The Deputy from Cork, who unfortunately is not here at the moment, told us that like any other business man he would make what he could out of tariffs, and he said that business people would be fools if they had not been operating in that way. Of course, they were operating in that way. What business man would refuse to operate in that way when the chance is given to him? If even the prices, or the benefits of these prices, were being scattered through the general community through increased wages, that would be one advantage. If, however, the benefits are going to a small select group of individuals who will not have the same spending capacity, as a big number of smaller people, then we consumers get no benefit. If wages are raised in tariffed industries through the impact of these quotas and tariffs, the money is kept in circulation and the general community will gain because there will be a lowering of relief and a lowering of all these other burdens that we have with us at the moment—unemployment insurance, unemployment assistance, home help and so on. But the situation is that prices have been very definitely increased over what we used to regard even as inflated prices, and there is a very small number of people getting benefit from increased employment. There is a very big sacrificefrom the community which they pay through taxation and which they partly pay through meeting borrowings, borrowings which are partly off-shouldered but all of which posterity will have to meet. And the Minister comes here with this Bill and feels that he is doing a serious day's work in presenting it to us! He closes his eyes in regard to anything that is wrong in the world outside in regard to these matters. He tries to distort the facts in order to get a more pleasant view of what is happening in the country. Suppose he is going to be as successful as any man might appear to be in this matter, what has he touched? The mere margin of life in this country.
These quotas and restrictions are imposed, as far as 90 per cent. of their effect is concerned, on industrial goods. What does the Minister hope to achieve? We know what he has achieved. Supposing they are going to operate amazingly well, does the Minister not know that his own statistics again show that more than half the countryside, more than half the people who are occupied in any gainful way, are occupied in agriculture? A fact that emerged from the 1926 Census of Production was that of every 100 people engaged in work in this country, 51 were engaged in agriculture, 14 had to do with industry and the remaining 35 were someway parasitic on the 51 engaged in agriculture and the 14 engaged in industry. The Minister in this Bill is dealing with 14 out of every 100. What does he hope to raise that figure to? Supposing his most optimistic dreams were realised, what is the turnover in the new 100 we will have to examine in, say, a census of production five years hence? What will the 14 have risen to? Will it go as high as even 16 out of every 100 in the country? If it does show an increase, where will the reduction be? Will it be a reduction in the 35 who are engaged in the trading and professional classes or in the 51 who are now in agriculture? If industry is going to gain even in man power employed, where is the subtraction going to be?
The Minister must also recognise a certain artificiality in this matter, apart from the general consideration as to how work is divided in this country as between agriculture and industry. The Minister for Agriculture told Deputy Corry that, as far as this country was concerned, it must continue to produce agricultural products surplus to our own home requirements. If we were going to confine ourselves to producing what this country needed, we would have to put on the unemployed market about 250,000 people. The Minister for Agriculture told us, almost in the same breath, that his only hope of getting rid of our agricultural surplus was in Great Britain. The Minister is going to impose under this Bill a variety of restrictions and quotas and he takes power to differentiate as between countries.
Some five years ago this Bill would have been introduced with a whoop of exultation as to how the British would be perturbed through its impact. All that has gone. It is now said that we are expecting, not very optimistically expecting, that we may get the Coal-Cattle Pact renewed with Great Britain. The position is that we may get the coal from them if they think fit to supply us with it. What an amazing turn! At one time we would not burn British coal; we had a tariff against it and we quotaed it. Then the quota over night became a restriction in favour of British coal and nothing else. Now we are hanging round expectantly, with our hats in our hands, wondering whether we will get the coal from Britain. What a position! Our people for some two years have been forced to take British coal to the exclusion of other coal.
One of these days, in this country, the labour community is going to awaken to what is going on. There is a certain amount of anger developing in different circles at the sight of people meeting every year to preen themselves on what they have dug out of the consumer, with Government aid, through quotas and restrictions and tariffs. There never was very much hostility that I could discover, properly placed, aroused by the inequalities of wealth and poverty. Outside the landlord class, who have disappeared for so long, if there were any great examples of wealth it was recognised that the people who had achieved it, had achieved it in the face of very stern competition; they were good employers and there was an appreciation that their gifts had brought them where they were and that there was no artificial aid required and no outcry for artificial aid. Nowadays we have a different spectacle and it is developing a certain amount of anger amongst those who have to pay and who see the proceeds going into a very small number of hands and not being distributed widely through the country. There is a feeling of anger developing that that condition of affairs should not merely be tolerated, but that it should apparently be approved by the Government.
We have the so-called prosperity of the country elevated to our notice when you have certain commercial issues over-subscribed and eagerly grasped, when some heavily tariffed industry in the country offers itself to the public and guarantees a 6, 7 or 8 per cent. preference share. Some day labour is going to awaken to the fact that that 8 per cent. is fastened more or less permanently and is going to be paid before there is any attention devoted to the wages given to the workers, and it is going to be paid along with a possible increased wage to the workers, if that is demanded; but it is all going to be paid ultimately by the consumer, who has no redress and who cannot get any way of checking prices either by way of competition from outside or control inside. All that is lauded here as being a sign of prosperity.
This is the worst feature of the Bill. It is fiddling with insignificances. The impact of that on the economy of this country is going to be small, but it is going to attract attention, and perhaps it is going to attract more than attention; it may, perhaps, attract anger and we may find, through the hostility aroused by the futility of this, that a good thing in the capitalist system may be dragged down. There are quite a number of people in this country who are beginning to despair of a capitalist system which only perpetuates the abuses and cannot keep any of the virtues of that system which had lasted so long.
It used to be that men risked their money, threw in their enterprise, their talents and whatever energy they had, picked up whatever money they could secure, and worked it all out into some sort of production on their own initiative, without outside help. There was this good in it, that when these people did work in that way and were subject to competition, the general public gained, because they got something that was produced against competition, that was produced and sold at a reasonable rate and there were organisations of the trade union type to see that that was not done by sweating workers. Nowadays we get the goods not so well produced, in the main; we get them sold, in the main, at high prices; we find that, in the main, the net production figures I have spoken of are not to any degree divided amongst workers and employers. We find the community is paying the cost and a small number of individuals are reaping whatever gain there is.
In those circumstances, quite a number of people, who still believe in the capitalist system as an institution, would rather see in this country even bureaucratic control, with all the inefficiency that that means, than see a small number selected, by what means one does not know, and allowed— definitely and clearly the word must be used—to batten on the unfortunate people without displaying any of the virtues of the old capitalist system. The Bill, because it develops this system and all the abuses of it, is a Bill that is to be condemned.
Deputy Dillon spoke of the movements in the world and he mentioned the Trade Ambassador in America who had been sent across to try to make amends for what that country did by starting this ramp. There was a recent announcement by Mr. Cordell Hull, when looking for an extension of the Trade Agreements Act. He addressed a letter to the Senate in America a few days ago. He urged favourable action in regard to this Trade Agreements Bill as a means of easing the present-day political tension which is pushing many nations in the direction of military conflict. He followed that with the declaration that there was not the slightest doubt that America's abandonment of the trade agreements programme at this juncture would mean the resumption of the international economic warfare which was showing such marked signs of abatement. He spoke of the serious injury that would accrue to the United States in case of war, notwithstanding that their country would do everything humanly possible to keep out of it. He said there was one sure way for that country to be spared a war and that was that they should see war would not occur.
This is all argument addressed to the Senate with a view to passing a trade agreement measure. He led up to this, that in the years that lie immediately ahead an adequate revival of international trade is the most powerful single force for easing political tension and averting the danger of war. The same newspaper issue that contains all that, contains the statement that a distinguished Frenchman had been sent to America, and the statement as to his mission was that he was to work for the rapprochement of the great democracies, which should unite in proving that stability can be achieved by freer trade. There is a record in the same column of the meeting of the Oslo Powers' Conference trying to hammer out their view of freer trade amongst that group of nations. As a finish to the column there is a remarkable speech made by General Smuts on world trade, which was the only way out of the otherwise inevitable war that he saw brooding over the world. Against all that tendency in the world we offer this Bill. It is like nearly everything that has been done in this country.
