RELATED TOPICS 261 



cates of the duty on imported wheat. The millers are 

 more enthusiastic for the retention of the duty than are 

 the farmers themselves; but it is primarily for the 

 farming community (so these protectionist enthusiasts 

 tell us), that the agitation for protection is maintained 

 by the millers. Some have gone so far as to say that 

 a community should be self -sufficing. The elementary 

 principles of international trade are sufficient to prove 

 the absurdity of this opinion. Absolute self-sufficiency 

 would mean the total absence of imports. The argument 

 need not be pursued further except to state that, other 

 things remaining the same, no community can have an 

 export trade unless it has a corresponding import trade. 



Again, if we consider the argument in its less extreme 

 form self-sufficiency as to wheat production its 

 refutation is no less easy. If other countries can send 

 wheat to New Zealand in sufficient supplies cheaper than 

 it can be produced here, would it be disastrous to this 

 couuntry to import a great part of its wheat supply? 

 So long as the supplies from abroad were forthcoming 

 with regularity, we should surely benefit if wheat prices 

 were lowered, even though the wheat industry were to 

 decay, and wheat growers to sustain a temporary loss, 

 that is, assuming that other things were equal. How 

 far we can expect regular supplies from abroad will be 

 discussed in another section on this subject. But we 

 can readily see that, ceteris paribus, it would not be 

 disastrous were we forced to make regular annual 

 importations of wheat. The degree of probability of 

 such a necessity will be made clear in discussing the 

 next argument in support of protection, noted below. 



Another argument put forward is that the abolition 

 of the duty would lead to the decay of wheat production 

 in New Zealand. It is alleged that New Zealand would 

 become dependent on Australia for her supplies of wheat, 



