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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 58

V—Published in the Report of the Royal Commission on Local Industries

page 12

V—Published in the Report of the Royal Commission on Local Industries.

Wellington,
GGentlemen,—I respectfully beg leave to call your attention to a few of the clauses of the Tobacco Act of 1879, that will prevent capitalists from introducing tobacco culture and the manufacture of cigars and tobacco into the Colony. I submit a few amendments for your consideration :—
  • Reduction of manufacturers' license fee.
  • Reduction of duty on leaf grown in the Colony.
  • Reduction of duty on imported leaf.[Note, this to be reduced until good leaf is grown in the Colony, then a protective tariff.]
I am, &c.,

Chas. Harvell.

Clause 5th, Act 1879. A yearly license fee of £50 is a tax that will press unfairly upon the small manufacturers, who may perhaps be engaged in only one branch of the business, that is making cigars by hand labor. Under such conditions they would lose about 20 per cent of raw material, through their inability to utilise the scraps, stems, and shorts from the cigar tables, or the waste from badly packed cases. On the other hand, capitalists, running large concerns, fitted with all the latest improvements in machinery for cutting, grinding, and pressing, lose absolutely nothing. Suggested amendments clause 5. Issue licenses, monthly, quarterly or yearly, at so much per head, for operatives engaged in converting raw leaf tobacco into articles of consumption.

Apprentices, to serve the first year of their time free of license Clause 7—Let the applicant for a license enter into a bond, himself in the sum of £500. Clause 12—The duty on cigars, cigarettes, tobacco, and snuff manufactured from tobacco grown in the Colony ought to be only 6d per lb, and the duty on imported leaf tobacco, 2s per lb.

Manufacturers who may desire to produce medium or superior classes of goods, will be obliged to use an equal quantity of local grown and imported leaf, at least, I think so. I arrive at the above conclusion, because I have never seen any leaf grown in any of the Australian Colonies, or New Zealand, that could be made up and give satisfactory results, unless mixed with imported leaf.

Tobacco grown in the Colonies from the best imported seed will require careful cultivation for some time before it becomes page 13 thoroughly acclimatised, and equal in quality to the leaf produced in the country from whence the seed was obtained. Therefore, a considerable time must elapse before the New Zealand planters will be able to shut out the imported manufactured goods, and raw leaf. In the interim planters should cultivate the best leaf, and none other. The best samples of leaf are grown only in the West Indian Islands (excepting Lattekea, an Eastern leaf, that Englishmen would not smoke). The next best is a leaf called Florida Havana, produced from Havana seed planted in the State of Florida. There are other kinds and qualities of leaf grown from Florida in the South to Connecticut in the North. Florida Havanna, I believe, would grow in favorable localities anywhere between the North Cape and the Bay of Islands. Maryland, Virginia and Kentucky might be cultivated at the Bay of Islands and along the East Coast up to Hawkes Bay, or perhaps to Wellington. Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and Massachusetts seed leaf ought to grow in Marlborough, Nelson, Canterbury, and part of Otago. The prices of American leaf in the States range from $3 per lb for the Southern dow to 10 cents for the poorest Northern. An acre of fair land ought to yield about a ton of leaf—some seasons perhaps less—one and a half tons are very often grown on prime land. The very best Yarra leaf, grown in Cuba is made into cigars that sell for £50 per thousand. Is there any leaf grown in any of the Australian Colonies, and made into cigars which would realise £5 per thousand in any market in the world ? Think of it!

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