Democratic Sentinel, Volume 13, Number 41, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 November 1889 — THE LUMBER TARIFF [ARTICLE]

THE LUMBER TARIFF

The Workingmen Do Not Get Any Part ot It. W. T. Spear, lately deputy collector of cuctoms at Houlton, Me., gives the following information in regard to the lumber duties in reply to the interrogatories cf the Question Clubs: A glance at the man of Maine will disclose the fact that this— Aroostook —county, is bounded on the east by the province of New Brunswick, being separated from that province by an imaginary line. In the nature of things the land and timber growing thereon in Aroostook cannot differ materially from that of New Brunswick —in fact, there is no perceptible difference. And yet, thro’ the oper tion of the tariff, which

- levies a tax ot $2 per thousand on foreign lumber imported into this country, the wealthy owners of our timber lands —many of whom are non-residents—are enabled to demand and receiv i 75 cents per thousand more for spruce and $2 more for pine stampage than is paid in New Brunswick. Let us take spruce—for v ery little pine is grown here—and see how much om timber lard owners are benefited by this tax. Thero are an-

nually cut m this county probably Wm less than 150,000,000 feet of spruce, pine and cedar, from which the stumpage owners, through the operation of the tariff, are aftle to exact more than SIOO,OOO as a bounty, »nd that 8100,000 is the measure of the protection that the tariff on lumber affords them, and it is because the tariff puts this neat little sum in their [pockets that they are protectionists. This SIOO,OOO per annum is of course added to the price of the menu* factored product and finally paid by the consumer. While awaiting the replies of the distinguished gentlemen interrogated by the Question Clubs, let us notice the excuses that have been offered by them and their political associates in the past in 3 astifbatiori of this, as 1 view it, ‘ indefensible extortion. ” During the campaign of last year they claimed that the tariff on lumber is for the sole benefit of the labor engaged in that industry, and that industry, and that free lumber would reduce the wages of the labor employed in the lumber w oods in this county to the level of those paid iu New Brunswick. This assertion implies that on account of the tariff of $2 per thousand on lumber, the laboring men of th s country, who work in the woods, are receiving higher wages than are paid for the same work in New Brunswick To demonstrate the falsity of this implication we will

state that nearly three-fourths of the employed in the lumber woods of Aroostook—and we understand this is trut of Penobscot and other counties of Maine—are province men who come here in the fall, work in the woods during the winter, assist on the drives in the spring and then go home to spend their earnings in New Brunswick. This foreign competition has so equalized wages that despite the protection (?) influence of a tariff of $2 per thousand on lumber that protectionists tell us is for the sole benefit of labor, laborers in the lumber camps of Aroostook receive no higher wages th&n they do in New Brunswick. These are faces which I have obtained from personal interviews with reliable men engaged in lumbering in this county and in New Brunswick, and therefore I believe they eannot be successfully controverted. I have shown, first,

that the lumber tariff affords the stumpage owner a bounty of 75 cents per thousand, and second, that it does not increase the wages 0? our labor a mill. But the story is not yet complete. I desire to add that it would seem that somebody is protected to the full extent of the $2 duty. I have shown that the man who sells the stumpage gets 76 cents of it. Who gets

J the remaining $1.25. The following facts indicate that it must be the manufacturer. More than 100,000,000 feet of lumber is annually cut in this county, driven to St. John, N. 8., there manufactured and shipped to tho Unitec States free of duty, under the existing laws. For export to this counUy such lumber is worth $5 (the amount of the duty) per thousand more in the St. John market than lumber manufactured from logs grown in New Brunswick. — Hence wd must conolude that the

manufacturers pocket the $1,25. — Thus it will be seen that the tariff on lumber affords a bounty of $5 per thousand, which is divided between the Siumpage owner and the manufacturer, while labor gets no part of it. In other words, the tariff on lumber affords the ownei s of Aroostook timl er 1 ,nds a boun* ty of at least SIOO,OOO a vear and the manufacturers of Aroostook lumber more than $150,000 annually, and that is what makes (them worship at the shrine of protec tion.

□1 admit that the tariff does benefit them; but in this ease, as in nearly every other, it benefits those who do not need to be thus favored, and that, too, at the expense of those who can ill afford to pay them tribi te, Thus does the duty not only add- and unnecessarily so, for the government does need need the revenue—s 2 to every thousand feet of foreign lumber that is imported, but, as we have seen, it enables the rich American stumpage owner and manufacturer to add $2 extra to the cost of our domestic product, all of which is a tax upon the consumer, which he pays in the increased cost of the house which he builds or rents. Thus the lumber tax is a curse instead of a benefit to labor. In case the lumber is imported, the duty goes into the national treasury, from which all would derive a benefit were it needed, but the $2 per thousand bounty that the tariff affords goes to swell the surplus of the wealthy owners of timber lands and the manufacturers. Such is the operation of the tariff on lumber in the Aroostook, and it is doubtless the same elsewhere. It makes the rich richer and the poor poorer—the inevitable, and we may «dd designed, effect of all hgh tariff laws.— National Democrat.