Democratic Sentinel, Volume 13, Number 2, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 February 1889 — The Salt Duty. [ARTICLE]

The Salt Duty.

The defeat of the attempt to tike off the odious duty on s rit by the solid Republicanvote in the Senate is on I,' one more proof of the servile state into which the party Leaders have fallen. There is no possible justification for the duty, even from the point of riew of the extremist protectionists. The proof is complete, from salt-makers themselves, that there is no danger of foreign competition in their trade, that with free salt they would hold their markets at even lower prices than they can now get. and that the only men in the business who have anything to fear are those whose methods or resources are unequal to the production of salt as cheaply as it can be made elsewhere in our country. Years ago, before the industry was as firmly fixed as it now is, some of the same Republican Senators who voted for the salt tax were convinced that it was intolerable and labored to abolish it. But that was in the days when protection was held as a rational theory and when the course of its supporters was not dictated by a greedy band of combined monopolists. It was a time when Mr. Sherman and Mr. Dawes and Mr. Allison were not blind to the disgrace of a system unequaled for stupidity save in Turkey and Egypt, and unsurpassed for its corrupting influences even there.— New York Times.