the importation of foreign goods, the manufacture of which had been quite neglected before in Australia.

Up to the federation of the colonies only Victoria had had a tariff system for the protection of its manufactures fostered since the sixties.

By the Commonwealth tariff system manufacturing is protected in the other states, too, and since that time, new branches of industries not represented before were started; especially during the war when Australia was eut off from the importation of European goods and hat to put up with American and chiefly, with Japanese manufactures progress was rapid.

Many trades were able to exist only under the exceptional oporiu-nities offered by the war and when oversea trade was resumed, they would have disappeared, if the invested capital as well as labour had not insisted by their organizations and political influence on additional duties and on special prohibitory duties on goods, which otherwise would have competed successfully with Australian or British goods.

Therefore the law provides a double protection: once of Australian manufactures against all foreign competition, once of the manufactures of the British Empire against non-British competition. Under the pressure of public opinion, almost completely governed by the protectionists, there is not the least inclination to conclude commercial treaties with any foreign country.

As for the results of these regulations for the protection and pro-motion of Australian manufactures, economic statistics indicate clearly that manufacturing develops rapidly, that the number of hands employed in manufacturing inereases, and that there is a rising amount of turnover.

In many branches, however, this development is entirely due to protectionism and it has its drawbacks which make themselves felt more and more to the buyers while at the same time they imperii the future economic development of Australia.

It is well known that an excess of radical protectionism against the competition of imported goods is not to the advantage of the qua-lity of the home-made goods, as the managers conscious of their inviola-bility produce goods of inferior quality but at a rate only a little cheaper tham that at which elsewhere goods of superior quality can be obtained. And there are reasons for complaining that this is so in Australia. Thanks to protectionism the managers are able to extort money from the buyers, for the quality of Australian goods sold at a high rate is decidedly inferior.

Of course high duties are one of the principál claims of the Labour Party as without them manufacturing would become impossible as long as the workers insist on the present rate between work done and wages paid. The Labour Party obstinately refuses any scale of wages according to the quality of the work done, it objects to piece-work and even tries to enforce uniform wages for all kinds of work. So labour is levelled down, there is neither inducement nor wish to specialize by practice or to excel in workmanship, and so the spirit of enterprise and ambition is nipped in the bud.