he Free Trade era, the wealth consumed in the war is
recoverable only on the same lines. It is not merely that British
shipping--at present so lamentably paralysed and denuded of earning
power--cannot be restored to prosperity without a large resumption of
international exchanges: a large proportion of industrial employment
unalterably depends upon that resumption. And it is wholly impossible to
return to pre-war levels of employment by any plan of penalising
imports.

THE DYESTUFFS ACT

How then does the persistent Free Trader relate to the special case of
the "key industry," of which we heard so much during the war, and hear
so little to-day? I have said that the question of maintaining any given
industry on the score that it is essential for the production of war
material is a matter of military administration, and not properly a
matter of fiscal policy at all. But the plea, we know, has been made the
ground of a fiscal proceeding by the present Government, inasmuch as the
special measure known as the Dyestuffs (Import Regulation) Act of 1920
forbids for ten years the importation of dyestuffs into this country
except under licence of the Board of Trade. Dyestuffs include, by
definition, all the coal-tar dyes, colours, and colouring matter, and
all organic intermediate products used in the manufacture of these--the
last category including a large number of chemicals such as
formaldehyde, formic acid, acetic acid, and methyl alcohol. The
argument is, in sum, that all this protective control is necessary to
keep on foot, on a large scale, an industry which in time of war has
been proved essential for the production of highly important munitions.

What has actually happened under this Act I confess I am unable to tell.
Weeks ago I wrote to the President of the Board of Trade asking if,
without inconvenience, he could favour me with a general account of what
had been done in the matter of issuing licences, and my letter was
promised attention, but up to the moment of delivering this address I
have had no further reply. I can only, then, discuss the proposed policy
on its theoretic merits.[1] The theoretic issues are fairly clear.
Either the licensing power of the Board of Trade has been used to
exclude competitive imports or it has not. If it has been so used, it is
obvious that we have no security whatever for the maintenance of the
industry in question in a state of efficiency. In the terms of the case,
it is enabl