It seems to me the proposal embodied in this Bill is the most absurd and foolish proposal the Government has introduced into the House. I find nothing that has been brought before us comparable with this, except the book tax. The same sort of outlook is behind this proposal as was behind the book tax. It is such a proposal as one might expect to find in a debating society composed of very young people. There is absolutely no evidence of any regard for any of the facts that ought to be taken into account. There is no consideration for the interests of the general community. Everything is to be sacrificed for the benefit of some small group, perhaps a minority in some small group. We were going to have, in the case of the book tax, everybody penalised, as it now appears, for a handful of bookbinders. A great new principle was going to be introduced for the benefit of a handful of bookbinders.
We are now going to have a great new principle introduced without any regard for the interests of the community as a whole, without any regard for the agricultural community or the ordinary consumer, all in the interests of a handful of manufacturers who, perhaps, are only misfortunate or perhaps are inefficient, but at any rate are wanting tariffs and are frightened of the natural consequences of tariffs. I think when we condemn this Bill we are not taking a short view merely; we are taking a long view.
Dealing first with the short view, nobody can doubt that the consequences of the Bill are going to be extremely bad. All this imposition of high tariffs is going to involve hardship to the community, no matter what happens. The Minister for Industry and Commerce rises up smiling, in defence of every tariff, and says it is going to cheapen the price of the commodity involved. I do not believe that the Minister for Industry and Commerce is so simple or so foolish as to believe in half the cases in which he professes to believe. We know that it does not follow in every case that a tariff will involve an increase in cost, but we do know that in the majority of cases it is going to involve an increase. Sometimes that increase will not manifest itself immediately, and sometimes the manufacturer will be careful and will wait until the time when he should lower a price and refrain from lowering it and get his benefit, but, in any case, the Budget, no matter what was done, is going to involve a very heavy burden on general consumers.
Now we have this tariff coming along, which is aimed at preventing—I do not know to what extent it is meant to work the Bill—more efficient methods of carrying on manufacture here. It is aimed at not merely giving a monopoly to goods manufactured here—and many of the tariffs are such high tariffs as to be exclusive—and cutting out the competition of goods manufactured under other conditions outside the country, but it is meant to confine the manufacture of these goods to some handful of people who happen to be in the trade at the present time. I think that is an entirely unsound principle, and it seems to be a principle that the people on the opposite side are going to apply all round. Their propaganda indicates it. That propaganda about the 111 factories that were closed is an indication of that.
It is not the business of a Government to keep every factory open, and there is no harm in the closing of factories, and in the most prosperous and progressive country in the world there will continually be factories going to the wall. New and better processes and methods will be adopted in one factory than in another, and the weak and sleepy and inefficient factory will go to the wall. That is quite a different thing from the Government taking action that closes up a factory. The closing up of a factory in the course of industrial development is something that ought to be accepted, just as a forest will remain although trees are dying or being blown down, while new trees are growing up, and any attempt to say that once a factory, always a factory, that every firm, no matter what its folly or inefficiency, must be kept going, is entirely wrong. I think that a principle like that is behind this, that we are going to be condemned, if there is some one firm in business here and a tariff is imposed, no matter what the capacity of that firm is, no matter what its management is, to pay for goods the price that firm will sell them at, or, perhaps, can sell them at, taking it at its best.
There is a great deal of talk about economic penetration, and I think that nearly all the talk we hear about it is, as I said, the schoolboy debating society type of talk. Economic penetration has quite different effects, according to the circumstances. In half-civilised countries, economic penetration is one of the ways of securing political domination. If people are backward, if they have not come in contact with modern civilisation, one of the things that happens to them is that factories and trading stations are opened, and influences are set going amongst the people and the Government of the country is upset and foreigners come in and take control of it. But for anybody to suggest that, even if there were economic penetration on the most extensive scale that the Minister can conceive, it will enable the people who own the factories to secure political control of this country is entirely absurd.
Everybody knows as a matter of fact that the workers in a country like this, if you had foreigners controlling all the factories, would be rather hostile to them than otherwise, and that there would be no possibility of what happens in some semi-civilised country like Afghanistan, or some country like that, happening here. Nearly all the talk we hear about economic penetration is utterly foolish talk, arising from things that have happened in countries in which the conditions are not in the least like the conditions that exist here. If all our industries were owned by foreign combines—and there is not the slightest prospect of that and not the slightest evidence that we have been travelling in that direction—but if we were to give a present of every supposition to the Government, in a country like this where the people are politically educated, although we have not been used to certain responsibilities, the consequences would be very limited indeed, and the situation that would then exist would not be irremediable.
I think that, again, when people talk about economic penetration, they are throwing back their minds to the state of things that existed here before there was self-government and when you had the British Government ruling here. The coming in of British firms then, undoubtedly, not only strengthened the British grip on this country, but it tended to make it impossible to loosen that grip. Everybody knows that one of the reasons for a long time why the British held on so tightly to this country was that the system of land tenure existing here meant that citizens of theirs had big economic interests here and that they exerted their whole influence in England to prevent that grip being loosened. To some extent, though to a much lesser extent, if no self-government existed here, if the state of affairs we knew before 1921 was still the state of affairs here, there would be reason for citizens feeling alarmed if additional industries came under the control of British companies, because these companies would have been inclined to exert their influence to prevent a political change, fearing that a political change might lead to upsets of various kinds that would injure their business and their property. But when we have self-government here, and when that self-government is not threatened; when the people are not ignorant politically; when there is no possibility of the sort of things that could happen in some semi-civilised countries being done here, we have to recognise that even if there were economic penetration of this type, the consequences would be very limited. The consequences, if that became plain, would always be in the power of the Government to remedy.
Let us be quite frank about it, industrialists are terribly at the mercy of any Government that may be in power in a country. I used to hear people on the opposite side talking about the domination of the banks here without for a moment thinking how much the banks while carrying on their business were at the mercy of the Government and of the forces at the control of the Government. Similarly, any industry is tremendously at the mercy of any Government that may be in power, and no industry or group of industrialists combined are going wantonly to set themselves up against the Government or the national policy represented by the Government. While the Government, in one sense, is at the mercy of the industrialists, because the economic life of the country cannot be carried on without them, the industrialists themselves are at least equally at the mercy of the Government. They are private individuals who have put their money into enterprises, not for any political purposes but simply to earn their profits in the ordinary way. They do not want to indulge in any nationalistic or anti-nationalistic struggle, and they do not want to get up against the Government, and if the particular arrangement that obtained in any country became so distasteful that the Government desired to change it, the Government would be able to change it with a reasonable amount of acquiescence from the industrialists themselves. They are no more immune from pressure of that kind than politicians themselves are immune.
The whole idea behind this Bill is a childish idea. People are still operating in the atmosphere of the debating society and paying no attention at all to the facts existing here, no attention to the sort of country we have and to the behaviour—the normal behaviour— of people who have invested their money and who want to carry on and make their profits without quarrelling with any Government that may be in power.
Anybody, I think, will admit that in one respect at least it is more desirable —I think the Minister quoted this—to have industries owned by citizens of this country than owned by outsiders. I think there is only one point of any real consequence in the matter, and, as I say, I believe that was the point mentioned by the Minister. If Guinness's, for instance, had been founded here by an English firm, then Guinness's, instead of becoming the big concern it has become, with a great export trade, would have been a much smaller concern manufacturing solely for the Irish Free State, while the parent brewery in the ordinary way would do the trade abroad, and to some extent if it had been a foreign concern we would have been denied that. The same thing would apply to a firm like Jacob's, or any such firm.
I believe it is perfectly true that in the ordinary way an industry established here by an outside concern will never be made bigger than to supply the market here. But there is no pressing problem arising out of that fact, because, with tariffs being piled mountain high as they are, and, until some change comes, likely to go still higher, there is not any great prospect of an industry being started here and acquiring an export market. While that fact which I have been mentioning is not a thing to be neglected, it is one that at the present time is of more theoretical than practical importance and is likely to be of more theoretical than practical importance for some considerable time to come.
The Bill, as has been pointed out, does not necessarily and will not necessarily achieve the purpose for which ostensibly it was brought in, because, really, control is the main matter and not investment. From the point of view on which I have been touching, ownership does not really matter. It is control. It is control here. The branch factory does not normally carry control of the firm, and that is why it is not developed more than to meet the immediate market for which it was established. This Bill, while it may, to some extent, keep out English capital, will thereby keep out with it the enterprise which might be developed by that capital, and I think that what we want in this country is not so much capital as capital associated with knowledge and enterprise. It may keep out English capital, but if the sort of situation exists which the Minister fears—this sort of bogey-man business that seems to loom so large in the minds of the Government—you will not be able to keep it out.
I do not think there is any such thing going on as these wicked foreign capitalists throwing their money in here for some sort of evil purpose of getting control here, but if such a thing had to be guarded against this Bill will not suffice. There are a dozen ways by which an outside firm could have the same sort of control it has to-day and still comply with the terms of the Bill. It would be easy to get a person of Irish birth but who has been living out of Ireland for years and has nothing at all to do with Ireland now but who would be a national, and let him hold the one per cent. of shares, and let him who would otherwise be ineligible become eligible by that fact, and you would have no more control than to-day and the whole machinery of the Bill would be made entirely farcical. New Bills or amendments, I know, can be passed from time to time and loopholes can be filled up, but if you are facing the sort of thing the Government pretends to be facing there would be so many loopholes and so many methods of acquiring control indirectly that you would never be done and your purpose would never be achieved. Control could be secured by a certain means of giving credit—by making loans. It could be secured by certain managership agreements. Control could be acquired in all sorts of ways. So that, not only is the Bill conceived in a spirit of childishness but if the dangers which the Ministers see, or think they see, really exist, this Bill would be totally ineffective as a means of combating these particular dangers. There would be more sense in dealing with distributive agencies from the national point of view than in dealing with manufacturing concerns.
I think that what the Government ought to do, having embarked on a policy of high tariffs, is to be logical about it and to face up boldly to all the consequences and to go out for the obtaining of employment and for the building up of industry here, and to welcome all commerce. There is no doubt that, apart from any people with capital backed by enterprise who might be directly stopped by the operations of this Bill, by the refusal of a licence, many more will be stopped by the atmosphere.
