Democratic Sentinel, Volume 11, Number 31, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 September 1887 — A LITTLE TARIFF HISTORY. [ARTICLE]

A LITTLE TARIFF HISTORY.

Uketch of the Progress of Legislation Hostile to Freedom of Trade. A writer in the Chicago Herald in introducing a brief account of tariff legislation in the l nited States Congress says: “Rightly to comprehend the protect on issue a historic sketch is necessary. By this we can gather clearly how it has happened that legislation so hostile to freedom, 60 repugnant to both the letter and the spirit of the Constitution, has been brought about, and is now regarded by so many citizens as sound governmental policy.” He then con innes as lollows: In the preamble of the first tariff law in 1789 one of its objects is declared “the encouragement and protection of domestic manufactures.” By this law the average duty was but 8J per cent. Its purpose was revenue. Direct taxation was hard to gather, as the nation was bankrupt and had repudiated its Confederate debts. Since that preamble, for which no warrant is found in the Constitution, and which, in view of the low duties levied under the law, is a self-stultifying absurdity to a protectionist of to-day, a persistent war has been waged against the people by men eager to use the Government force for personal advantage. In 1791 lhe average duty was 11 per cent.; in 1792 it became 13£ per cent., and the 5 per cent, minimum was then dropped. In 1800 the 10 per cent, list followed it. In 1803 the 12-i per cent, schedule vanished, while at every change in the law the numbers of articles on which duties were collected was increased. In 1812, for the impending war. the duties were doubled, to remain so while the war should last. In all this legislation the rate of duty which would bring the most revenue was the one always claimed in every change to be that sought for. In 1810 Clay declared himself in favor of “decided protection to home manufactures,” and in this year a great increase in the number of taxed commodities occurred to supply the needs of the Treasury resultant from the war. “The father of the protective policy” did not, however, until 1824 succeed in stamping his policy on our legislation, and this by so small a majority—--107 to 102—in the House that it had no assured permanency. But the parasite growth then took root upon the nation’s trunk. Since that, with rare intervals, it has drained the nation's vitality, diverting capital from those uses naturally profitable, and by which the profits w ould flow to the wealth producers, into those artificial channels which, feeding this parasite growth, evolved that foliage of luxury which flourishes only to impoverish labor. By this tariff the people after forty years under a constitution of specific and limited governmental power suffered its limits to be overpas-ed; abjured their natural right to purchase in the cheapest markets, and so get the greatest possible return for their produced commodities, and, infatuated by the demagogic cry of “protection against the pauper labor of Europe,” constituted over them this protectorate, a class usurping control for phrsoual gain. To-day this cry is repeated by Blaine’s followers in the Republican party, ruling it as the Clay coterie ruled tne Whig party. The alleged magnetic man has reappeared, whose magnetism lies only and solely in the fact his record shows—that his instinct is to use the governmental force for his personal advantage; that he has a host of friends glad to accept him as leader, so as to use the Government for their own ends. Clay could, if his correspondence with Madison does not misrepresent him,never have anticipated as permanent such a tariff as we now endure. But, as might have been foretold, the leech could not be satisfied. In 1828 the duties were increased, though the still weak majorities—los to 95 in the House and 26 to 21 in the Senate—indicate determined resistance by the people. In 1829 it became plain that this class legislation did in nowise tend to “establish domestic tranquillity.” New England, her commerce crippled by it, was driven to invest in manufacturing. The South, with ruder labor, was unable to make profit by such investment, and saw with anger and mortification that she had been by law rendered tributary to Massachusetts. In 1816 both Calhoun and Lowndes had supported Clay’s policy. In 1832 South Carolina, with justice on her side if the Constitution has any meaning, but by a method unknown to the compact, and which to admit meant only disintegration, attempted to nullify the unequal law. The national peace was in imminent danger when Clay, as pacifier of the civil dissension he himself, as inventor of the pernicious policy, had generated, introduced his compromise bill, and after a hard struggle passed it. By this the rate of the duties grew less and less from year to year, until in ten years the old revenue limit of 20 per cent, was to be attached. The fact that a civil war was then barely averted gives a warning that the ruling class here—strong enough in the past twenty-five years to control the Republican party and to prevent the policy of the Democratic party—is now, as it then was, too deaf to hear. The surrender of self-government was indicated not only by the tariffs of 1824 and 1828; it appeared also in the form of loose banking laws in almost every State, all in violation of the spirit of the Constitution—article 1, section 8, clause 5. These resulted in the issue of alleged money far in excess of all natural demand as a medium of exchanges. As a measure of values its increasing redundancy resulted in an increased valuation of. all property. Speculation ran rampant. More new towns were plotted than would suffice to contain the then population. On the first attempt to realize on the expanded valuation by demanding coin of the banks for their paper issues the fortunes based on obligations and debts were scattered in 1837 on the winds. By the withdrawal of the United States deposits from the control of the speculating banker, Nicholas Biddle, JacksoD had punctured the bubble and precipitated the inevitable catastrophe while it saved the Treasury. Had he allowed it to run its full course the panic would have involved the Government with th: people, and would have surpassed the explosion of the Law reeime in France in its disastrous results. Still the plundered people were persuaded to hold the administration of Jackson's successor (Van Buren) responsible for a collapse it could not have prevented, and tbe gradual change in the tariff was alleged to be the cause of the worst revulsion the country had so far undergone. The election of Harrison, and the res-

toration to power of the class now combined to use the governmental force for private advantage, was followed by the tariff of 1842, protective even to prohibition of imports. This the people endured for four years, and in 1846 they reduced their taxation, levied for the advantage of their rulers, to 50 per cent, on an average. This vms in force until 1857, when 30 per cent, ad valorem became the average rate, and this stood until the outbreak of the civil war. The so-called Morrill tariff. then cunningly devised to lax the use of impoits by a double duty, specific and ad valorem, has since granted almost unlimited facilities to fraud, and certainly more than doubled the average rate. To this during t e war various supplementary bills were added to our bur dene. Some changes reducing duties were made in 1870, but the general average was scarcely affected. The rale has fluctuated since, but now, in 1887, the duties are about what they were constituted by the war tariff of 1860. We now protect about 1,500 different commod.ties by an average rate of nearly 45 per cent., as closely as can be ascertained. We who produce perhaps threefourths of the world’s marketed cotton, and have it at our doors, protect its manufacture by duties of from 35 to CO per cent. This is the manufacture which Madison more than sixty years ago declared was so thoroughly established here by “the impulse of the war” that it could never again need protection. On woolens the duty is 50 to 65 per cent. We have dropped the duty on wool itself, and so enhanced the profit to those in control of our home market, in which we must buy. And yet this pampered industry has grown only weaker by its protection for two generations. Even before the Revolution this industry was dreaded by the English manufacturers, and English legislation against it was matter of complaint in the Declaration. Now it ha 3 become so despicable that English goods, despite the duly, are sold in open competition with the product of our looms, and in the markets of the world our goods cannot be found. On iron and steel we pay 30 to 70 per cent. We have gas for fuel; our ores are on the surface, for which in other lands miners must delve deep into lhe earth; yet our imports of these are increasing from year to year. The duties enable our iron men to dispense with the improved methods which competition abroad for the world’s market has evolved. Yet, if they were content with the profit foreign capital is glad to get, they could undersell the world and thrive. A table of the average rates of duty from 1824 will pei haps illustrate more clearly our vacillating and inconclusive policy in this respect: Duty average. 1824-1828 38 per cent. 18-28—1832 41 per cent. 18*2-1811 31 per cent. 1812 23 per cent. 1812-1846. .50 per cent. 1816-1857 30 per cent. 1857-1860 20 per cent, Changing only to increase during the war, at its close the duties were perhaps 50 per cent., and, as before stated, from 1865 to 1887 the average has been 45 per cent. It is plain that our government has long ceased to be a people’s government. Now it only performs the functions and duties of a national trust for a protected class. Its varied interests pooled into a concrete bill, apportioning each its respective share of the public plunder, the Government has become as palpably but a trust company for that class as is the Standard Oil Company lor its combining, conspiring corporations. It maintains an unnatural and inequitable price upon all production on which a duty is levied, and compels the people to pay this price as plainly as does the gas trust destroy competition and sustain the price of gas in this city.