IMPOSSIBLE FREE TRADE IN AMERICA.

Waikato Times, Volume XL, Issue 3208, 17 January 1893, Page 3

IMPOSSIBLE FREE TRADE IN AMERICA.

TO THE EDITOR. Slß| Mr Cleveland, in his contest for the Presidency, used the words " Impossible Free Trade in America.'' I think it would be well that these words should be properly understood. It is impossible to do away with Protection in America in the same sense as it was impossible to do away with slavery in the Southern States. It is true that a tremendous avalanche came and buried slavery, and it will require some tremendous calamity, such as a split in the union, to do away with Protection. The vested interests were so great that what with the determination of the South to have slavery, and with the unwillingness of the North to buy or pay for this vested interest, that theso two reasons would have carried slavery on till some great convulsion burst it up. In the same way the vested interests in the protected industries in the Eastern States are so great that with the determination of these States to have Protection and the unwillingness of the Western States to buy up or pay for the doing away with these protected industries, these two reasons combined will make "Impossible Free Trade in America," There is also a third reason—and a very strong reason it is—tli.it is, that the sudden doing away with the great eril of Protection would cause the immediate pauperising of the artisans employed in the protected industries, and those same artisans would have a moral right to be compensated for their vested interests. The artisans have a vested right morally much higher than the capitalist, seeing that he (the artisan) was only a passive outcome of Protection, wheras the capitalist was the active organiser and the political grower of the evil. That the United States should have; to go on groaning under the evil of Protection shows that we cannot do wrong without having to suffer for it; and it should be a lesson to us here in New Zealand not to go further in the wrong of Protection, so that the already evils which we suffer from Protection be not increased. America has now put a stop to the further extension of Protection, and will, as far as possible, retrace her steps in the direction of Free Trade; but there are great difficulties in the way. Let us not go further on in Protection, so that we may have the less to retrace,— Yours truly, HARAI'EI'K.