assistance rather than of reliance upon individual energy and effort; 
while Governments, always exposed to interested political pressure, 
are prone to give that assistance rather than to see industries 
disappear, their capital lost and the workers engaged in them 
forced to seek other employment. Thus protection tends to grow 
and to cover an ever wider field, its own growth being productive 
of the very conditions which lead to its further growth. Some- 
thing of this kind has, we think, taken place in Australia. We 
believe that the policy of protection has, in some respects, been 
unscientifically carried out; that it has been extended to cover some 
interests at least which do not deserve it ; that the total burden of 
the Tariff has probably reached the economic limits, and that 
an increase in this burden might threaten the standard of living. 
54. The case for protection is strongest in regard to those in- 
dustries which can claim that, having the home market. secured 
so them and mainly using home produced commodities as their 
raw material, they can and do supply the community with their 
goods at a price equal to or not malerially greater than that 
at which similar goods could be imported from overseas without 
a duty, but that the protection is necessary because, but for it, 
powerful combinations of oversea producers could, by under- 
cutting their prices, drive them out of business, and having done 
so could for the future charge as much as the Australian consumer 
sould be forced to pay. This is a case which commands all possible 
respect, but the corollary of it is that the measure of the extent 
bo which it can be made out is the measure of the extent to which 
protection is, on pure economic grounds, justifiable. We are thus 
provided with a working canon of efficiency and may say that 
those industries are efficient which can supply or which are likely 
within a reasonable measure of time to be able to supply their 
goods at a price not greatly exceeding the cost of similar goods 
imported free of duty, and not in any case exceeding that cost hy 
more than the community is prepared, with its eyes open, on 
other than pure economic grounds, to pay for the maintenance of 
the industries in Australia. Efficiency in this sense should, we 
think, be generally the condition of protection. Other things being 
equal, those industries are most likely to be efficient which, produc- 
ing goods comparatively simple in character and in wide demand, 
tan obtain the benefits of mass production for the Australian 
market ; but mass production is not everything, and it may well 
be that a small industry producing a commodity for which there 
is only a limited demand may be able, by the vigorous application 
of brains and energy to its task, to supply Australian requirements 
at a reasonable price and thus prove itself a worthy object for 
Protection. 
55. A further condition of protection should be that every 
recipient of it should be liable at any time to be called upon to 
furnish the Government with the fullest information as to the 
costs of his products, the prices at which they are sold, and the 
Efficiency as 
vcondition 
f protec- 
ion. 
[Information 
regarding 
wrotected in- 
Justries to be 
supplied to- 
Government