Democratic Sentinel, Volume 7, Number 3, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 February 1883 — Why Congress Does Not Reduce the Tariff. [ARTICLE]

Why Congress Does Not Reduce the Tariff.

The Government receives from the tariff taxation an annual revenue of |2()0,000,000; but the protected capitalists, on the goods they manufacture, collect from the people at least SBOO,000,000 a year. The imported dutiable goods which come in competition with the domestic goods are worth between $400,000,000 and $500,000,000, and pay a duty of $200,000,000. The domestic competing goods amount to about four times as much, and pay a bonus or bounty to the manufacturers of four times what the Government gets in revenue, or $800,000,000. Both collect their taxes from the consumers, who are the American people. For every dollar of tax the Government gets the manufacturers take four from the people in the shape of extra price for thengoods and wares. This extra $800,000,000 is what they call “protection,” but what cynical folks call the “whack” of the privileged classes. The protected individuals cheerfully concede the wisdom and necessity of reducing the Government revenue on imports $50,000,000; each one is willing that the tax may be taken from any imported goods except the kind he makes. The woolen .men have no objection to a reduction of duty on everything except woolen goods; the iron and steel men want the tax reducd on ore, pig and everything else except iron and steel; and so on through a hundred other trades.

Suppose the protected interests represent or employ 1,000,000 of men in this country, and the non-protected 10,000,000 —which is about the proportion. To reduce the tariff $50,000,000 of the tax which goes to the Government would reduce the tax collected for the protected classes $200,000,000- To repeal $50,000,000 of unnecessary revenue tax would have the effect, then, of repealing $250,000,000 of the tax paid by the whole people on the necessary commodities of life and comfort. No one of the protected classes makes any objection provided that the reduction does not reach its particular interest. Thus the unmanufactured pine lumber interest refuses to give up the small pittance of revenue which the Government derives from Canadian lumber because it will relieve the prairie States alone of $10,000,000 of extra tax which is levied on the public in higher prices for lumber, shingles and lath. The glass and earthen-ware men are in Washington insisting that no part of the reduction of the tariff shall be made in their wares, but may be on everything else.* The nail-makers want their tax of 60 per cent., Mid the silkweavers their 60 per cent., retained for their benefit; the shotgun-makers want 100 per cent, in place of 30; the woolen men want their 80 per cent, and no less; the cotton-manufacturers want the 50 per cent, continued for their special

b J ,t; the soapmakers their 50 per or i the lead and zinc men insist on / /subsidy instead of less; the castor- / men say they can’t make matters lon less them 100 per cent, tax on Unfortunates who take their medij; the spool-thread men swear that "thtef must continue to be protected against the tailors and sewing-girls 50 to 80 per cent. And so on to the end of the chapter. All these interests and others, protected as they are almost to double the nominal value of the goods, demand that Congress shall not toueh any of their particular part of the protective bounty, but that if the tariff be reduced it shall come from other s Each subsidized interest is at WasKtagton watching over the bills to see that, whatever else be reduced, no reduction shall be made in its own share of the $800,000,000 taken from the people. Indeed, some of the more .rapacious of these special interests demand an increase of duty _on their particular branches of the robbery in order that they may be able to charge still higher for their wares. How can Congress unite upon a reduction of $50,000*000 of tariff revenue when to do so will involve the repeal of $200,000,000 of domestic protective plunder now’ collected as a bounty-tax for private and personal gain ? So relentless is the lobby that Senators and Representatives are personally bullied and threatened if they dare vote to reduce taxes.

The 1,000,000 of protected people demand that they be authorized to continue collecting $800,000,000 annually from the other 10,000,000 of unprotected. families in the country; afid the objection to a reduction of taxes is that any reduction of tariff duties involves a proportionate reduction of protected bounty tax to those special interests. There seems to be no one in Congress to represent the 10,000,000 of families who are fleeced for the benefit of the 1,000,000 who shear them. With a Congress thus beset on all hands—with lusty “infants” crying on all sides for protection, and more protection—every attempt so far to prepare a bill to reduce the tariff $50,000,-. 000 ends in an increase instead of a reduction of taxation. —Chicago Tribune.