CHAPTER XXI: TEMPORARY ADMISSIONS - Yves Guyot, The Comedy of Protection [1906]
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The Comedy of Protection, trans. M.A. Hamilton (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1906).
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CHAPTER XXI
TEMPORARY ADMISSIONS
Customs permits—Diminution of the 2s. 10d. duty—Corn-producing districts—Law of 1902—Mills of the north.
The question of import bonds had been raised in connection with that of temporary admission. The landowners had begun by declaring that if the corn duties did not raise prices as much as their promoters had promised the suspension of silver coinage was to blame for it. In 1900 they blamed the temporary admission which allowed millers to re-export wheat imported by means of a Customs’ permit involving repayment of the 2s. 10d. duty. The corn-growing departments of the south produced less, those of the north more, than they could consume; the southern millers imported grain from Odessa without exporting flour; the northern millers exported flour without importing wheat. A certificate of temporary admission only benefited the southern miller in so far as he could sell it to a colleague in the north; and since 1873 it had been necessary for a northern miller who wanted to send flour to London to send first from Dunkirk to Marseilles for a Customs’ permit. A decree of 1897 allowed the sending of permits by post.
The result was extraordinarily unhappy. A northern miller could not fight against foreign markets by buying corn at a price which included 2s. 10d. per cwt. of duty; by getting a Customs’ permit, which lessened the differentiation, he could try to export his flour. The Marseilles miller, on the other hand, selling him it for 2s. 6d. or 3s. 4d., reduced pro tanto the duty on foreign corn consumed in the south.
According to the Blue Book on Agriculture, the northern and north-western districts produced 268 cwt. of corn for every 100 cwt. produced in the south. The Act of February, 1902, forced the miller to pay duty immediately the wheat was brought in, and prevented his alienating the right of collection, the amount of which would be refunded to him on reexportation. The aim of the landowners was to force the south to buy the wheat it needed exclusively from the north, and thus pay the whole duty, i.e., 2s. 10d. From one point of view this was logical, but it was illogical to lower the price of wheat in the wheat-growing districts by making it impossible for the northern miller to export flour.
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