Democratic Sentinel, Volume 10, Number 45, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 December 1886 — Taxation. [ARTICLE]

Taxation.

Editors Western Rural: It Is useless to talk of poli.ical economy so long as the tax paver thinks he has nothing to do wit": footing the bill for political extravagance. The plumed knig’at said at Niles six year ago. ‘‘They sav we have misappropriated the revenue. Rut what difference does it make: you, the people, do r ot p iya penny of the revenue tax.” Butler says ‘'Englaud has no interests in this country, therefore we make them pay fax on all their goods before we will allow them to be sold in our market.” Now if we can make England pay part of our tax, let us be as seiflsh as we can, and make h*r pay all of it. En land does not bring goods to this country. If I want tea from C ina, hardware from Birmingham, linen from Belfast, T sit down ahd order it, just as I would if I want glass from Pittsburg. The goods arrive; a tax is demanded from me by the government and I have to pay before I can get mv goods. Merch ants in New Yor k pav millions of dol lars a year tax and add the tax to the price of the goods. If you buy the goods you pa it back to them Hence indirect taxes. A duty of ten cents a pound on woo l regardless of va ue is called “specific duties ” A duty of twenty per cent- ad valorem [according to value] i* cabe 1 “ad valorem duties.” The duty of twenty per cent ad valorem was taken off from wool March 3d, 1883. That is the way the do it. The man who gets out the raw material always gets the last boost, and Is the first to have it taken away. He is the man who docs the mosjwork for the least moiey, ’Tis he who has adopted the eight hour plan, eight hours in the forenoon and eight hours in the afternoon. In 1882 my wool brought thirtysix cents a pound. In 1883 after the twenty per cent duty was taken off, my wool sold for twenty-eightJeeDts, just about twenty per cent less. My brother’s wool, on corresponding dates sold far forty and thirty-two jents. Sa you can see that Jprotection protecta. If not why do we wool growers kick so strenuously against taking it off? Ditto, the steel, iron, and woolen manufacturers. Also the salt and lumber manufacturers have got the same kick and the same self interrsf The duty, tax, protection on wool helped me; did it help my hired man? Did it help all the poor of the land, who have to buy clothing made from protected wool ? I rescind my stutemwnt above, and say no, it did not help me, for while lam get* ting a little taffy on my wool, dollars are paid out on a thousand and one protected articles I have to buv Protection benefits the lumber kings; does it benefit iheir workmen? Does it keep Canadian workmen at home, from coming into Michigan by the score, and competing with home labor? Brother farmers why this unre *t? Why this unsettled state es affairs? Mr. Blaine, at Pittsburg, Oct. 20, quotes Dean Swift, and seems to sanotinn the quotation. Dean Swift told the ministers of Queen Ann, ‘That they could double the luty and halve the revenue orhalvt the duty and double the revenue. ” Now brother, if that is the way it will work I say amen to halving the tax r our tax] and doubling the revenue [our Then lev us demand that our revenue be used to pay off the public debt. Then anarchy, strikes and this unrest will In a measure have its cure. This whole system is contained in a nut shell; is it right to tax one man for the upbuilding of anoth er? I nave voted protection all my life, but I say no.—T. in Western Rural.