Democratic Sentinel, Volume 13, Number 38, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 October 1889 — Folly of Taxing Raw Materials. [ARTICLE]

Folly of Taxing Raw Materials.

To-day we are importing at the rate of millions of pounds per annum of raw cotton for making “woolen goods, ” simply because our mills are forced to cheapen the cost of their materials, and the imported cotton is of more suitable quality for this purpose than that raised in our Southern States. We can get this about as cheap as its cost to the European manufacturers. Every pound of it takes the place of two or three pounds of fleece wool. It is a crumb of “free wool” of the kind that our mills are driven to use by the high tax on Hie genuine article. The trouble with all efforts to raise the prices of raw materials by taxes or combinations is, that the effect is at once to restrict the consumption in two ways.. Consumers of materials find substitutes, and consumers of the manufactured goods procure from other places where the manufacturers have less or no taxes to add to their cost. It is this power of substitution that upsets the calculations of copper trusts, and the thousand and one schemes of speculators. This spirit of resistance to taxation without corresponding benefits which we have inheritedfrom our forefathers who threw the tea into Boston harbor works in ipany quiet ways upon the minds and habits of the whole people. So we See that freedom to buy such materials as the manufacturer requires for his work increases the consumption, and the natural increase of price follows, just so far and so long as it continues to be natural and healthy. Millions of yards of “woolen” goods are now made containing only from 50 down to 10 per cent of new wool, and

some without the first ounce. An Ohio manufacturer is sending out his circulars stating that he has this year increased his product of shoddy more than a million pounds. This will help make up the short wool clip in thatState. It is the only way left for our mills to compete with the foreign. They must in some way find an off setter the handicap under which they start in the contest with foreign mills. Give them jhe same chance their competitors have at wool, and they will increase its use' and improve the character of their fabrics. The present adjustment of the tariff, on both materials and fabrics, is such as to discourage improvement of American w6olens. All the advance made in this respect by our home mills has been made in spite of adverse legislation. Many have been ruined by the efforts they have made to get out a good article to compete with importations, under the delusion that they had in their favor protection by our tariff. It will be a difficult matter to prove how far the tariff increases wages. The free-trader will show you that England pays larger wages'fox shorter hours than Germany or France, high-tariff countries. Also that under the same tariff in this country wages in some localities are two and three times as high for the same work as in others. It is evident, however, that if one manufacturer must produce his goods in competition with another, what he pays more for his materials he must save in some other department, and usually this must come, as far as possible, in the pay-roll. The fact is, that prices for both the labor and materials must in the long run be regulated by the prices at which foreign manufactured goods can be sold in our home markets, because our own manufacturers must meet those prices—in fact, undersell them until consumers recognize their goods as equal to the imported. The manufactures which we export to-day are, as a rule, those in which labor is the largest item of cost, and in these our own manufacturers have the home market. Wade’s Fiber ana Fabric.