The house of Industry : a new estate of the realm
34 THE HOUSE OF INDUSTRY
policies just now are at a discount and our postwar generation is more than a little fatigued when these remnants of pre-war controversies are even mentioned. But is it safe to follow Mr. Cole and merely treat all tariff problems as pure expedients ?
Emphatically no! The assumption is that the imposition of tariff may produce certain results. For example, a certain tariff here or there may divert trade from foreign countries to the Empire. Or may exclude goods made under sweated conditions—a proposal I made in The Manchester Guardian thirty-five years ago. Or may exclude goods to protect basic home industries. Observe that these are not mere expedients to raise revenue ; they are, in fact, an integral part of policy—the plaything of one industrial group and equally the horror of another. Nor do they work the oracle.
For the simple reason that our main purpose is not to displace trade but to increase it. Moreover, it by no means follows that an import duty levied in January is equally expedient in July. And yet again, a tariff levied in 1931, as an expedient, is not easily withdrawn in 1932. Interests, Sometimes powerful, cluster around tariffs. As I write, the chemical industry is desperately fighting against the withdrawal of the dye-stuff safeguarding duty.
The point is that any form of tariff, as of income-tax, would needlessly retard the work of the House of Industry: is a spoke in the wheel of industrial control.