Any year you like. The Deputy thinks there cannot be evil consequences from tariffs. I do not say that there are evil consequences. I am speaking rather of the results of tariffs and I say that once you get into the region of 60 per cent. or 80 per cent. tariffs, once you allow a manufacturer a licence to charge 10 per cent. under that point, you are going to have, undoubtedly, very bad effects upon the price of the article, and a bad effect on the cost of living, and unless purchasing power of wages is increased you will, undoubtedly, have a falling off in the demand for certain other articles. I have been reminded about quotas. Tariffs are bad enough, but a tariff movement is a sound movement properly managed, tariff management to keep prices low, to see that the benefit is passed on to the worker or to create an extra demand for articles or to try to get industries started. That type of tariff is sound. Supposing you have a tariffed industry which allows 60 per cent. or 80 per cent. of a tariff for the asking, and that allows the manufacturer—because he cannot be prevented —to raise charges to the point mentioned in Deputy Dowdall's argument, in order to get profits that he thinks he is entitled to get, and supposing you have the community crushed under so big an increase in cost, and that is multiplied over a big number of articles whose prices are increased, that is a serious situation. But a tariff is always under control. It is under the control of the Prices Commission. The Prices Commission simply cannot manage this as we have been shown. I think Deputy Donnelly's view is sound and is a popular one. The Prices Commission has been condemned by popular opinion. It is a futile body. It is not futile in the sense that the members are not exceptionally able but the Commission is not able to do the task put upon it.
The tariff weapon is always one which can be turned against the bad manufacturer, because the height of the tariff can be lowered, goods can be let in, and prices can be brought down under the stress of competition. Alternatively, we have not so many manufacturers here that their employees could not be looked after. The difficulty about attempting to increase wages in certain tariffed employment, and not to increase them otherwise, is that inequality is brought about, and demands will be made by those in non-tariffed or slightly tariffed industries when they see colleagues in 60 per cent. or 80 per cent. jacked up industries getting increased wages. Surely workers should be protected to this extent, that whatever benefits accrue to a group of manufacturers from tariffs, some attempt should be made to share them out amongst the workers. You can do these things. It takes a lot of effort but it can be done, and it will be done in the end by labour troubles if not in some other way. You get into a second and a worse region in quotas. You get into an extremely dangerous and I think a completely immoral state of affairs when you have reserved commodities. Let us take any reserved commodity. There are not so many of them in this country. A manufacturer is given the sole right to manufacture certain things here which the public must use. He is protected not merely from outside competition but from internal competition. No one can set up a factory against him. He can charge what he likes subject to the will of the Prices Commission, which I regard as being only a bogey, as most of these people discovered it to be a bogey. He can charge what he likes. Who gets the profits? I did not find it to be notorious that the employees in the few reserved commodities are very generously paid but I found it to be notorious that the public are being very heavily overcharged. I do not agree with Deputy Moore or that it is a proper return to the community to say: "Oh, the manufacturers who are getting these profits will spend them in the country and there will be a diffusion of wealth." There may or may not. At any rate, there is not the same utility in their spending as there would be on the part of a couple of thousand workers getting wages, or even of the original workers getting better wages.
When we get to the region of reserved commodities and to the region of quotas, I often wonder how people can justify the capitalistic system at all. Of course, there is a very dangerous tendency against what I consider to be the useful capitalistic system if too many of the quotas are seen. Analyse again a reserved commodity as it is operated in this country. A man is given a field for exploitation by means of tariffs. He can charge what he likes and is subject to no competitive interference. The fruits of the capitalist system used to be that a man embarked his own capital and took that with his enterprise, brains, energy and ability to get up earlier and to work later, and to get the most, in a sympathetic way, out of the men working under him. He might have drawn big profits under such a régime, but he was operating against other people in the same system, but if he won out, it was first of all through his courage in embarking his own capital in a particular venture and, secondly, through his energy and ability in getting a return on that capital.
Why should any man be given unlimited profits in a field that is handed over to him for his sole exploitation? Although I object to Government interference as a practice, when we have Government interference and have it so widespread as we have, I cannot understand, when we are in the region of reserved commodities, why the Government do not do as they did in the case of the Sugar Company and a number of other things and say: "We shall provide salaries for the managers; we shall give them good pay, and we shall see that we get value for the pay we give them. If the public are going to be fleeced in the prices charged for the goods, then they shall have the satisfaction of knowing that the profits will go to the Exchequer to swell the revenue." I think it is an extremely wrong practice that people should have handed over to them some article for exploitation. There is no Government supervision— I am not sure that Government supervision would be effective—to see that these people get a certain recognised rate of profit. They can get two or three times the recognised rate of profit without interference.
The Minister spoke some time ago about industrial disputes. With conditions such as they are, with wages down in many cases, with very little increases, certainly no increases in the number of workers, I have wondered that there are not more labour disputes, and there are going to be more if this matter is not attended to. I do not know whether people are going to drift to Communism, but there is going to be a hardening of feeling against the attempt to keep alive the capitalist system under conditions in which we have all of what is described as the vices of the capitalist system with none of its virtues. The only time that you can get the virtues of the capitalist system is when there is a free field for competition as there can be under the best type of a capitalist régime. We get under the other system the manufacturers grabbing their profits. We do not know what they are doing with them. We do not know whether they are going to put them to reserve, to build up a cushion against a depressed time. All we do know is that we are being charged more heavily for the same type of article than we were charged when it was allowed to be imported. We are not aware that there is any great increase in the purchasing power as a result of the handing over of the reserved commodity to a group of individuals. The State is getting little or no advantage from that. That is the worst development of the system under which we are working, and it is increasing. That is the situation we know to be here as a result of the tariffs.
I want to have as complete an analysis as is possible of employment in industries that are getting the benefit of protection. I want to have analysed as well the prices charged to the consumers for the articles so protected. I want a complete exposition of the number of workers, the wages given and if there is anything of a peculiar type in any of these factories —say the employment of juvenile labour, the employment of outworkers or anything of that kind which would give us on the surface a good view of the situation and a presentation of prices and wages. In order to get our minds clear on the subject, we ought to know how many people are getting employment on the building of houses in the country, how many are getting employment through relief schemes and how many are getting employment in the sugar beet factories because we know the cost of them. I have found the figures relating to employment are confined almost entirely to the building industry. I think there are other signs that that is right.
I asked a question the other day and we had the illuminating answer from the Vice-President that the indebtedness of local bodies from the 31st March, 1933, to the 31st March, 1935, has gone up by £6,000,000. £6,000,000 in two years! What is that being spent on? I think everybody is clear that the biggest amount of that is spent on housing. That is where you are getting your employment from. But we cannot go on increasing the indebtedness of our local authorities by £6,000,000 in every period of two years, apart from the fact that the saturation point in regard to housing must be reached some time. What is the hope for the future? If I am right there are about 20,000 or 30,000 employed in house-building. If it is a fact that whatever gains we have got from the tariffed industries—leaving everything else out of consideration except the numbers employed—have been offset to the point of equalisation by losses, what about the rosy future? During these first four years of 60 and 80 per cent. tariffs, of every inducement to manufacturers to come in— capital guaranteed to them, capital loaned to them, tariffs promised, quotas established against their competitors, and reserved commodities at certain times—we have ranged widely over a number of articles. We have raised the barrier very high indeed and we have it in operation for a bit over three years.
If it is a fact that the sole gain to the country is the number occupied in house-building our hopes for the future must be very dismal indeed. Remember we have got to catch up on the problem. It was said that there were 70,000 out of work in my time. That figure was examined, analysed and explained. Assuming that there were 70,000, there are a number of people not reporting at the moment, the Minister having deemed them not to be unemployed. You do not satisfy people by deeming them to be employed when in fact they are not. It may be a satisfaction to the Minister to have this notional figure of unemployment but it is no satisfaction to the people who cannot get work. There are 117,000 people not fully occupied or not occupied at all at the moment. We are told that the population of the country has increased or is increasing at the rate of some 50,000 per annum. The Minister has said, in some of his many speeches, that we have got to look to industry and not to agriculture to take these people off our hands. The Minister is not making any appreciable progress. He says now that we have got to go to agriculture and not to industry.
Lately the tune has changed a bit. Up to about seven or eight months ago the Minister always flattered himself that it was industry would mop up the people who were out of work. We have had an interesting development since. The Minister goes to industrial dinners and says "Remember that agriculture is the basic industry of the country. Unless that succeeds, industry cannot succeed." On the other hand, the Minister for Agriculture goes to farmers' dinners and says "We are employing on the land as many as we can. Industry will have to absorb the remainder." That is a criss-cross type of argument. We shall deal with agriculture at another time. We are on industry at the moment. There are supposed to be about 20,000 coming of age each year for whom we have to find occupations and there is a large number on our hands. We have indulged in a very heavy building programme. We have experimented in a very wide field in this matter, with very high tariffs, and the best we can say is that there has been an increase of 25,000 in the number going into insurable occupations and the most of that has been explained by the activity in house construction. Now, if that is the case, and if it is not the case I want to be shown how it is not, but if it is the case, then the case for tariffs has not been conclusively proved in this House, even to Deputy Donnelly's satisfaction. Supposing even that we have got 10,000 in, if these 10,000 have been offset by the 10,000 that we have lost from the simple angle of people in employment, we are no better off, but from another angle we are much worse off, because we have undoubtedly been taxed and taxed frightfully to the point of trying to get people into occupation in the last three years; certainly without any spectacular success.
I have alluded before to the change in the mentality of people. I was sorry to see that yesterday, again, the Minister decided that he had to go back to it. This itch for interference in other people's business is desperately on the Minister. He has not got over it yet. I have observed several times that there are good lessons to be learned from other countries. Men should not just be so completely absorbed in their own activities and movements that they cannot look beyond a sort of limited horizon. The Minister talked of self-sufficiency and search for it. I wonder has he ever considered the remarks that emanate from time to time from the Labour Office in Geneva, and in particular has he ever looked at the report of the director of the International Labour Office of two years ago? In that report there was stressed this which may have some bearing on the problem here. He said that it might be wise for the representatives of Governments in certain States who were keen on self-sufficiency to stop for a moment and examine what was their position with regard to raw materials. Supposing we accept that as a line for examination, what is our position as regards raw materials? In our search for self-sufficiency, can we ever reach our objective? What raw materials have we, what industry is there in this country about which it can be said that, from the production of the raw material to the presentation of the finished product everything can be done at home? When you name about three things you are finished. If we had concentrated on these three things we might have got a great deal of development in a short space of time without a great deal of sacrifice to consumers. But we have scattered ourselves over all sorts of peculiar articles, and all in a search for self-sufficiency.
Apart from that, it is a peculiar thing that the countries that led us into this morass are now the most anxious to get us out as far as their example can help anybody in their direction. I have always felt that when people are writing about the last decade, or the last 15 years, they will certainly put their fingers on the United States of America and on France as the two countries that led the way in the raising of tariffs; in all these matters of protection, rates of exchange, quotas and limitations of different types. But it is an amazing thing that in the last 18 months both the French Government and the American Government have been found to enunciate publicly their view that self-sufficiency is a myth, and that economic nationalism has led to the impoverishment of the peoples. That was stated by the French representative who was Prime Minister for three or four months and is now the Foreign Minister in France. He stated clearly to his House of Representatives that no example could be given where economic nationalism has proved a success. At the last meeting of the Assembly of the League of Nations, in the autumn of last year, the American representative, Mr. Cordell Hull, brought before the Economic Committee what was an expression of the American point of view, that economic nationalism was a failure, and a resolution that the League should institute a study of a series of products with a view to getting tariff barriers lowered and international trade revived. More recently still, at a meeting in March of the Labour Office, the American representative again proposed that an inquiry be undertaken into the effect that changes in commercial policy may have on the employment and wages, and the real income of workers. He stated that the United States had gained experience in this connection and had taken certain measures towards freeing the channels of international trade. He added this, that it was a proven fact to-day that the closing of frontiers by tariff walls did not protect workers against unemployment, and that if employment was to be encouraged tariff barriers must be lowered.
The representative of, I suppose, the best placed industrial community in modern Europe was on the same line. The late Minister for Foreign Affairs in Czecho-Slovakia, and now its President, instituted a series of conversations with his neighbours, the old Austria-Hungarian Empire and Yugo Slavia. His view was expressed in this way. He said:
"Economic nationalism has not proved a success; it is not a success with us; we must open up the barriers that are against us, and in complement to that we must lower our barriers to these countries that are around us."
The dictator of Fascist Italy inaugurated a series of conversations with the States surrounding him. He signed three or four commercial pacts as between Italy, Austria, Hungary and Yugo-Slavia, and his phrase in introducing these was that they must exploit the complementary national economies of all these countries, because not one of these countries can live without the other, and if there is to be any increase in productivity and wealth they must lower their barriers as regards rates of exchange, quotas and the rest that they had erected against each other.
Last autumn when the American Congress was going out of session, President Roosevelt asked for an amazing power to be given to himself, and that was—without calling together the elected representatives of the people he could lower any tariff in existence in America by 50 per cent., but that if he wanted to lower it by more than 50 per cent. he had to call Congress together. He stated his reasons for asking this amazing power, and they were that America, by the hard process of learning, had discovered that they must depend for employment for their workers on their export trades, that they must get other countries to lower barriers against their products, and that the only way in which that could be done was by America lowering her barriers against the goods of the countries with which America wanted to trade.
All round the world, except where you have a peculiar situation, such as in Germany, owing to the Treaty of Versailles—even Germany is trying to get out of the net but cannot, and if Deputy Donnelly will read what the Controller of the Reichsbank has said he will find that if Germany is struggling behind tariff barriers it is not of her own wish—all round the world the movement is not, remember, towards complete free trade but towards freer trade. This country in the teeth of all that, despite all the sad experience of all those other countries that have been wallowing in the mess for the last five or six years, is able to produce a Minister who yesterday was buoyant about economic nationalism and self-sufficiency. He criticises anybody who wants even to slow down the processes that he has adopted for building up tariff walls. The united wisdom of the world must be worth something, and it would be no harm if Ministers in this country would at this moment confess that their rosy optimism about tariffs before they came into office has had another colour put upon it by their experience in office.
Deputy Donnelly has spoken of our criticising so fiercely all that has been said about tariffs. I will continue to criticise the sort of folly which was responsible for getting the Government elected. The Deputy asked me if I had any of the advertisements. I told him I had this one—that fatuity about the more and more money and why should it ever stop. If there is no reason why it should stop why are we not getting the stream coming a bit more abundantly and copiously towards us? Need I repeat again the nonsense that was talked about this country having a more obvious cure for unemployment than any other? President de Valera was annoyed with the advertisement about Hoover and MacDonald and Hindenburg not being able to meet the problem of unemployment in their countries. His answer was if those statesmen had the cure staring them in the face as we have here they would have ended unemployment long ago. What is it? Why stand staring the cure in the face? Then we have the Minister's famous folly:
"If we would only do this, produce our own food, make our own clothes and build our own houses, there would not be enough idle men in the country to do the work. We would have to call back some of the 250,000 who emigrated within the past nine years."
Not to be outdone, the President gets up on a platform a few days later and says that if the country were to stop buying the foreigners' produce we could support a population of 17,000,000. Is it any wonder that people would criticise? That is what we want done in the country—to call back the emigrants and have a population of 17,000,000.