PROTECTION IN AMERICA !-MR FORREST WRONG.

Waikato Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 2347, 26 July 1887, Page 2

PROTECTION IN AMERICA ! -MR FORREST WRONG.

TO THE EDITOR. .Sin, —Mr Forrest in your last Tuesday’s paper has made statements which I must contradict. I consider free trade and protection a question of life and death to New Zealand, and I cannot be quiet when statements are made which are directly opposite to facts. Mr Forrest refers to the disasters in America in 1807. He is right, the disaster was great. He says this crisis in lS- r >7 was after 14 years free trade. In saying so he is under a great mistake. The 14 years previous to 1857 was not free trade but high protection. In those 11 years all the North Eastern States were under protection, and great factories had arisen. They never would have been built but for protection, and if protection had been withdrawn these factories would have at once closed.

Without being egotistical, I will say I am an authority on tins -subject. I was in America in 1857, and held a situation in one of these protected industries, and through the complete and entire stagnation which occurred in 1857, I, along with all the employed, every one without exception, was thrown out of employment, but if I never had been in America I could equally and as certainly and truly have contradicted Mr Forrest.

In Scotland I was so mixed up with the producing of goods for America that 1 know all about their duties, and 1 know that what had been once a great trade in sending goods to America bad entirely ceased. I could not help knowing all about their protection, so that when I did go to America I was not like one in the dark.

Mr Forrest, and nut he alone, bat many protectionists, "loss over and mislead by saying that new countries fur a time need protection. He (Mr Forrest) says “Protection must be assured for a term.” Now this is what we must avoid. Protection in America is not now- because it is good, but because, having it fora term, it would be severe to be quit of it. ft is like a man with a sore leg, which is draining the life and strength out of his body, but the cutting of the leg would bo a severe cure, so he delays. Under protection in America, great vested interests have arisen, and many hands employed. Free trade would render these vested interests valueless, and would throw all these hands idle, and along with this, a President being only elected for four years, he naturally wishes to avoid the evil and disagreeable duly of dealing with this severe cure. And as politics in America is a trade, like all other men in trade, the future of the trade is as nothing to the time they are in it. The politician also, if possible, avoids having to do with the cure. The late President Grant, who was elected by the Protectionists, would, if possible, have liked to say something in favour of protection, but he could not do so. He could only find an excuse for its continuance. In his proclamation on assuming the reins of Government he could not say a word in favour of protection, as a principle ; all he could say was that it was there and doing away with it would pauperise a multitude. So it would. We in New Zealand must avoid a term of protection, so as to avoid these vested interests. Look at the price wo had to pay for the doing away with the Dunedin distillery! We had to pay sweetly for the doing away of that vested interest. Mr Editor, a groat authority in America has said that so great is the evil of protection in America, that the doing away with it woo'd be so good, that America could afford to pay fall value for all the-e vested interests, and pension every hand employed for the remainder of his life at full wages. That statement, coupled with the fact of a free trade President being now elected, shows that the evils of protection are now being understood. If it had not been that men's minds had been wholly employed in fighting the fierce battle of abolition and freedom, to the complete and entire exclusion of every other subject, there never would have been protection, at least not to the extent that it is. Protection was quietly smuggled in upon the sly ; the Western fanner, who was being chiseled by protection did not know there was such a thing as free trade and protection, in fact did not understand what free trade and protection meant, either as a principle or what it was in practioe ; lie never heard of such a thing, such a subject has never brought directly or indirectly before his notice ; did not know there .was even such a thing as protection ; there was such an intense struggle berween the all-absorbing subject of freedom to the blacks and continuance of slavery, that every other political subject was completely ignored, in fact not heard of neither in the press nor in the conversation of the people. It is not so now free trade is becoming the battle cry. Harafipi.