Democratic Sentinel, Volume 7, Number 7, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 March 1883 — The Beauties of Protection. [ARTICLE]

The Beauties of Protection.

While the packed conference committee of Congress was settling down to its work of murdering tariff reform, two great protected manufacturing establishments in different parts of the country suspended business and made assignments involving aggregate liabilities of about half a million. The more important failure, in a money point of view, was that of the Taylor Paper Company, of Chicago, with liabilities of nearly $400,000. The more interesting to us here in New York was the failure of Samuel H. Fox, of Durham, Oneida county, proprietor of the largest glass manufactory in the State. Mr. Fox was the defeated Republican candidate for Congress in the Oneida district last fall. His large establishment at Durhamville has long afforded the eulogists of high protection a favorite example of the benefits of that beneficent institution. He was the ideal employer, patriarchal in his concern for the welfare of those who worked for him, generous more often than strictly just in the matter of wages, and markedly progressive in his efforts to work by the best methods and the most improved appliances. He fails for something like $150,000. Why should he have failed, if protection really protects? The tariff taxes the importation of wares similar to his with duties ranging from 57 to 80 per cent. In the year 1881, for example, we imported from Europe window glass to the value (European price) of $1,425,363. Upon that glass we paid a total duty of $999,066 —which raised the gross cost to $2,424,429. The price at which Mr. Fox sold his glass to Americans was settled. by this foreign price, of which seven parts were actual cost and five parts tax. Yet even with this enormous contribution of five cents bonus out of every twelve paid, him by his customers, Mr. Fox is unable to continue his business! Is it not time to ask ourselves in all seriousness whether we cannot find a better use for our energies and earnings as a people than to tax them in this way to bribe men to do a losing business? — Albany Journal.