DUMPING
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] Sin,—If you want to attack any method or policy, there is no simpler way than to give it an absurd name. " Dumping " condemns itself. Yet how few who denounce it have taken the trouble to examine its origin, as explained in (for instance) Professor Ashley's lectures on Business Economics " ? It is there shown that " the selling of goods at a lower price abroad than at home " is a natural and inevitable process- " a perfectly normal outcome of a business situation." It is not possible to spread the overhead costs evenly and propor- tionately over every article manufactured or produced. We need not suppose any secret or sinister design in low prices of imported goods. Assertions of the existence of such motives . generally turn out to be pure conjectures.
Further, I ask why dumping is almost always looked at from the producer's point of view, and seldom from that of the consumer. Surely we are consumers at least as much as we arc producers. If goods are sold dear abroad, and sent here to be sold cheap, in order to "relieve. the home market and prevent price from being forced down," so much the worse for the foreign consumer and so much the better for us, especially if the imported article be the raw material of manu- factured goods (including manufactured foods). The farmer may not like cheap corn : to him it is " unfair." But why should the whole community be taxed, or restricted as to its sources of supply, in order that one section only of the emu.
munity may benefit P—I am, Sir, &c., CONSUMER.
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