Democratic Sentinel, Volume 12, Number 29, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 August 1888 — TARIFF FACTS. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

TARIFF FACTS.

How Our Forty-seven Per Cent. War Tariff Affeet& the Toiling Masses. What the Poor Washerwoman Pays for Sugar in the Cities ot London and Paris. A Republican Mannfactnnr Expose? the Sophistries of Protection and of the Chicago Platform. Our Manufacturers Want tFrce Raw Materials, but Don’t Dare to Say So. The Tariff Views of Grant, Arthur, and Garfield—Where the Workingmen Stand.

Taxes for Kicli an.l Poor. There can be no more absolute proof of the fact that our 47 i>er cent, war tarih is framed iu the interest of thoso who least need help and against the toiling masses, than a brief study of the rates of duty laid upon luxuries and necessities relatively. I herewith submit a table taken directly from the official tariff: Luxuries — Tariff. Diamonds (uncut). Free Jet Free Medals of gold and silver Free Fossils Free Fashion plates ~ .Free Precious stones 10 per cent Agates Free Ottar of roses Free Almond oil. Free Alabaster statuary ..10 per cent Sna Is Free Turtles .Free Skele ons Free S uffed birds .Free Fancy and perfumed soap 15 per cent Cocoa Free Cabinets of coins, medals, and other antiquities Free Brazil and cocoa nuts Free Tropical fruit plants Free Tortoiso shells Free Meerschaum Free Parchment Free Mother of pearl Fr e Regalia and gems for societies Free Quoits or curling stones Free Gut cord for musical instruments Free Ebony Free Lignum-vit® '. .FVee Mahogany Free Satiuwood Free Rosewood Free , .Cedar Free ox wood , .". Free jewelry .25 per cent Baw Milk Free Necessities— Tariff. Earthenware and crockery 55 per cent Slates and slate pencils. 30 per cent Handsaws 40 per cent Pins 30 per cent Sewing machine needles 35 percent Pocket knives i nd razors 50 per cent Cream of tartar 6 cents per lb Borax , 5 cents per lb White lead 3 cents per lb House furniture 35 per cent Mackerel 1 cent per lb Rice 2)4 cents per lb Horsoshoe nails 4 cents per lb Hammers, wedges and crowbars.‘2) 2 cents per lb Hard, soft and castile soap ~. .20 per cent Beeswax 20 per cent Cast iron vessels and stove plates. 1)4 cents per lb Copper in plates and pigs ,4 cents per lb Matches 35 per cent Ink 30 per cent Garden seeds 20 per cent Clay pipes 35 per cent Books 25 per cent Envelopes ‘25 per cent Palm-leaf hats 30 per cent Brooms 25 per oent Battens 25 percent Brashes 30 per cept Leather gloves 50 per cent Shingles .35 cents per 1,000 Pine clapboards .$1 per 1,000 leet Salt 12 cents per 100 lbs Readymade clothing 40 percent Cotton thread and yarn 40 per cent Cotton stockings and shirts 40 per cent Oilcloths 40 per cent Hats and flannels GO to 70 per cent Women’s dress goods, part wool GO to 70 per cent Woolen shawls 60 to 8J per cent How many diamonds, stuffed birds, cabinets of coins, Bnails, quoits, tortoise shells, and how much ottar of roses, mothor of pearl, rosewood and mahogany, meerschaum and jewelry, do the railroad labo.er, mechanic and fanner have ÜBe for during a year? Is it for their interest that these articles should be free of duty; or would they gain more by cheapening handsaws, croam of tartar, rice, garden seeds, books, boards, ha s, thread and clothing ? — I). 1). Jayne, in Cheiuinau (N. Y.) Union.

The Protection Bugaboo. A platform lecturer here au evening or two Blnce on “The Footprints of Wesley," in speaking of his purchase from an English washwoman of chips from the rock from which Wesley used to preach, and of his being told by her that the small sum received was more thail she could get in England for a hard day’s washing, brought down his unthinking audience wi h cheers, of course, by the usual electioneering clap-trap exclamation and alarm cry of “freetrade," whereas the lecturer and his hearers ought to have had the intelligence to know that the wages of English laborers, including E glish washwomen, are more than 53 per cent, higher in free trade Eng and, notwithstanding her denser population of over four hundred to a square mile, than in the high-protection countries of continental Europe, and, therefore, that the tariff is no explanation whatever of tbe higher wnge rate of the American as compared with the English laborer, or the low wageß of the English washwoman. Nay more, that the facts, if they proie anything, would show the tariff to be the cause of the lower wage rate in highly protected con- ■ tinental Europe, as compared with free-trade England, other conditions being vastly less dissimilar than between England and America, where its population, even in Ohio, is but eighty to a square mile. They should know that the condition of the English laboring class is vastly better now than under the high-tariff regime of forty years ago, in confirmation of which but read Miss Martineau’s description of their condition at that time. And that the condition of work-women in free-trade London to-day is far better than in high-pro ectionist Paris will be seen from the following extract from Helen Campbell’s correspondence on the needle-women of Paris. She writes : “Every article of daily need is at the highest point, sugar alone being an illustration of what the determination to protect an industry has brought about. The London workwoman buys a pound for Id., or at the most ad. (2 cents and 4 cents). The French workwoman must give 11 or 12 sous (10 or 11 cents), and then have only beet sugar, which has not much over half the ► accharine quality of cane sugar. Flour, milk, eggs, all are equally high, meat alone being at nearly the same prices as London. Fruit is nearly an impossible luxury, and fuel so dear that shivering is the law for all but the rich, while rents are also beyond London prices. For the needlewoman the so d question has reso.ved its If into bread alone for at least one meal, with a little coffee, chiefly chicory, and possibly some vegetables for the oth rs. Put many a one lives on bread for six days in a week, reserving the few sous that can be saved for a Sunday bit of meat or bones for soup. ” And so on thfbugh a contrast as unfavorable to the metropolis of high-tariff France as favorable to the metropolis of that unfortunate (?) country in which prevails a “tariff for revenue only,” and whose more highly paid laborers, strange as it may seem to the protectionist doctrinaire, find it unnecessary to demand protection from the low-paid or pauper wages of the competing nations of the continent. Strange, iS it not, that American wages in the mind of your protectionist, need to be so highly protected,

when English wages need it not, although forced to compete with the low wages of the continent, at vastly greater disadvantage than America with England. A French needle-woman and washerwoman paying ten or elev n cents a pound for beet 'sugar when her English sister pay i but two or three cent ior a superior article is a fair illustration of the logical fruitage, the selfish cupidity and blindness of that extreme protectionism gone mad, which even in the land of Bastiat and Turgot can thus sacrifice general interests on the altar of the special and protected interests of an unprofitable home industry, and that in America can fight to the bitter end against a reduction of 5 per cen\ on the necessaries of life, as provided for in 'the Mills bill, or to reduce a dan erous surplus and to relieve the people from the burdens (f unnecessary and unjust taxation ; and that rather than surrender -any part” of its acquired gro nd, its usurped privileges, it would favor free or untaxed whisky and tobacco. —Lakeside (Ohio) Cor. Chicago Times.

The Manufacturers and the Tariff. The following letter, written by a Republican manufacturer in Massachusetts to the Chairman of the Finance Committee of a Republican club, shows that the sophistries of protection and of the Chicago platform have not mystified all the members of the g. o. p., even among the manufacturers: Office of the Hadley Company, I Boston, July 13, lfcßj. j Chairinan of tho Finance Committee of the Holyoke Republican Club: Dear Sir—l have yours of the 12th, asking for a contribution for the Republican Club, lam, of course,. deeply interested in tho tariff as regards the Hadley Company, and also in its bearing on many other cotton and woolen manufactures iu which I am interested; but, in my opinion, the Republican members of Congress from New England and ihe Home Market Club and the Woolen Manufacturers’ Association have practically done more harm to the cause of protection and to the protected

(so-called) industries of Massachusetts than the Democratic members of the Ways and Means Committee. I have had occasion to see some of the Democratic members of the Ways and Means Committee, and to hear of the plans and views of others, and I am convinced that but for the action of the Kepublican members of Congress from New England and the greater part of the Republican manufacturers of New England we could have had in the Mills bill satisfactory schedules for woolens and cottons. As it is, at the request of some manufacturers (Republican), made through Democratic members from Massachusetts, the Democrats of the Ways and Means Committee altered and advanced rates on some important items, while we were met, I am informed, by Republican members of the House, saying: “Leave the schedule as it is ;it is better for the election. ” The Republicans now refuse to aid in putting raw materials on the free list, and certainly in New England free raw material has been considered as an element in protection almost as essential as the duty on the manufactured article. From my business experienc ' in both importing and manufacturing I am fully aware of the necessity of protection for the maintenance here of certain manufactures, and I very much regret that the Republican party, with which I have acted from its beginning, has, for political success, taken a position which I consider hostile in its practical effects to the protected industries of Massachusetts. The Democratic members of the Ways and Meanß Committee take broad and, on the whole, reaspnable views of the tariff question, and while of course they look at the interest of the United States as a whole, they do not ignore the fact that many great industries have grown up in this country under the high duties made necessary by the frar of the rebellion, and that it is only fair and proper that consideration should be paid to their existence and condition. Neither do they ignore the fact that the workpeople in the" protected industries are very largely members of the Democratic party. Besides the consideration that my manufacturing interests have been put at needless risk by the partisan action of the Republicans, 1 mast also take into Consideration the interests of tbe whole country, in which we are all involved, and I cannot feel it to be right to vote for any one who can honestly stand on the Republican platform. Most of the Republicans with whom I have spoken about it have told me that they had not read it. I can readily believe that it would be disagreeable reading to Republicans who in the past have, in all honesty, desired to have raw materials and fruit products on the free list.Jßut.the exigencies of practical politics have forced the party into a false position as regards the tariff, and into many other unwise and dangerous relations in regard to the domestic and foreign affairs of the country. There is practically no party in this country in favor of free trade in any reasonable sense of the term, and it is as unfair to call the Mills bill a freetrade bill as it-is to say that the Republicans are in favor of the free drinking of whisky, because the manufacturers of protected articles have for several years insisted that all internal taxes should be taken off, in order that it should be impossible to alter the duties on imports. While the Mills bill is not a bill that wholly commends itself to me, it is correct, and for the interest of Massachusetts in many particulars, notably in the matter of free wool. Every manufacturing country in tho world of aaflr<Mnae%uaaf \ except

the United States,' has wool on the frea list. The position that , the Republican party has taken makes It well tot the country, as it seems to me, that it should not have the control ot the Government for the next four years. Yours truly, Ari hub X. Lyman, Free Raw Materials. It w s not until the Mills bill proposed to make free wool and thus repeal a t x of 41 per cent, in the raw materials of our woolen manufacturers and reduce the tariff on woolens from 68 per cent, to 40 per cent, that the woolen manufacturers began to whisper the truth and confess that free wool is a necessity to the success of our woolen industries. . < The woolen manufacturers, as a rule, concealed tho truth and publicly denied It to Congress and to tho country, because they feared that a demand from them for free wool would recoil upon them by the removal of protection from woolen products. When the issue was renewed in the present Congress, the Times sought information on the sub'ect only from Republ can woolen manufacturers, and they, with one accord, confessed that free wool was oSssaitial to the success of our woolen industries and to enable them to supply our home market; but all, wi.h like accord,tbfused to let tho truth go to the public as coming from them, featog retaliation upon manufactured goods. • In like maun# every Republican iron manufacturer privately declared that iron ores ought to be free, as foreign ores are a necessity for mixing purposes to multiply the use of oar domestic orqs, but in like mauner they did not dare to say so publicly. The same answers come from Republican cordage manufacturers in favor of free hemp ; from Republican b tumiuous coal operators in f ivor of free coal; from Republican builders in favor of free lumber; from Republican tin dealers in favor of free tiu ; and all had sealed lips for the public on tho subject. These Republican protectionists, speaking for their respective lines of business, all sincerely desire free raw materials, and all are terrorized

into silence because they fear the power of monopoly trusts and combines to crush any honest industry that crosses their path. There is not a woolen manufacturer in the United States who does not know that the Mills bill, with free wooi, gives our woolen industry vastly better protection than the present tariff that extortionatelv taxes consumers without protecting either capital or labor. There is not a woolen manufacturer in the Unhed States who does not know that with the Mills bill substituted for the present tariff the woolen industry would at once supply our whole home market, instead of allowing Europe to supply within a small fraction of one-half of the woolens we consume. There is not a woolen manufacturer in the United States who does not know tnat, with the Mills bill a law, our woolen employers would double their employment of home labor; paylabor better wages, pay larger profits to capital, and relieve the woolen consumers of the couim>try—which embrace the whole people—ot at least $120,000,000 annually for the necessaries-of life. There is no protection to labor i i taxing wool, while there is positive and practical protection to labor in taxing woolens ; but they should net be taxed 68 per cent, and then give Europe half the labor of their product : on as is the case under the present tariff. (The profit on sheep- east of the Missouri River is got from the mutton, and not from wool.) Tho people waut protection for home-labor and they will gladly protect the woolen industry to enable it to supply its entire home market and pay liberal wages to labor; but they will not tax themselves 28 per cent, extra to protect wool that is not the product of labor and at the same time give European mills and foreign labor onehalf our home market for woolena. —Philadelphia Times.

Tariff Views of Four Presidents. FROM PRESIDENT GRANT’S MESSAGE OF 1875. I would mention those articl s which enter into manufactures of all sorts- All duty paid on sue i articles goes direct to the cost of the article when manufac.ured hero and must bo naid for by the consumer. These duties not only come from the consumers at homo, but act as a prot< ction to f reign manufacturers in our own and distant markets. FROM PRESIDENT ARTHUR’S MESSAGE OF 1882. The present tariff system is in many respects unjust. It makes unequal distributions, both of its burdens end its benefits. * * * Without entering into minute details, which, under present circumstances, is quite unnecessary, I recommend an enlargement of the free list so as to include within it the numerous articles which yield inconsiderable revenue, a simplification of the complex and inconsist nt schedule of du ies upon certain manufactures, particularly those of cotton, iron, and steel, and a substantial reduction of the duties upon sugar, molasses, silk, wool, and woolen go ds. FROM PRESIDENT ARTHUR’S MESSAGE OF 1834. The healthful enlargement of our trade with Europe, Asia, and Africa should be sought by reducing tariff burdens on such of their wares as neither one or the other American States are fitted to produce, and thus enable ourselves to obtain in return a better market for our supplies of food, of raw materials, and of the manufactures in which we excel. FROM PRESIDENT CLEVELAND’S MESSAGE OF 1887. The taxation of luxuries presents no feature*

of hardship, but the necessaries of life us6tl and consumed by all the people, the duty upon which adds to the cost of living in every house, should be greatly cheapened. * * * Thus our people might have the opportunity of extending their sales beyond the limits of home consumption—saving them from the depression, • interruption in business, and loss caused r>y a glutted domestic inaiket, and affording their employes more certain and steady labor, with th* resulting quiet and contentment. PRESIDENT GARFIELD'S SPEECH IN THE HOUSE in iß?a I believe that we ought to seek that point of stable equilibrium somewhere between a prohibitory tariff on the one hand and a tariff that gives no protection on the other. What's that point of stable equilibrium? In my judgment it is this : A rate so high that foreign producers cannot flood our markets and break down our home manufacturers, but not so high as to keep them altogether out, enabling our manufacturers to comline and raise the prices, . or so high as to stimulate an unhealthy growth of manufactures. In other -words, I would have the duty so adjusted that «very great American industry can fairly live and make fair profits ; and yet so low that if o rjnanufactur rs attempted to put prices unreaasnably the competition from abroad would ooNie in and bring down prices to a fair rate. Where the Workingmen Stand. Congressman Lawler, who voted against the Morrison bill two years ago, has been telling the Eastern people how he came to vote for the Mills bill. He says : “I have not heard one word of cond lunation of my course siuce my vote upon the bill. Two years have worked decided change of sentiment among the people of my district regarding the tariff question. Since the consideration of the Mills bill in the House 1 have been in receipt of letters and telegrams from my cotstituents urging me to support it. In nearly every case these communications were sent by Knights of Labor and others who at one time believed that tteir prosperity depended upon a continuance of the existing tariff system."

Mr. Lawler further informs the Eastern people that 95 per cent, of his constituents are workingmen, and that he represents one of the largest manufacturing districts in the West. “The x»assage of the bill,” he says; “will moke us votes instead of weakening us.” Ho much for the free-trade cry in Chicago The only labor member of the House, Congressman Hmith, of Milwaukee, voted for the Mills bill, although, like Congressman Lawler, his political existence depends on the good opinion of the workingmen. The labor organizations throughout the West, and, perhaps, throughout the nation, are more favorable to a r< duction of the ta iff than tney are to the Republican ultra protection platform. The farming classes are the hope of the Republicans in this campaign as in the past. Still, the farmers are not protected. They have to fight their own battles. They buy tueir farm supplies in the dearest market in the world and sell their products atforei-n prices in opposition to the pauper labor of Russia and India. What do they geo for their unwavering devotion to the Republican party? This declaration in the Chicago platform: “We favor the entire repeal of tle internal taxes rather than the surrender of any part of our protective system.” —Chicago News. Business Men for Tariff Reform. One of the most notable signs of the times is the alacrity with which business men not partisans are ranging themselves on the a de of conservative tariff reform. The latest ot' this class of persons is Mr. A. J. Drexel, the great Philadelphia banker, and a Republican who has hitherto given much material aid to bis party. Mr. Droxel, besides expressing himself unreservedly as a, convert to- free wool, also declares that he is not only convinced that wool shonla be admitted free, but that iron ore should also be put on the free list.— Chicago News.

SCALING THE HEIGHTS OF PROTECTION.