Page:The New Protectionism.djvu/69

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
THE TANGLES OF A TARIFF
45

certainty must prevail as to the future course of trade, and when business men are gravely hampered in their plans and their finance, this violent dislocation is to be brought about in the delicate mechanism of international trade.

There is not a trade in England that would not be affected injuriously in some way by the complications of such a tariff.

The term "key -industry" has recently been invented to describe trades which, like the aniline dye trade, are supports of great staple industries. The suggestion is that a small number of these "key-industries" exist which at all costs must be kept under British control. Now, this account of industry is quite illusory. There is no important trade which is not dependent for its successful conduct upon dozens of other trades, many of them necessarily outside the limits of our country, our Empire, or the Alliance. In the future, as in the past, we shall have to draw many of our raw materials from foreign countries, which might become our enemies,

This article is issued from Wikisource. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.