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Mr. Arthur Arnold, M.P. on "Fair Trade"

"Fair Trade" is now declared to mean a Food Tax.

Peace is largely assured by the interest of foreign nations in keeping open our free market for their surplus food.

Our success in competition, as manufacturers, rests entirely upon cheap untaxed food.

If food were taxed our people would suffer poverty, because the rise in the cost of manufacture would drive us out of foreign markets.

Cheap food brings high wages, because when food is cheap, workmen have more to spend in the purchase of manufactures.

Taxation of food, which is the avowed policy of the so-called fair-traders, is demanded for the support of a Land System, condemned by all economists, such as no Government in Europe could impose without causing revolt

A fair sample of its fruits is that 700 persons own one-fourth of England and Wales; that 1,700 persons own nine-tenths of Scotland; and that 292 persons own one-third of Ireland.

You are told that the soil will pass out of cultivation if the price of produce be not raised by a tax to be paid by your labour.

Wheat is now selling at 35s. per quarter.

Remember that in the beginning of the Free Trade struggle, the same class declared in evidence before Parliament that the same calamity would happen unless they obtained 80s. per quarter.

The most productive employment for capital is in agriculture, because the forces of nature co-operate with the powers of man, and if the distribution of land were subject to the operation of economic laws, it is not possible that where capital is so abundant, climate so good, and the demand for food so large, agriculture should not be highly profitable.

Resist the Food Tax as you would avert the ruin of the Country.