Sir Henry Fowler Says that an Import
Tax Upon Food Would Be Ruinous
to the English People.
Free Trade, which has been the policy of England for sixty years, is again
on trial, and the battle waxes fierce. There is a growing effort to work
in the thin wedge of "a moderate tariff, not protective but defensive,"
but the opposition are fighting it with every weapon in their armory of
protest. England to-day is not self-supporting, her rural industries have
been declining for years, and the country receives from abroad the far
larger quantity of its food and raw material.
Thirty per cent of the people are underfed and on the verge of hunger.
Thirty per cent of forty-one millions comes to over twelve millions.
This significant statement comes from the lips of Sir Henry
Campbell-Bannerman, the new English premier, in a speech against the
proposal for preferential tariffs with the colonies, at Perth, on June 5,
1903. Three years has not changed the situation for the better.
Winston Churchill, M.P., puts the situation thus:
The mass of people are absolutely dependent for the food
they eat and the material they employ upon supplies of food
and raw material which reach them mainly from abroad. They
are dependent on the condition of a crop at one end of the
world and the state of a market at the other; and yet, upon
this artificial foundation, through this inestimable
advantage of unfettered enterprise and of unrestricted
sea-communication, they have been able to build up a vast
industrial fabric which it is no exaggeration to say is the
economic marvel of the world.
In 1904, the amount of merchandise brought into the United Kingdom was
nearly $2,740,000,000. For thirty years England's imports have been
rapidly increasing, while her exports, comparatively speaking, have
remained stationary. The situation can be put in a way readily appreciated
by Americans if we realize that the entire British Isles are smaller than
New Mexico, and yet contain about half as many people as are in the United
States.
It is the foreign trade of Great Britain that is claimed to be the
salvation of the nation. In 1904 this amounted to over $4,600,000,000, and
last year, the figures for which have not yet been published, was the
greatest in oversea trade in the history of the nation.
Sir Henry Fowler, a leader of the Liberals, said, in a recent speech:
The question of free trade is the greatest which has been
before the country for the past half century. The young men
of to-day are absolutely ignorant. They do not know what it
means and the issues it involves. If the great system of
free trade were interfered with, if the attempt were
successful which is being made to reverse the policy of the
past sixty years on which the overwhelming bulk of political
economists were united, I foretell for this country a time
of the greatest disaster. All classes would suffer,
especially the working class.
Dealing with the question of exports and imports, he pointed out:
Eighty per cent of what came into Great Britain represented
raw material necessary for manufactures and food necessary
for the people. Therefore the prosperity of this country
depends, not upon its exports, but upon its imports. We are
free-traders, not for the injury it does others, but in our
own interests. It is to our advantage to buy cheap. Our
greatest import is food and the next raw material. We can
only pay by our own manufactures.