Democratic Sentinel, Volume 12, Number 10, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 March 1888 — TARIFF TRUTHS. [ARTICLE]

TARIFF TRUTHS.

Can a Tax System Be Right Which Is a Puzzle to the Intelligent Tax-Payer? A Mystery and a Partial Explanation —Labor Cost and the Tariff v . Rates. ' _____ ■ - F- ' The Mystery. [From "Tariff Chats," by Henry J. Philpott, of Dm Moines.j How strange it is that any American citizen should say, when asked his views on the tanff question, “I don’t understand it" The tariff is a part of his taxes. It is the largest part of the tax he pays to the General Government. If he is an average citizen, with an average family, this tax alone cost him $lB last year, and a little more or less than that every year. Yet he confesses that he knows nothing about this $lB of his own money which he pays over to Uncle Sam. He doesn’t know whether it is more or less than he ought to pay. He never asks whether the tax is so levied that he is paying more than slß—sso or SIOO maybe—while some other and richer tax. payer gets off at $5 or $lO. Would he spend money so blindly in any other way? When you ask him about the money he pays to Uncle Sam he says he doesn’t understand it. If you asked him about the money he bestows on his wife and children would he look blank at you and confess, “I don’t understand it?” What would you think of him if h? did? How long would you expect to see him out of the Sheriff’s hands?

Now all his taxes are a part of his expenses. Why should he not understand all about them? Is it worth $lB a year to let his mind rest from such an easy task as finding out where the money goes and how it goes, and whether the manner of its going is not such as to take several times $lB along with it? If he were spending $lB in any other way he would at least look far enough into the matter to see whether some shrewd swindler had not a scheme in it? That something of this kind is true of the tariff I shall prove to you in a minute. But first I want you to stroll with me down into the Valley of Humiliation, and blush awhile for having ever been compelled to confess, as I know you have, for so have we all, that we didn’t understand the tariff question; that we have been paying out an utterly unknown sum of money every year without knowing or even inquiring—for if we had diligently inquired we should have known—how we paid it, or when we paid it, or whether any reform was needed, or whether we might not have got off by paying less, and had just as good a Government or better.

Can any tax system be right which is an absolute mystery to the intelligent taxpayer? Is the man fit to be free who does not, or will not, or cannot, at the first opportunity, investigate until he thoroughly understands how his Government exercises its taxing power over him—the most important and dangerous of all its powers? But if you say, “Don’t reproach me so; I have studied it long and earnestly, and, although I can understand anything else that concerns me, I can’t understand my taxes,” my reply is: Then your taxes are levied in a wrong way. You have already condemned them so far as lies in your power. You have said of them about the worst thing you could say. Get you at once a tax system thatfou can understand. And do not rest until all your neighbors have joined you in your effort. Beware of mysteries, but, above all, of mysterious taxes. You may rest assured that people who impose mysteries on you do not, as a rule, do it for your good. If you were making change of money with a man, and he should throw a cloak over you so you could not see, you would suspect his motives in a minute, wouldn’t you?

The Explanation. [From “Tariff Chats,” by H. J. Philpott, of Des Moines. 1 But, besides being mysterious, there is another very suspicious circumstance about this tax which costs you, an average man, $lB a year. lam sure you must have observed it a number of times. It is that whenever you ask to have the $lB cut down to sl7 some man 1,000 miles away, or across the street, >or somewhere, excitedly rises up, gets very red in the face, and cries at the top of his voice, “Don’t! For God’s sake, don’t. It will bankrupt me and starve my workingmen.” Now, don’t you think that man has some undue interest in your taxes being high? “Why,” you say to him, “the Government has got too much money. I was willing to pay the $lB when the Government needed the money, but really I don’t like to go on paying the whole of it when only a part is needed. I don’t want my money, which doesn’t come any too easily, ricked up in the Treasury or sown by the wayside.” “Well,” says he, “but you must go on paying it anyhow. It will never do to stop.” Now, is there not something suspicious in the existence in the country of people who get so excited when other people’s taxes are going to be reduced? Is it not proof positive that there is a scheme behind your tax system, as I promised to prove to you a minute ago? Suppose the treasuries of your State, county and township were overflowing with money. You have a receipt for the taxes you paid this year. It foots up $lB. Next year, you say to yourself, it will be less. The taxing powers will reduce the levy. Next year the tax receipt will foot up sl6. Suppose it did? How many of your neighbors would be rushing to the county court house and demand that the reduction be not made? What would you think of any one who should do so? How long would it take you to make up your miqd that that man had a job of some kind on foot and expected to get hold of part of the money you paid in taxes?

Yet you have come to look upon it as perfectly natural that a lobby of rich men should swarm at Washington to resist every proposed reduction of taxes. You are not in the least surprised that when President Arthur or President Cleveland proposed that your $lB tariff tax should be cut down to sl2, there should at once be held several meetings of rich men ($140,000,000 was represented at one meeting) to protest against the reduction and put forth a piteous plea that if it was made they would have to go out of business. Now the present tariff is already twice condemned as a tax system. You condemned it by confessing that with hard study you can net understand it. These meetings of rich men have condemned it by saying that it is a kind of tax which can not be reduced without ruining their busi-

ness. Is it not about time such a system was reformed? Can you honestly, my protectionist friend, say that you admire a tax which you can not understand and which can not be reduced without the bitter opposition of special classes of the people, and an outcry that the whole country is going to be ruined? Do you begin to guess what it is that the cloak of mystery covers? Labor Cost wuil Tariff Rates. I From the Chicago Tribune.] The abominably false pretense that the existing tariff is necessary to secure high wages for American workmen is exposed by the fact that the rate of duty on nearly any import that can be mentioned is twice the amount paid labor for the production of a like article in this country. Exceptions may be found to this rule, but the rule itself cannot be denied. Thus, while it is pretended that the present high monopoly tariff only covers the margin between wages here and abroad, the truth is that the taqp rates on almost any protected article will average more than twice the total wages paid American labor for the manufacture of a like article here. The following statement of the labor cost of certain selected articles is taken from the report for 1886 of Carroll D. Wright, United States Commissioner of Labor, and to make the suggested comparison plain, the Tribune adds to the Commissioner’s exhibit the rate of duty on the manufactures specified:

Per cent. Rate of Articles. labor cost. tariff. Pair stoga b00t517.50 3o Yard ingrain carpet‘22.sß 47 Suit cassimere clothing 16.26 68 Yard of sheeting2a 81 55 Ton Bessemer nailsl9.o6 84.33 Pair blanketslß.os 63 Ton pig-iron 9.72 56.60 Yard cotton cloth.lß.Bo 55.76 Yard print cloth 31.82 49 Cooking 5t0ve’..36.95 45 Pound spun silk 8.81 30 Harness leatherl3.B4 30 What could demonstrate more conclusively the falsity of the claim that the present excessive duties can not be reduced without lessening the wages paid American labor? Allowing for tariff rates sufficient not simply to cover any alleged margin between wages in this country and in Europe, but the total labor cost of articles produced here, and there still remains 50 per cent, or more of the present tariff scale that can only be reckoned as pure bounty and {dunder paid to factoiy bosses and in which abor has no share. What is this excessive {tortion of the tariff which does not benefit abor in any degree maintained for? It was put on only to secure revenues in-time of war, but that necessity long since passed away and surplus revenues are now piling in the Treasury. Is it supposed that this tribute can still be exacted from the people under the pretense that it is done to protect labor? What bounty-monopoly advocate will explain why it is necessary to levy on imports to an amount double the labor cost of producing similar articles in this country?

The instances given above are hardly up to the average of the tariff, and some of them are altogether exceptional in showing a rate of duty not greatly in excess of labor cost in home manufactures. It must be remembered that the average rate of the tariff is 46| per cent, of the value of imports, while the amount paid as wages in this country is only 20 per cent, of the cost of the manufactures produced. Mulhall gives the following as the ratio of wages to valuo of manufactures in the United States for a period of thirty years ending in 1880:

Average per cent. States. for thirty years. New England 22 Middle 19 Southern 18 Western ....18 Union 20 If labor is only paid 20 per cent, of the value of the goods produced, by what pretense can it be made to appear that a tariff of 46i per cent, must be levied on competing imports to main American wages? Clearly a tariff averaging 20 per cent.— less than one-half the present scale—would cover not only any “difference between American and European wages,” but the entire cost of the manufactures produced here. In the face of these facts it requires brazen audacity or stupid ignorance for any . man to claim that a tariff averaging 45 per cent. —60 per cent, on the necessaries bought by the unprotected farmers —must be maintained to protect labor.

American Versus !■ oreigu Uaboi > “I have recently made some investigations which prove indisputably th:U American labor can compete with foreign,” remarked Hon. Frank Hurd, of Ohio, to a Chicago Tribune reporter. “Just take two lines of production. A lady’s laced gaiter shoe, twenty-four button, can be made in Lynn, Mass., for 35 cents’ worth of labor. The manufacturer of the same shoe in Manchester, Eng., pays his workman 60 cents. In Germany the labor costs 80 cents. The German laborer at these wages will make $2, the English laborer about $3, and the American laborer $4 or $4.50 per day under a protection system. For the single shoe the American laborer is paid less than either the English or German workman, yet he earns more per day. That is because of the superior intelligence, skill, and organization of American labor. Another instance lies in the manufacture of cotton cloth. A German weaver turning out 100 yards of a certain quality will receive 70 cents for his labor. The English workman on the same quality of goods will receive 60 cents, the American 40 cents. Yet the American weaver will make more wages per day than the English or German laborers. It is our machinery and the skill of our workmen that enable them to earn more wages than foreign laborers, and not a protective tariff. We could drive England out of the world’s market if we would exchange for the commodities of other countries.”

TruntH and the Tariff'. (From the New York Bun.] Some of the worst and most shameless of the trusts are distinctly made possible by the tariff, and would break down in a very short time if foreign competition were once freely admitted. This is the case with the Steel Association, with the Iron and Steel Beam trust, and with the Sugar trust, the latter being affected by the prohibitory duty on the higher grades of sugar. It is not entirely the case with copper, because this gigantic trust originates in a foreign country, and for the time being grasps the product of the world; but it is true in this way, that the tariff has built up the copper monopoly in this country, and put its managers in a position to turn over to the French ring practically the entire output of the United States for three years. So, though free copper would not now break the bonds of the trust, the tariff has made the trust possible.