[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR, —One of the sorest
issues in politics to-day is the duel between the Free Trader and the Tariff Reformer, although perhaps not one of us is wholly the one or the other. In my trade, Reading has just lifted this controversy clean out of the hands of ;the politicians, and has shown the rest of the country how to outwit their foreign competitors, quietly and without fuss.
There are forty bakers in Reading. Six weeks ago only twelve of them refused to sell imported flour. The millers approached the bakers and asked them whether they would not like to do something about it. Whereat the bakers co- operated with such heartiness, that, within a fortnight, twenty more of them have switched over to home-milled flour ; the result being that only seven bakers in Reading, instead of twenty-eight, now buy their flour from abroad.
The moral of what Reading has already so splendidly achieved is this : that any British industry can have Pro- tection when it wants it if its manufacturers and its distribu- tors work together, as the millers and the bakers are doing to-day, and make the public aware of the shops where the home product is to be purchased. The public, who are the third party in the alliance, may be absolutely relied upon to buy what their own countrymen have to offer them if, as in the case of home-milled flour, the quality is equal to that of the imported commodity, and the price is no higher.—I am, Sir, &c.,
(Councillor) J. W. BANFIELD
(Secretary, Amalgamated Union of Operative Bakers and Confectioners).
Union House, 8 Guilford Street, London, W.C. 1.
Previous page
