Democratic Sentinel, Volume 11, Number 47, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 December 1887 — THE PAST AGAINST THEM [ARTICLE]

THE PAST AGAINST THEM

Tariff-Revision Speeches Deliv[ered in the Forty-seventh Congress. Republican Congressmen Now Protectionists Who Then Saw the Necessity for Reform. [Washington special to Chicago Tribune, Bep.] Some of the Repnblic&n Congressmen who are criticising the President’s message as a free-trade manifesto are thrown into confusion by their own records during the Forty-seventh Congress. This was the Congress which created the Tariff Commission. In the Senate, the third day after its meeting, Morrill, of Vermont, the high priest of protection, introduced a bill to secure tariff changes. In the course of the debate on the bill for creating a tariff commission almost every Republican who spoke committed himself to the urgent necessity of reforming the tariff. For instance, Senator Sherman thought it necessary to revise the tariff for the express purpose of reducing the taxes. He said: The bill assumes that there is a necessity for a revision of the tariff laws, and as to this necessity there is no controversy or dispute. The very great changes in the relative value of articles in the tariff schedule, the wonderful results that have arisen from improved methods of manufacture, as in the case of steel, the wholesale evasions of standards of value, as in the case of sugar, and the numerous incongruities and defects of existing laws, developed by trial of twenty years, imperfectly patched up by amendments—all these causes combined render it necessary to revise not only the rate of duties but the methods of ascertaining and collecting them. To tneae causes is also added the conceded fact that under existing law we are collecting from the people of the United States as national taxes the sum of fifty to one hundred millions of dollars more than is requisite to meet all the proper current expenditures of the Government and all our obligations to the public creditors and to comply with the sinking fund act for tho gradual reduction of the public debt. We agree that the tariff should be revised and the taxes be reduced. Senator Hawley said: I will vote in any direction to bring about a resolute attempt to give us a revision of the tariff. I say that as representing a protective constituency. I am for resolute, direct, immediate action in the direction of a wise revision of the tariff, whether by a commission or the usual mode. The gradual change in business in many directions, the changes in process of manufacture, the cheapening of production, and a hundred thing- I need not specify havo brought it to pass that the present tariff is a machine very much out of gear. It hurts American manufacturers. In short, it is inevitable. It is to be seen, without argument, that in the progress of the country a tariff.no matter how wisely drawn, must require revision. In tho House Mr. McKinley of Ohio said: There are excrescences in the present tariff which should be corrected. There are wrongs growing out of decisions of the Treasury Department and the courts which ought to be remedied at once, commission or no commis-sion-matters which ought not to be delayed for the adiustment of a commission, and which, if they are to be postponed until a commission which we may create shall make its report and Congressional action be had thereon, ought to defeat the whole scheme of a commission. The free list might be enlarged without affecting injuriously a single American interest. Mr. Burrows, of Michigan, said: Upon the first proposition—to wit: the necessity for a revision of tho tariff—there seems to he no contrariety of opinion. All parties, men of every shade of beliof, from the high rotectionist to the extreme free-trader, all unite n demanding a readjustment of the present tariff. These are only samples of what many other Republican members said.

Blaine anil the Tobacco Tax. Mr. James G. Blaine in his Parisian retreat is terribly exercised over the fact that President Cleveland classes tobacco among the luxuries. He draws a piteous picture of the millions of men “at work on the farm, in the coal mine, along the railroad, in the iron foundries,” etc., to whom the succulent “chaw” of tobacco is a necessity, and expectoration an unfailing joy. His heart, too, is wrung at the distress of (hose untold thousands who “seek the solace of a pipe or cigar after each meal” by reason of the internal revenue tax upon every ping of tobacco ancl every cigar.

But if Mr. Blaine were nearer the people and would wiue the protection him from his eyes, he would 6eo that the appeal for relief from the internal-revenue tax on tobacco dot-s not come from the consumers but from the manufacturers. The consumers of tobacco have witnessed a reduction in the tax of one-half witcin the last five years, but they have not been able to perceive a corresponding reduction in the price of the juicy plug or tne fragrant cigar. The manufacturer has pocketed the difference in the tax paid. And where has the United States reaped any benefit from the reduciion in the in-ternal-revenue tax on tobacco? Its receipts from this source under the old rate of 10 cents per pound for iue year ending June 30, 1882, were $47,34/280 By the reduction to 8 cents per pound, which went in o effect May 1, 1883, the receipts were cut down to $20,062,400 for the year ending June 30, It 81. For the fiscal year ended June 30 last the receipts from this same source were $30,108,067, an increase of $2,200,704 over the preceding year. The best proof possible that consumers have not been the beneficiaries of the reduced internal revenue levied on tobacco is afforded in the fact that th ■ price has not fallen so as to discourage the importa-

tion of tobacco. In the year 1880 the value of tobacco importations was $6,179,238, yielding $4,681,400 duty. In anticipation of the fall in prices prophesied to follow the redaction in the internal revenue on tobacco, in effect May 1, 1883, the importations for that year were forced up to $10,515,806, on which the duty was $7,601,638. The receipts for the next year naturally fell off $8,593,098, from which they have steadily grown until for the year ending June 30, 1887, they were nearly $12,000,000, from which $9,127,758 duty was collected. It is thus apparent that the redaction in the internal tax on tobacco has not discouraged its importation, which in 1887 was nearly half as gre.it again as it was in 1884. And why shonld it, since the consumer pays just as much for his ping and his cigar as he did before 1883? Mr. Blaine’s sympathy for the consumer is bogus. It is the capitalistic manufacturer of tobacco who wants to be relieved of the tax for his own benefit. —Chicago News.

A Shameless Misrepresentation. The Joliet Steel Rail Rolling MUIb Company issued an order on Saturday last, shutting down its works for an indefinite period, discharging the men and paying them off. The Superintendent of the mills accompanies the order by the statements that the mills have run steadily for six years, only interrupted by the strike es the employes in 1883, when these were compelled to accept 20 per cent, less wage's than was offered them at the beginning of the strike; that the plant is one of the most improved and successful in the world, capable of competing with any works known; that the reasons for the closing of the works are a depression in the rail market and lack of orders; and, finally, that the President’s message and the attitude of Congress on the tariff question so onsettled the industry that contracts for 1888 delivery coaid not be made with .any certainty as to prices, while with this uncertainty no orders could safely be contracted for, even if they were to be had. In reality no more brazen-faced, shame - less, and utterly false assertions than are contained in the latter part of this statement could be made by the most unscrupulous demagogue that ever undertook to deceive a people. The facts of the American steel-rail situation are briefly as follows, being condensed from an editorial in the Bulletin , the organ of the American Iron and Steel Association, of Nov. 30, several days previous to the publication of the President’s message: For several weeks prior to the above date the steel manufacturers waited in vain for orders for rails from the railway companies, the expectancy assuming quite a panicky aspect. Finally, when it became unmistakable that the railroads, the grangers especially, had decided to withdraw for a time from the market, the panic gave place to a better feeling on the part of the rail-makers, in view of the estimate that new and old i oads would require in 1888 at least 75 per cent, as many railß as in 1887. Still, when at the steel manufacturers’ meeting, which took place at the middle of November, it was admitted that the railroads did not exhibit a sign of a desire to take orders at any deliverable prices, the Bulletin outlined their programme by saying that the rail-makers could not be blamed if they should reach the conclusion that it was better for them to close their works than make rails at a loss.

• This, in reality, is what the rail-makers had, at that time, concluded to do in order to bring tbe railroads to their terms. Now, while the above programme is being carried out, it is sought to make a political question out of a fight between the steel-rail octopus trust and the railways of the country. At the same time, every protection organ in the* country has doubtless been given the cue to work the disreputable racket for all it is worth. —Clticago News.