)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