PROTECTION AND " DUMPING.* 1To THE EDITOR Or THE ..SPECTATOR.".1
Sia,—In reply to Mr. Farrer Ecroyd's question in your last issue regarding the alleged connection between foreign Pro- tection and English "dumping," may I quote the following passage from a speech made by Prince Bismarck on February 21st, 1879, in support of the new German tariff of that year 2—
" Hitherto the wide opened gates of our imports have made us the dumping place' (so one must under protest in modern days translate the German word Ablagerungsstatte] of all the over- production of foreign countries. At present they can deposit everything with us, and their goods when once in Germany have always a somewhat higher value—at least our people think so— than in the land of origin, and it is the surfeiting of Germany with the over-production of other lands which most depresses our prices and checks the development of our industry and the restora- tion of our economic condition."
I do not discuss the economics of Prince Bismarck's position, but simply quote his words for their illustrative interest.
And now, by way of pendant, let me recall the attitude of the first Corn-law reformers in our own country. I go back to December, 1838, to the two fateful meetings at which the Manchester Chamber of Commerce discussed the foreign competition of that day, and the inability of British manu- facturers to face and overcome it, handicapped as they were by a dearly fed working class,—the meetings which brought Richard Cobden to the front as a. protagonist of repeal. A statement issued in justification of the position taken up by the Manchester Chamber of Commerce (I quote from a report of the meetings held on December 13th and 20th, 1838) says :—
" Here is a body of intelligent and experienced men who make known to the world that their industry is decaying beneath the rivalry of foreign manufactures whilst they declare it to be their solemn conviction that this is the commencement only of a state of things which, unless arrested by the timely repeal of all pro- tective duties upon the importation of corn and other foreign articles of subsistence, must eventually transfer our mann- facturing industry to other and rival countries."
It may be remembered that while the directors of the Chamber of Commerce would have been satisfied with the repeal of the Corn-duties alone, Cobden called for "the total repeal of all protective duties whatever," and carried the Chamber with him. The following year saw the establishment of the Anti-Corn-Law League, with results which have for over half-a-century formed part of history. Cobden's idea of
meeting " dumping " by Free-trade, and Bismarck's idea of opposing it by Protection, remind us, as we look around to-day, how politics and economics are both more or less experimentation within a circle : sooner or later we come back to the age-old problems, and we try to solve them by the age-old methods, for there is nothing new beneath the
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