Democratic Sentinel, Volume 9, Number 31, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 August 1885 — A NEW TARIFF BILL. [ARTICLE]

A NEW TARIFF BILL.

The Ilandall Win? in Congress Has Agreed to a Revenue-Reform Measure. [Philadelphia telecram.] Tlte Press prints the following Washington special regarding a recent tariff deal among the Democrats: “The apparent non-committal attitude on the question of the tariff is the result of recent conferences in which the more moderate Democrats, including the President himself and Secretary Manning, have thrown out the tub which is intended, at least for the present, to satisfy the free-trade whale. In the conference which has led to this result, which took place recently in Washington, Congressman Bandall took a leading part, and in many respects his views had much to do in shaping the new Democratic policy. “First of ail it was agreed on all sides that the tariff must be revised. At last, after much discussion, in which the advice of certain well-known protectionists was sought and freely and frankly given, the moderates agreed to give the immoderates a $40,000,000 reduction in customs during the coming session, the moderates, however, to reserve the right of creating a sort of inner-circle tariff commission to be run during the months preceding the coming session of Congress as a sort of side-show to the Treasury Department. “It must not for a moment be supposed that a reduction of $40,000,000, which involves the acceptance and support on the part of the free traders of a bill prepared entirely by the Bandall wing of the Democratic party, was agreed to without other and still more substantial promises in the immediate future. It has been practically agreed upon that the Treasury Department, aided and abetted by such manufacturers as may be round willing to co-oper-ate with the Secretary, will present a bill, the basis of which will be, as I have said, the reduction of $40,000,000, or at least an apparent reduction of that amount. “To this end the Treasury Department has employed several experts, who are now engaged in obtaining opinions of manufacturers throughout the country, and such information as it is enabled to gather in relation to the cost of production at home and in competing European countries. All this information will be tabulated and a bill framed after the fashion of that proposed (and finally passed) by Secretary of the Treasury Walker, and which is known as the ‘ Walker bill of 1846.’ “On paper and viewed as a whole, this is a splendid scheme. The moment, however, the bill, as proposed by the Secretary of the Treasury, comes into the House and is taken up—as it most assuredly will be—line by line, the Democratic party will be in the same condition as it always has been on the tariff question. A struggle over the proposed Treasury bill will, in fact, develop the old struggle again. The least objectionable measure may be passed, but a measure that contemplates the reduction of $40,000,000 of customs duties will, in the opinion of some of the leading Bepublicans here, utterly fail. ”