BUSINESS AND POLITICS
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] • Sin,—If any fUrther justification were needed for the, action Of Free Traders in holding a series of strictly non-party conferences to be addressed by business men and economists it:would be found in the Nottingham by-election campaign, where business is being mixed with politics for the benefit of One party, whose supporters, by the way, except when begging for a tariff, are the very people who are always complaining Of political interference in business and whose perpetual cry to the progressive statesman is " Leave of alone 1" Employees in Nottingham are being told that to vote Liberal or Labour is-to vote for the nun of the -trade which prOvidei- their livelihOOd, and one employer in dismissing warkpeopli told them that they had the Labour Governnient to thank for it. Thiti Should be a warning. to everyone that to dabble in Protection. is to make busineis 'a matter Of politics, to make politics a matter of bribery and blackmail, and—to use a phrase that has been used before—to make a " huckstering shop " of the Mother of Parliaments.
By a lucky accident our first non-party conference is to open the day after polling day at Nottingham. There will be no vote-catching speeches ; 'the object - is to raise this question, which is a matter of life ..and death for British industry, above the plane of party politics and to put before the - thousands of people who are earnestly trying to -make up their mindi on the fiscal issue sane statements of . fact on which-theyean Omni sound -judgment.—I am, Sir; &c.;
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