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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 77

IV. Conclusions

IV. Conclusions.

The writer may claim to have proved by the figures given in this Chapter that the assertions made by Free Traders regarding the security of our present position as a manufacturing nation, and the appalling dangers that are involved in tariff changes, are wholly fictitious.

Our present position is not secure: it is highly insecure. Our exports per head of the population have declined steadily in value since 1870, and are still declining. In 1900 and 1901 we imported nearly £100,000,000 of foreign manufactured goods, and the United Kingdom is becoming each year more of a "dumping-ground" for the surplus products of Germany and America. Only those who have made Free Trade into a fetish can assert, in face of these facts, that all is well.

The appalling dangers that are involved in any change in our fiscal policy are likewise the creation of the disordered mental vision of Free Traders.

There is an adequate market at the present moment within the Empire for the whole of its output of manu- page 75 factured goods. The demands of this market are rapidly growing. Should the whole of our present export trade to foreign countries be lost, our manufacturers would still have to increase their production by £40,000,000 worth of goods to meet the present demands of the home country, and of the Colonies and dependencies of the Empire.

As regards the food-supply of the population of the Empire, the figures show that we can at present produce one-third of this under the British flag, and that the proportion is slowly increasing. Here, again, the Empire provides an adequate market for all the food produced within it; and it will be years before the agriculturists of Canada and New Zealand have overtaken the demand for meat and grain. A preferential-tariff system would but accelerate this development of the food resources of the Empire.

Free Traders, in their slavish adherence to the underlying dogma of their policy—cheap food and cheap manufactured goods—forget that one must be a producer before one can be a consumer; and are also disposed to ignore the danger that under the present conditions of international trade (miscalled by them Free Trade) our home and colonial industries may be undermined and destroyed by protected industries in other lands.

In the opinion of many the time has arrived when this danger must be recognised, and when steps must be taken by the Home and Colonial Legislatures to relieve the threatened industries from such unfair competition. Will the Colonial Premiers be able to induce their respective Governments to take action on this momentous question; and will the Home Government support them by introducing a system of preferential duties on colonial products?

The following extract from Mr. Chamberlain's speech at Birmingham on May 16th, 1902, proves that there is one member of the present Government who is alive to the dangers of our present position, and is prepared to page 76 take the steps necessary for increasing the over-sea trade with our Colonies—

"At the present moment the Empire is being attacked on all sides, and in our isolation we must look to ourselves. We must draw closer our internal relations, the ties of sentiment, the ties of sympathy, yes, and the ties of interest. If by adherence to economic pedantry, to old shibboleths, we are to lose opportunities of closer union which are offered us by our Colonies, if we are to put aside occasions now within our grasp, if we do not take every chance in our power to keep British trade in British hands, I am certain that we shall deserve the disasters which will infallibly come upon us."