ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED | MAY 30, 1925 | THE CANADIAN COUNTRYMAN
The almost solid demand from the West and the Maritime Province for a low tariff, and the demand from the manufacturing centres of Ontario and Quebec for a high tariff make statesmen in this country no sinecure. The suggestion made a short time ago by the Hon. F. B. McCurdy, who was Minister of Public Works in the Meighen Government, that Nova Scotia should be permitted to control its own tariff policy shows what an important place the tariff occupies in the politics and government of this country. It would be disastrous if the tariff disrupted the good work done by Confederation.
It was not protection, but the free trade that has existed among the forty-eight states in the United States that has brought that country to its present condition, and it will be free trade among provinces that will make this country commercially strong.
What we want more than anything else is a tariff that is fair to all groups and sections of the country. The farmer has a perfect right to object to raising the tariff on manufactured goods, and we believe the manufacturer, on the other hand, has an equally good right to object to a lowering of the tariff. A stable tariff would be a fair tariff, and is the kind of tariff we should have.