His Excellency the President in the Lebanese Factories

His Excellency the President has continued his encouraging visits to the Lebanese factories, and in every factory he was received with such welcome and honor as befits his lofty station and his noble purpose. In this issue we publish a description of his visits to some of the factories, and we set down here the word delivered by Mr. Tawfiq Salman at the reception held for him at the Zabbat tannery:

My lord, Your Excellency the President,

It is a happy occasion indeed that our industrial establishment should be honored by your presence and blessed with your exalted kindness. The owners of this works, Mr. Nicolas Zabbat and Najib Ghantous, extend to Your Excellency the warmest of welcomes, thanking you for this generous gesture, and they regard your happy visit as a moral encouragement to the tanning industry, that it may press forward on the ascending paths of progress.

You strove, and wrested for the country its political independence; and today your ardent zeal has willed that you work to buttress this political independence by strengthening and liberating the country's economy, upon which true independence rests. So you have set about visiting the national works to see at close hand the progress and prosperity they have attained, and to hear the wishes and needs of their owners, so that you may counsel your government — which likewise watches over the country's interests — toward the fulfillment of these wishes and needs, thereby giving proof of your sincere, practical desire to strengthen national industry.

In this connection we recall that your august government, by a recent decision, raised the customs duties on certain foreign manufactures with a view to protecting local industry, but it slipped its mind to raise the customs duty on imported tanned leather, which under the previous regime paid 15 percent — and it was fitting that this duty, even under the previous regime, should have been 25 percent instead of 15 percent, for reasons that are not hidden. This is what we draw to your attention, Your Excellency.

Our desire for the protection of the tanning industry does not spring from any weakness on our part. We proved before the war, when the raw materials necessary for this industry were available to us, that our industrial production was sufficient and well-made, sparing us what is manufactured abroad — witness that before the late war we alone supplied all the neighboring countries with the products of our tanneries. But it came to pass that obstacles were raised in our path, in a plan that may well have been contrived with the intent of halting the progress of our industry: while the tanneries of Palestine in the war years were glutted with raw materials, our tanneries were wholly deprived of them, so that all movement of production in the works was paralyzed. Nor did it stop at that: throughout the war years there kept arriving in Lebanon, by all manner of routes, leathers tanned in Palestine, of the basest sorts, to be sold here at the highest prices — and the intent of that needs no proof: it is the building of Zionist industry upon the ruins of Lebanese industry.

But now that conditions have settled, and the circumstances of the war and the crisis which the tanning works endured have passed, we approach Your Excellency with the plea that the following demands be fulfilled:

1 — Enabling the owners of the tanneries to obtain raw materials at the official prices, by providing scarce currency for them. 2 — Raising the customs duty on imported tanned leathers. 3 — Permitting, as speedily as possible — before it is too late, and before the European works return to operation — the export of what exceeds the country's needs of the tanneries' production and of leather manufactures. Thereby, my lord, you will help to advance the tanning industry and raise the level of labor.

Long live Lebanon, and long live its beloved President