IMPORTS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 27 July 1938, Page 2

INDUSTRIES & IMPORTS

1 THE EXAMPLE OF IRELAND. (To the Editor.) Sir, —The importers complain that - many of our secondary industries are ) uneconomic and therefore should not ■ be protected by tariffs. Can any importer name a single secondary industry that is so economic' that it can survive competition with the great industries abroad, except those immediately connected with our primary industries, such as cheese and butter factories? Can anything be more uneconomical than to let about 50 per cent of our imports come in free, and then make up the loss of revenue by means of the sales tax, which is paid not only by imports but by our local manufacturers as well? It costs just about as much, if not more, than a protective tariff, while it leaves our infant secondary industries shelterless against foreign competition. Can anything be more uneconomical than to import over £40,000,000 worth of goods most of which could be manufactured here if we had the factories, at the same time as we have to spend upwards of £20,000,000 a year on public works, which is only another name for relief works? Can anything be more uneconomical than to put our unemployed to build roads, bridges and railways, work that will not need to be done for a generation or two? How long will it take to settle the unemployment at that rate? If we were to spend half of that £20,000,000 every year on building out our immense stores of water-power and building factories to make the things here that we now import, would not that be far more economic than piling up millions of pounds worth of debts every year by importing? A little over 100 years ago Ireland had a far bigger outfit of secondary industries than we have. When the Act of Union brought in free trade with England she lost nearly all her factories and 22,000 skilled mechanics had to leave the' country. The population was forced back on the land. The ' competition for land forced up prices I till a potato garden fetched from six to seven pounds an acre. When the tenants could not pay such atrocious rents, they were driven out of their holdings to join the unemployed on the roads. Eight hundred thousand ; unemployed were reported to be roaming through the country, begging bread. Those who stayed on the land were exploited by the landowners so j that in 1844 a Royal Commission reported that in most district many of the houses were neither wind or waterproof. The only food was the potatoes, the only drink water; the only asset the pig and the manure heap. Then came the famine, because the food that might have saved them had to be exported to pay debts and for imports, as we are doing. When the potato failed, the food failed too, and about a quarter of a million lives perished. The end of the tragedy came in 1848, when the landowners were sold up, ostensibly to allow the farmers to get the land at lower rents. Actually, to . find investment for idle money in the banks. Is that what New Zealand is training for?—Yours, etc., I HANS C. THOMSEN. I Solway, Masterton, July 26. I