POTENT FACTS IN REGARD TO COMMERCE.
Inter-state commerce is ono thiug and foreign commerce quite another. The former is restricted only by such conditions as time, distance, natural obstructions and the possibilities of production and consumption may set up. The latter is necessarily limited by our capacity to buy in the cheapest markets and sell in the dearest. If, by reason of our high duty on fine wools, we cannot buy from the Australians, we are prevented purchasing in the very cheapest market in the world; and, if, by reason of our want of accommodation, friendliness and disposition to α-ive and take, we lose tho Australian market for our cotton products, wo lose the highest-priced and best market in which to sell that commerce ia acquainted with. Thus, at one blow we are stopped from purchasing in the cheapest and sellin" in the dearest market, and how inimical that is to foreign trade is plain beyond the possibility of misapprehension. If the Australians manufactured their wool at home and asked us to take the manufactured avticlr, the case would be very different, It they were unwilling to take the products of American labour in payment for their cheap and unmanufactured wool, there would be a good deal of feeling, if not much reason, to justify our refusal to buy in the cheapest market fine wools which we need, and which we cannot purchase elsewhere to greater advantage. When the operation involves both buying and selling with a maximum of profit both ways, what, in the nature of things, remains to be alleged against such an arrangement ? It is said that in building up such a reoiprocnl trade the principle of protection to home industries would, in some undufined way,, be violated. Nonsense ! That is the best protection to home industry which finds it a market for its products. Wool is a raw material which requires no labour, worth talking about in its production. Whore.then, does tho tax upon it afford protection to the American weaver and mill hand? He needs fine wool, because without it he cannot manufacture fine cloth, such as the market both at home and abroad demands. The admission of such wool duty fren is to him tho very best kind of protection. What is true of wool is equally true of coal and other products upon which no skill is expended, and honco the so-called, but mis-named, frco trade of Cleveland is protection in its most positive and practical form.—S. F. News Letter.
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Waikato Times, Volume XXX, Issue 2450, 24 March 1888, Page 1 (Supplement)
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417POTENT FACTS IN REGARD TO COMMERCE. Waikato Times, Volume XXX, Issue 2450, 24 March 1888, Page 1 (Supplement)
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