News of the Week
11HE Protectionist movement in this country has already acquired all the characteristics familiar elsewhere. Encouraged by the increases in price it has been . possible to effect on articles included in Mr. Runciman's Abnormal Imports schedules, every kind of trade interest, from iron and steel downwards, is importuning the President of the Board of Trade to put on tariffs for its special benefit. The questions in the House of Commons on a single day, last Tuesday, provide a good enough illustration of that. Mr. Potter wanted a duty on cotton goods, Miss Pickford on women's worsted wearing apparel, Mr. Beaumont on tennis rackets, Mr. Hannon on made-up garments and garden tools, Mr. Lennox-Boyd on baskets, Mr. Anstruther-Gray on paper of all kinds, Mr. Cross on cotton blankets, Sir Walter Smiles on cotton yams; Mr. Gibson on leather, Sir George Hamilton on vegetable oils, Sir .Henry ,Page-Croft on iron and steel. In thd face of this fusillade Mr. •Rtincirnan maintains a com mendably .firm _front. :He has _refused to schedule leather, 'on: the ground that it--is the raw material of extensive : British indtistries, and tile - seine applieS à-fortiori. to-iron: and steel. :Whatever maybe said for and against _ l*roteetion_ as , a ,systern, the worst . of . all ways to bring it into f6ree is by administrative Order under powers. conferred for the totally different purpose of righting the. trade balance. A tariff on iron and steel means laying under disastrous • handicap the export trade it is life and death to us to expand.
