Democratic Sentinel, Volume 14, Number 20, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 June 1890 — HOW WE ARE TAXED. [ARTICLE]

HOW WE ARE TAXED.

[From the Chicago Herald.] The big rumored starch trust is now a fixed fact. Besides the rank injustice that an increased price will impose upon everyUbusehold in the country the direct object of the trust is to lay further burdens upon the various branches of the cotton manufacturing industry. Eveiy yard of cotton cloth requires starch in the finishing, and if converted into a printed fabric requires a greater quantity than was used in the first instance. Fall River, with forty cotton mills running 2,128,228 spindles in 1889, used. 2,250,000 • pounds of starch, and as this represents but one-sixth of the spindles in the country some idea may be formed of what will be exacted from the entire number of spindles. There are twenty print works, besides many bleacheries and finishing works that are large consumers of starch. It is evident that the requirements of these works end mills have been duly considered and that a conspiracy has been organized to extort from them the uttermost farthing. There are few items in the McKinley bill which more grossly illustrate some of its absurdities and injustices than the . proposed duty on seal plushes. T^a,.qr,. < tide is almost exclusively in England, - country i

worn almost exclusively by the poorer classes or such as cannot afford the price of the re si article. Until about a year ago the seal plush was not manufactured in this country at all, owing partly to inability to dye and finish the goods, and partly to natural conditions, and even now there is only ene mill that has succeeded in producing it in anything like a fairly satisfactory manner. Under the present tariff the duty levied on this article is 50 percent., which should afford more than ample protection to any legitimate industry. But it seems that it struck the framers of the new tariff in a different light, for the duty proposed therein is to be in the future (3.50 per pound and 15 per cent, ad valorem. In plain figures this simply means that an article heretofore costing say $1 per yard to land will co t in future from $7.25 to $7.50 per yard, and that in order to help a millionaire manufacturer in this country to make more millions, thousands and thousands of our women and girls will have to pay for their winter garments double the price that they are paying now.

Not one of the smallest of the tariff burdens is the salt tax. We imported in 1889 $846,761 worth of foreign-taxed salt. On every pound of it received in bulk the consumers had to pay 85 per cent, duty, and on every pound in bags 44 per cent. The Treasury thereby collected a revenue of $469,435 which it did not need. The domestic production of salt is worth about $5,000,000. By the operation of the tariff the price of this home product was greatly enhanced. How much it was enhanced cannot be stated exactly. The increase in the price of the domestic product on account of “protection” has been estimated by good authority at no less than $2,000,000. On that basis the people of the United States pay for the privilege of using salt a tux of some $2,500,000 per annum. In 1880 just 4,289 men, women, and children were engaged in making salt in this country, and for the benefit not even of this small number, but of the handful of millionaire employers of this small number, 60,000,000 citizens bear the odious salt tax. Farmers, why not join with James A. Garfield and Levi P. Morton in asking Congress for free salt?

In February a committee of the Wholesale Hardware Association of the United States went before the McKinley Committee to protest against any increase of the already protective duties of the present tariff. They presented protests from some three hundred of the 'jobbing hardware houses in ths country, representing all shades of political opinion and also representing $35,000,000 of capital. This protest was not only unheeded, but the McKinley committee proceeded to raise the duties on all kinds of hardware by from 50 per cent, to 150 per cent. Here are a few of the extortions proposed: On pocket cutlery costing not more than 50 cents a dozen, from 50 per cent, to 74 per cent.; costing from 50 cents to $1.50 per dolen, from 50 percent, toB3 percent., at least, and in some cases 150 per cent.; costing from $1.50 per dozen, from 50 per cent, to at least 83 per cent., nnd in some cases 116 per cent. On carving and cooks’ knives, from 35 per cent, to at least 55 per cent., and so on up to 71 per cent. On butchers’ knives, from 35 per cent, to at least 40 per cent., and to an average of 65 per cent. Most of these duties will be prohibitory. They will not enable American manufacturers to make the kinds of goods now imported, but only to substitute their own at higher prices.

With their usual recklessness of the real interests of the working classes, the Ways and Means Committee have managed to make the duty heaviest in the great majority of cases on the goods used by the poorer consumers. This is shown in the duties proposed on breech-loading guns. Thus, a gun costing only $6, on which the present duty is $2.10, is taxed under the McKinley bill at $6.10. or over 100 per cent., the duty being trebled; but a gun costing a penny under sl2 is taxed at the same rate exactly, which is only one-half as much relatively to the cost.

It would not be difficult, says Congressman Carlisle, to show by a citation of authentic reports of the markets here and in other countries that in almost every instance the domestic producers of protected articles have added the whole or a large part of the duty to the foreign prices of the same kind of articles and thus forced the farmers to pay millions of dollars more every year for their clothing, medicines, paints, glass, salt, earthenware, agricultural implements, board nnd wire fences, barns nnd other buildings, wagons, harness and other necessities than they would have been required to pay if the duties had not been imposed or had been properly adjusted and fixed at a reasonable revenue rate.