20 
generally, and such commodities as sugar, cotton, dried and canned 
fruits, wine and butter are either not being exported at all or are 
only being made exportable by means of a subsidy in one form 
or another from the public. We have felt much force in the oft- 
repeated complaint that successive increases in the tariff which 
affect prices and the cost of living, following upon, or being 
followed by, successive advances in the cost of labour as the result 
of decisions under the Arbitration Acts have involved Australia in 
a vicious circle of ever ascending costs and prices, and that this 
condition of affairs is crippling Australia’s progress and her power 
of supporting increased population. There lies no task before the 
Australian people more urgent than that of in some way breaking 
the vicious circle and of bringing down costs of production, as is 
veing done in the other industrial countries of the world, without 
owering the standard of living of the workers as measured not 
by money but by real wages, which are the reward of labour in 
the form of goods and services. 
Dbgervations 47. Qur views have merely been strengthened by our study of 
of the Tariff he reports of the Commonwealth Tariff Board, who, we observe, 
’ in their report for the year 1925-26, say that they are— 
*“ strongly of the opinion that the industrial unions of the 
Commonwealth should be induced to realize the critical 
position into which the Commonwealth is drifting and the 
absolute necessity for preventing the wages gap from becoming 
still wider between the United Kingdom, the Continent of 
Europe and the Commonwealth, otherwise, the Tariff Board, 
placed as it is in the position to take a comprehensive and 
‘ntimate view of all Australian industry, can see nothing but 
economic disaster ahead, and that at no very distant date *’ 
in their report for the year 1926-27 that— 
! . + . . in some industries it is apparent that 
protection is failing to protect. In so far as recent increases 
in Customs Revenue have been due to the collection of higher 
duties imposed with the object of discouraging the importa- 
tion of the appliances or commodities on which such duties 
were imposed, the increased amount collected represented, in 
the case of goods used in manufacture, an addition to the 
cost of production, which indirectly increased the cost of 
living ; and to the extent that any such increased revenue was 
due to the imposition of duty on commodities imported in 
the form in which they are consumed it represented a direct 
increase in the cost of living. Such additional revenue is un- 
desirable and the sums involved would be far better in the 
hands of the indirect taxpayers—whether State Government 
activities or undertakings conducted by private enterprise—or 
the general public,” 
and in their report for the year 1927-28 that— 
. + + +. . One of the most serious difficulties which 
Australia has to face at present is the high cost of production