Tariff, Tariff!

In the rising winds of Tariff v. Free Trade--now certain to be the issue of Britain's next election--three quivering political straws bent and whipped last week, prophetic, significant:

8% Ramsay? Worried by the blatant vote-getting newspaper campaigns of Baron Beaverbrook and Viscount Rothermere, who promise Prosperity if only the Empire will go high tariff (TIME, Dec. 2), Prime Minister James Ramsay MacDonald let it be known last week through trusted associates that he is prepared to modify the Labor Party's traditional stand for Free Trade.

Obviously the canny Scot was testing public sentiment with a trial balloon, but he let it be said that he now favors enactment of a blanket 8% tariff on all imports, even foodstuffs and antiques.

Low enough not to frighten seriously stand-pat-Laborite free traders, an 8% levy might serve to hold the votes of other Laborites now tempted to bolt into the Rothermere or Beaverbrook tariff camps. The 8% scheme, it was revealed last week, has been worked out for Scot MacDonald --no great economist--by the Special Commission he appointed last spring to report on tariffs as an antidote to unemployment (TIME, March 3).

Bankers Disagree. Headed by a great Liberal, Viscount Grey of Fallodon, but mustering many a Conservative in their ranks, 118 leading British bankers and industrialists issued a manifesto last week calling all schemes to ring the Empire with a tariff wall "little short of suicidal."

They warned that a tariff on raw materials and foodstuffs would certainly antagonize South America, might provoke reprisals against the enormous British interests there--for example most of Argentina's railways are British.

Scanning the signatures on last week's antitariff manifesto, observers noticed that it had been signed by directors of such paramount British banks as Lloyds, Westminster and Midland, then recalled with a start that other directors of these very same firms signed the pro-tariff "Banker's Manifesto" which created such a rumpus just two months ago (TIME, July 14). Inescapable conclusion: Britain's bankers, famed as the most clannish in the world, have found an issue which splits like an axe even their own offices.

In a four-cornered by-election at Bromley, fought largely on the tariff issue last week, the Labor and Liberal candidates (free traders) lost heavily while big gains were made by Lord Rothermere's high tariff candidate, and the Conservative (medium tariff) Edward T. Campbell won.

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