Democratic Sentinel, Volume 11, Number 40, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 October 1887 — FIBS ABOUT THE TARIFF. [ARTICLE]

FIBS ABOUT THE TARIFF.

Bam Randall's Daring Falsehoods at Atlanta—A Few Plain Facts and Figures. [From the Philadelphia Record.] At the Atlanta fair r. Randall (hightariff Democratic leader of Pennsylvania) was guilty of a breach of hospitality in mouthing a few of his tariff platitudes before an audience which had not been invited to that sort of entertainment. With the evidences of inventive genius, enterprise, and industrial skill all around him, Mr. Randall had the daring to tell his intelligent hearers that by reason of the tariff “the prices of food and clothing have been reduced, the wages of labor increased, and the profits of capital lessened. ” Indeed, this speech was not even redeemed by the orator’s classical allusion to Plato’s beautiful description of far-famed Atlantis. Had Speaker Carlisle, Col. Morrison, Representative Blount, or any other friend of tariff reform chosen the occasion of this Atlanta fair as one in which to air his opinions, he could have made short work of Mr. Randall’s assertions. Any one of those gentlemeu coultl have shown how injuriously the excessive tariff affects American labor by onerously taxing the necessaries which workingmen consume, as well as by narrowing the market for its products. He could have shown, further, that in this country wages are lowest, as a rule, in the more highly protected industries, and that in the European countries that have the highest tariffs vorkingmen are in the more deplorable condition, while in free-trade England the highost wages in Europe are paid. Anybody fit to address an intelligent audience on this subject knowß that the tendency of clothing and other finished manufactures to decline in prices has been in operation ever since the invention of steam and labor-saving machinery. To Arkwright, Watt, Whitney, Singer, Bessemer, and other great inventors is due the decline in prioes of manufactures which contribute so much to the comfort and progress of mankind. But our Philadelphia disciple of Plato tells the people of Georgia that it is the Tariff Divinity that has reduced the cost of manufactured commodities. The clothing of the ryotsof India and the peasants of Spain, or the peons of Mexico, is much cheaper than that of the woiking people of the United States. Has the high tariff of this country had so far-reaching an effect as to cheapen the clothing of the rest of the world. One of the long-standing arguments of protection iB that the high tariff, by creating home markets, greatly enhances the prices of products or the farm. This is the plea upon which the farmers of this country have been lured into support of the system which robs them. By its systematic discouragement of reciprocal trade the tariff has compelled the grain-consuming countries of Europe to seek other sources of supply than the United States; and this has brought the grain producers of India, Russia, Australasia, Argentine, and other regions into fierce competition with the farmers of the United States. But should a protectionist and a friend of Plato contemplate such a result with complacency? The Bessemer steel monopolists, the coal and coke combinations, the salt ling, the lumber trust, the sugar trust, the rubber trust, and all the other rings and combinations against consumers have developed under the fostering care of the enormous tariff. Mr. Randall sought to persuade his hearers that the general effect of the high tariff has been to lessen the profits of protected monopolies, and thus promote the interests of American consumers —an assumption for which he had no warrant. The friend of Plato and of Cato should be a greater friend of Truth. If the beneficiaries of the protected rings, combinations, and monopolies believed that the tariff lessens the profits of their investments, the lobbies of Congress would swarm next winter with their agents demanding its unconditional repeal; and Mr. Randall and Judge Kelley would be roaring advocates of absolute free trade.