Democratic Sentinel, Volume 10, Number 23, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 July 1886 — You Scratch Me, and I’ll Scratch You. [ARTICLE]

You Scratch Me, and I’ll Scratch You.

In order to maintain a high protective tariff on certain articles the numb e r of such articles as had to be increased. Protection was at first intended to foster our “infant industries” until they should gain strength to compete with the older industries abroad. That was Hor - ace <fereeley’s idea. The modern idea is to tax every sort of thing. Not only have we attempted to foster oui “infant industries,” but lest the protection be taken off these, a lot of other people have been taken into the pool. We have come to tax the products of the farm, as if this were not as good an agricultural country as any. — We tax the products of coal and iron mines, as if we were not richer than any other country in these respects. We tax imported lumber, as if our forests were “infants” too. All this has been done —not because our sheep and coal and ore and lumber needed, to be encouraged by taxation, but on the logrolling principle. The upshot of all this is that manufacturers are as bad off as if there was no tariff. It does not help the makers of cloth in this country to have imported cloth taxed, provided that some of the materials that our cloth makers have to use to mix with native material are taxed also. It does not help our makers of iron to have foreign iron taxed, provided that ore which they have to import to mix with native ore is taxed also. What our present tariff does is to raise the general scale of everything except wages. It makes clothing, furniture and homes cost more, but it does not increase wages. Indeed, it decreases wages; for with the fictitious scale of prices, we can sell no manufactured products abroad, and consequently our m rket is overstocked. —Elmira Gazette.