87

A.—6a

interest to the Dominions and which they are growing and put a duty of 10s. 6d. a hundredweight upon the; foreign fruits and admit tho Empire fruits free. Mr. Massey : Dried fruits again ? The Chairman : Dried fruits —that is to say, if I may summarize it, in regard to the dried fruits now subject to a 10s. 6d. duty we keep the duty at 10s. 6d. and give you 100 per cent, preference. As regards the other dried fruits which, are not subject to any duty at all, we take those which are of interest to you, and we can settle the list, and put a 10s. 6d. duty upon, those and give you 100 per cent, preference on them. So much for dried fruits. (4.) Other Preserved Fruits. Now le;t me take the case of preserver! fruits, for example, canned and bottled. Except for fruits which I have named, preserved fruits are not subject to any duty except upon the sugar content, if any. Here again we think we ought to be able to do something to complete the encouragement offered to the; fruitgrower, anel to do something of value both to the grower and to the development of the ancillary industries. What we woulel propose woulel be that we should put an all-round duty of ss. a hundredweight on the types eif preserved fruits which are of interest to you, and admit your stuff free. That would mean that, this fruit, when preserved with sugar, would obtain a double; advantage. It would first of all obtain the preference in respect of the sugar content, and it woulel then obtain a ss. perferenoe on the fruit content. As I say, the list that occurs to one contains tilings like, apples, pears, pineapples, peaches, and nectarines. But we can settle a list which would be complete. We; want tei make; it as complete as possible. 1 would only mention there one; small point. We would wish to exempt fruit-pulp for jam-making. It is a very important raw material for our jam-makers. I only want just to table that exception now. Mr. Massey: It will all come to you in the form of jam % The Chairman : No, it will not, because we propose to tax jam. Jam is preserved fruit and will be subject to tho double duty, first of all on the sugar content and then the ss. duty on preserved fruit; so that is all right, Mr. Massey. So much for fruit, anil I think that covers tho wheile area eif the fruitgrower's operations. (5.) Sugar. Now let me take sugar. At the present time sugar is dutiable according to a scale which depends on tin; polarization of the sugar, with a basic rate of 255. Bd., I. think it is, a hundredweight on fully refined sugar. Empire sugar enjoys a preference of one-sixth, that is about 4s. 3-|d. a hun el red weight, or nearly a halfpenny a pound on refined sugar. Now, that is a substantial preference undoubtedly ; but what wo have felt and what has certainly been strongly put to us is that if it was known throughout the Empire that the preference—what I call roughly a halfpenny a pound —was going to last, that is quite good enough for growers to go in and develop sugar-growing on a large scale and put capital into it. But supposing we were; to reduce our sugar duty considerably in the next two or three ye;ars, and the; preference was only to remain one-sixth and was therefore going to fall substantially below the halfpenny a pound, all the growers' calculations would be upset. Therefore what we; would propose; in regard to that is that we should give that guarantee of certainty over a period of, say, ten years, and that we should undertake; that the sugar preference shoulel not fall, but be maintained at its present rate, which, as I say, is practically a halfpenny a pound, so long at least as the duty on foreign sugar did not fall below that level. That I think would give just the security which the sugar-growers in the Crown Colonies and the Dominions want to make sure of before engaging in further work, and it is of enormous importance, in view of our financial commitments elsewhere, that we should draw as much sugar as we can from, the Empire. (6.) Tobacco. Then, I want to take one other item. I have dealt with the whole of the fruits, I have dealt with sugar, and now I want to come to tobacco. At present the duty on tobacco varies according to kind, being higher on cigars and unmanufactured tobacco. On unmanufactured tobacco it is about Bs. 2d. per pound, on which the Empire, enjoys a preference; of one-sixth —that is to say, about Is. Id. on raw tobacco. With regard to tobacco, we want to submit two alternative propositions for consideration : either that, in the same way as wo propose; to deal with the sugar duty, we; should stabilize the tobacco preference, so that, so long as the duty was maintained at a level which permitted of it, the preference would not fall below its present actual cash value per pound ; or, alternatively, that we, should increase the rate of preference, which is now one;-sixth, to one-epuarter ; that woulel make the preference about 2s. in the pound, as against Is. 4d. at the present time. So we woulel submit those two alternative propositions with regard to tobacco. Spirit in which Proposals made. Now, we; want at once to tabic those, proposals as an immediate anil practical contribution conceived in the spirit of making preference within the existing tariff as effective as we possibly can. General Smuts, 1 think it was, said that without revolutionary changes he thought we could do much of real value. We; feel so too, and it is in that spirit we make those proposals. But hit me; make this clear: By making those immediate proposals we; elei not in the least want to prejudge or to prevent or to prejudice the discussion of any other proposals or of any aspects of this question. We ought to face them all —it is what we are here for. We all of us know that there are difficulties, but I think I syieak not only for my colleagues but for the whole Conference when I say, "Do not let us shirk it." We have come here as a complete Imperial Economic Conference ; let us face all the issues. Let us see what the facts are ; and, above; all, do not let us content ourselves or pass on to our constituents outside throughout the Empire formula; in the place of facts.