Democratic Sentinel, Volume 7, Number 7, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 March 1883 — The Tariff Abortion. [ARTICLE]

The Tariff Abortion.

Congressman Abram S. Hewitt, in an interview in New York, said: “I was ready to vote for the Senate bill, which was to some extent a measure of reduction ; but when, by a trick, the whole subject was confided to the decision of a packed committee representing only special interests and not the interests of the people, and when this scheme produced substantially increased taxation iipon consumers, I could not give it my support. I find the conference committee made no reduction in any case where reduction would decrease the price to consumers or cheapen the article. It blundered in two striking cases into re luctions of duty which wi.l cheapen certain manufactures, but even then not to consumers at large, because these very manufacturers are so highly protected under the tariff that they have a monopoly of the market. The conference committee raised the duty in all cases where protected articles had.. the inside track or the ear of the committee or they could manage it. This legislation will fail of its intended effect, for the reason that the industries of the country are suffering, not from foreign competition, but from the domestic competition arising out of the protection we have had for the last twenty years. The result of this long period of protection is an excessive production at home, for which no market can be found, because we have no access to foreign markets, as other nations who have free raw materials. The result of this pernicious system is that. failures in every branch of business have already begun and will continue with accelerated rapidity until the weaker concerns, which cannot compete with their stronger are driven to the wall. The only sensible and possible relief that could have been extended to manufacturers would have been to free raw materials from destructive duties, so that ' goods might be produced at lower prices and thus find a wider market at home or abroad. I think the passage of this bill makes the fundamental issue between revenue reform and unprotected protection so clear that the organization of the next House will be determined by it and by it alone. It is, in my judgment, the beginning of the leal revenue fMorin demanded by people of this country.”