Page 163 - clra62_0019-(GIPE)

PROTECTION FOR MANUFACTURES IN NEW COUNTRIES ISS
to obtain ships of its own, equal to doing one-half of
its foreign shipping business, for on protective prin-
ciples no country could expect more than half. The
total entries and clearances in Victoria in the foreign
trade are 4~ millions in round figures, or 21 millions
one way. Many of the voyages to and from Victoria
are to the adjacent colonies and consequently very
short, but allowing ten round voyages in the year on
the average, we should still have only 200,000 tons of
shipping required for all the foreign trade of Victoria.
one half of which is 100,000 tons. Accordingly 100,000
tons of shipping would be the ship-owning Victoria
. could have a monopoly of, which would give twenty-
five liners of 4,000 tons each. How much shipbuilding
would be necessary to keep going a fleet of 100,000
tons? Perhaps one ship of 4,000 tons per annum with
repairs of an equivalent amount. How can Victoria
then have a real shipbuilding industry of its own, for
the home market alone, which is not more than a play-
thing? Take the iron trade again. The home con-
sumption of iron in England is about 4,000,000 tons
per annum, or about 100,000 tons for every 1,000,000
of the population. This would be the production of
pig.iron required in a new country if its wants were on
the same scale. How, then, could a new country have
a pig-iron industry? The minimum which a single
modern blast furnace can produce, without which pro-
duction cannot be economical, is about 100,000 tons a
year, and a country does not require one kind of pig-
iron only, but many. The same principle applies to an
the stages of the iron manufacture, to rolling mills, the
making of bar and hoop iron, and bolt and angle iron,
not to speak of the subsequent manufacture of ma-
chinery. A new country may make small machinery,
perhaps, but the miscellaneous pro~l1cts of the iron
industry are plainly not for it. Take again the earthen-
ware and china manufacture, of the products of which
home and imported we consume about £4,000,000 an-
nually. On the same scale a new country of 1,000,000