Democratic Sentinel, Volume 12, Number 25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 July 1888 — No Need for a Salt Tax. [ARTICLE]

No Need for a Salt Tax.

But, sir, before 1861 we had no tax at all on ‘ salt. Bops the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Bun-ows) mean to say that we had no' salt industry in this country prior to 1861? Sir, the flourishing condition of the salt industry is itself positive proof that.it did not need, as it does not now need, any tax in order to sustain it. I read, from page 838 of one of the volumes of the tariff commission, the testimony given by Mr. E. P. Wlteeler, of New York, a gentleman known to all of you as very intelligent, accurate and well Informed. . Ho says: "I remember as long ago as 1865. visiting the great salt works m the neighborhood of Syracuse, N. Y., and these manufactories were then thriving, vigorous and making monoy. They had no protection then, and they need no protection now. ” Sir, here is the testimony of parties very competent to speak—. Jackson & Kilpatrick, of New Orleans. They state in their communication to Secretary Manning: "To show the use these few favored capitalists who own or control the salt works in the United States make of the protection granted them by the representatives of a patient people, and how little they need protection, it is asserted by a standard authority that the Onondaga Salt company at Syracuse, N. Y., have issued their price list offering to lay down salt, freight prepaid by the company, at various points along the Grand Trunk railroad in Canada at a price much less per barrel than any citizen could buy tho some article for in Syracuse.”—Hon. C. It. Breckinridge in House Debate.