)y

Difficulty of
applying a
policy of
rotection.

the settled policy of Australia; that it would be idle to suggest its
abolition even if we thought that such a course would be expedient ;
that we must deal with Australia as she is and realize that changes
oy way of reduction of the tariff may lead to loss of capital and
the discharge of workers from industries already built up under
the tariff shelter ; and that while the undoubted effect of protection
in the diversion of production from its natural course must have
resulted in some cost, it is not certain that if the natural course
of production has been continued it would have maintained the
present population without some reduction in income per head, due
to pressure upon inferior or less accessible land and to lower prices
‘or a greater volume of exports.
51. But in the carrying ouf in detail of a policy of protection,
1» task of immense difficulty, there is much room for human falli-»ility.
 Protection, as its very name implies, is designed for the
veak, and the weakness may be that of infancy, that of temporary
rvilment, or that of inefficiency. It may well be expedient to
give artificial assistance from the public to a promising infant
industry, though, since its output must necessarily in the early
stages be small, such assistance is in our judgment better given
oy way of bounty, the cost of which can be exactly measured, than
by way of a protective customs duty which will raise, to an extent
difficult to compute, the cost to the community of the whole of
its supplies of the commodity which the infant industry is designed
but is not yet able sufficiently to produce. But it is to be observed
shat infant indusiries are apt to take a long time to grow up and
to be ready to dispense with their swaddling clothes, and the
process of reaching maturity tends to be further delayed when
the costs of the products of other industries required by the infant
industry are increased by measures similar to those which have
veen adopted in its own case. It behoves the State, therefore, to
teep a very careful watch upon the whole range of protected
industries, and to be sure that protection or bounties are not
continued so long or given so freely that their cost outweighs the
oenefit to be derived by the community from the establishment
of the industries in its midst.
52. An instance of temporary ailment would be afforded if
an established industry were assailed by a campaign of dumping
from overseas. In such a case it would be reasonable to afford
protection while the trouble lasted, but the protection might well
be reconsidered when the cause for it had been removed.
53. The protection of the inefficient is something which, we
imagine, no one would be prepared to defend, but it is in practice
not easy to avoid it; for the case for a measure of protection for
an industry is apt to be based on what is needed to keep the
weaker of those engaged in it alive. And protection itself tends
to have, though it does not always have in fact, a debilitating
‘nfluence and to promote habits of dependence upon Government