For the
building of ships of war the Government has its own dockyards: let it
have its own chemical works, if that be proved to be necessary.
Protection cannot avail. If the Dyestuffs Act is put in operation so as
to exclude the competition of foreign chemicals, it not only keeps our
chemists in ignorance of the developments of the industry abroad: it
raises the prices of dyestuffs against the dye-using industries at home,
and thereby handicaps them dangerously in their never-ending competition
with the foreign industries, German and other, which offer the same
goods in foreign markets.
The really fatal competition is never that of goods produced at low
wages-cost. It is that of superior goods; and if foreign textiles have
the aid of better dyes than are available to our manufacturers our
industry will be wounded incurably. It appears in fact to be the
superior quality of German fabric gloves, and not their cheapness, that
has hitherto defeated the competition of the native product.
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