Democratic Sentinel, Volume 10, Number 44, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 December 1886 — The Iniquity of the Copper Tariff. [ARTICLE]

The Iniquity of the Copper Tariff.

There are many more disastrous chapters in our tariff history than that relating to the copper duties; there is none that exhibits more directly the essential immoral.ty and the certain results of ultra-pro-tection. There was never, in the first place, the slightest excuse for a duty ou copper. The sole source of domestic supply, up to fifteen years ago, was the Lake Superior mines. These could have been worked to advantage in free competition with the world. But the owners wanted a monopoly, and when everybody else was having a tariff slice they got tiieirs. Still, under the original tariff, Chilian ore could be imported, and there were large smelting works in Boston and Baltimore. This did not suit the rnino owners at all; and so, regardless of the fact that the whole country was asked to pay a tax for their benefit, and of the farther fact that the smelting industry would be utterly destroyed, as it was, to build up the mining industry, they asked and received in 1869 an increase of duty about equal to that from sto 25 per cent After this copper mining became a close corporation. The coaipnn es combined and set an arbitrary price upon their product. This every American consumer had to pay, at the same time that these same compan es were selling abroad their surplus product at prices far below the American market. Tho wages paid were those fixed by the competition of the market. The profits of the mining companies were among the largest known. These enormous profits, together with the discovery of other deposits iu Montana and Arizona, caused the mining business to be overdone. The price of the metal fell heavily. The duty was cut down in 1883 from sto 4 cents per pound. But overproduction continued until something had to be done to restore tho magnificent dividends of the past. What is the remedy? Mines arc shut down and hundreds of men will bo thrown out of employment until the price has been raised again to the level of the profit that the manufacturer requires. When the market was good, laborers received the ruling wages, not a penny more, and tho tax levied on every user and manufacturer of copper in the country went to swell the fortunes of the mine-owner. When tho scramb!e for these profits overdoes the business, and times become bad, the laborer makes the sacrifice by being deprived of work, and cut off from wages until the monopoly created by the tariff sees fit to resume business. In the history of this, perhaps tho least excusable of all our tariff iniquities, we have an illustration of the invariable working of high and useless duties. They begin in extravagant profits for monopolies, and end in industrial prostration; but, from b ginning to end, the only individual who cannot possibly gain any benefit whatever, and who bears ihe heaviest share of the loss, is the workingman. Tnis is the system by which capital has, for nearly a generation, “protected” labor for its own private emolument.—St. Paul Pioneer-Press.