Democratic Sentinel, Volume 13, Number 30, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 August 1889 — Defending Monopoly. [ARTICLE]

Defending Monopoly.

We have recently observed in a number of newspapers calling themselves “agricultural journals,” but which are really defenders of monopoly built up by the tariff, the preposterous statement that the way to break the twine trust, and the bagging trust, and the salt trust, etc., is to raise all the articles ourselves. This is absurd, we say, because, even with a high duty on hemp, and on all substitutes for hemp, such as sisal, hemp culture is only profitable to a few farmers in Kentucky and Missouri. Is it just that every man who raises wheat should pay a heavy tax that a few farmers in Kentucky and Missouri may raise hemp on acres which would, except for the tariff, be put in grass, in wheat, in corn, or tobacco? We say no; the Farm and Fireside says yes. During the past four years the duty paid on sisal imported to make twine amounts to $2,000,000. That is added to the price of twine. The Mills bill wisely put sisal on the free list; that is, it proposed to abolish the tax of $2,000,000. The Senate bill proposed to raise the duty from sls to S3O a ton, or from $500,000 to $1,000,000 a year. The Mills bill proposes to reduce the tax on twine; the Allison bill proposes to increase it. Farmers and agricultural journals should demand that twine and bagging be put on the iree list. This does not please the Farm and Fireside, which comes out as a fullfledged defender of monopoly. It says: Home and Farm goes on to say that if we had no tariff every advance in price would draw Ihe foreign article to America, and also that, except for the tariff, twine would be imported and the trust broken—all of which is false and absurd. The twine trust, having control of the raw material, controls both the ioreign and the home manuufacture and sale of twine. To remove the duties now would not necessarily make twine any cheaper. There is no cheap foreign twine to be drawn to this country. The trust controls it all, and if the tariff were removed, under the existing conditions, the manufacturers could simply put that much more into their pockets. Whatever effect the removal of tariff duties might have on some other trusts, it could have none, at the present time, on the twine trust. Our Springfield critic is wrong as usual. There has been a failure of crops everywhere and a natural advance, but the price to-day in America is higher by 25 per cent, because of a tariff-protected trust, and always will be.

If putting twine on the free list would not reduce the price, why did the manufacturers oppose it, and why do the manufacturers’ organs, masquerading as agricultural journals, oppose to-day a removal of the tax on the farmers ? If the tariff is not a tax on the consumer, if it does not increase the cost of twine to the farmer, who pays back to the manufacturer the $491,654 he paid in 1888 for the 32,776 tons of sisal grass he manufactured to make twine ? There is but one answer to these questions; the tariff is imposed for this purpose; if it failed, the manufacturers would be the first to demand its repeal. We hold that it does not fail; it adds one burden after another to the shoulders of the farmer, and we insist that these burdens be lifted. Our Springfield contemporary insists that the weaker a person becomes the more he should be bled. We point out the deplorable condition of the patient; we show how his strength is wasted, and his energies gone; how with difficulty he drags his weary feet dow r n the weary furrow. Give him rest, we say; remove the stumps from his path; give him nourishment, cheapen for him the comforts of life, and so enrich his blood, and build up his system. “No,” says the organ of monopoly at Springfield; “no; phlebotomy is the only remedy; bleed him; bleed him every day; open every vein. His blood is too rich; it courses through his veins too swiftly; let’s bleed him, and if he dies, he will die a glorious martyr to the system of protection; and while every trust will mourn his loss, the ever-present mortage will seize his farm, while his family will be protected —in the poor-house.”— Home and Farm.