Democratic Sentinel, Volume 14, Number 22, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 June 1890 — HOW WE ARE TAXED. [ARTICLE]

HOW WE ARE TAXED.

[From the Chicago Herald.] No tinned plate is at present produced in this country, although block tin, the primary necessity for its prodnetion, is admitted free of duty. It is an article that is prodneed almost exclusively in Wales, where there are ninety-five works, embracing about four hundred mills, devoted to its production. Tinnedpl&te, as now made under the late improved methods*consists of the very best quality Bessemer and Siemens Martin steel, the sheets being cold rolled, pickled and annealed and rolled to twenty-nine and thirty wire gauge, cut to exact size, coated with block tin, polished and packed in oak boxes and delivered free on board the steamer at English shipping ports, and for this article the matter at present prices receives less than three cents per pound, boxes included. The same quality of steel sheets, without the cutting to size, coating with tin, packing or boxing, or delivering free on steamer, costs to-day from our American manufacturers, after their more than forty years’ experience, four cents per pound or more. In other words, with inexhanstible stores of every component of tinned plate, with unrivaled facilities for its manufacture, and consuming far more than all the rest of the world combined, we are forced to import all the tin plate used, because our proteoted manufacturers of iron and steel combine together and charge a cent more per pound for the steel sheets (making 95 per cent, of the bulk) than the finished tinned plate costs in New York duty free. Now they propose to have the Government raise the duty on foreign-made tinned plates, so ns first to control the market themselves and then be subsidized $14,000,000 a year for supplying the demand.

As the tariff now stands, a dairyman pays 8 cents more for each “15-quart pail,” 4 cents more for each “10-quart pan,” and 45 cents more for each “40-quart can” than if there were no tariff, and the price of other nrticles is, of course, in proportion; while if the McKinley bill should become a law he would have to pay 17 cents more for each pail, 9 cents more for each pan and $1 more for each can than if he were not “protected.” On these items each farmer can figure out for himself how much he is directlv taxed on the average on the amount of tinware ho uses annually in his dairy or for other uses in his. house or on hi< farm. The amount will be more than he at first thinks, since purchases of these articles are frequent; nnd without carefully adding them up for some definite period, such as a year, or taking a complete inventory outside of the house aB well as in it, few will realize how much tin plate they consume. The tariff on tin thus consumed generally by the dairy farmer is, however, not the only oppressive burden levied upon him by the tinned plate tariff. The nrticles named are repeatedly used, and the cost of their wear cannot easily be traced to its exact effect upon the pi ice of any one product. But with other articles this can be done. Take the instance of tinned pails used for packing butter for transport and for sate in twenty-five-pound and other packages. They are so much lighter, cheaper, and more convenient than the wooden firkins, tubs, and pails formerly used that they are an absolute necessity, and, whether or not their weight is included iu that of the butter paid for, it is certain that the dairy farmer does not get more for his butter on account of the extra cost to him on each package caused by the tariff. Calculating as before, this extra cost is found to be 6 cents on a twenty-five-pound package. That is to says, the dairy farmer’s butter would net him on the average 0.25 cents, or 1 per cent, more per pound if tinned plate were free.

Adolph Oehme, an intelligent farmer at Brainard, Neb , has figured up how much tariff taxes have cost him in a year. He has done more or less trad ng at the village stores, and, of course, has paid protection prices for everything he had to buy. The following is his account for the twelve months: 4 Amount tariff on same, 780 pounds sugar $ 18. t> 10 gallons molasses 4 j 22 pounds woolen goods 9 to Dry goods (cost SB9) 33.72 10 pounds chocolate, etc 20 5 pounds mustard [so 42 pounds rice 95 8,001 feet lumber leioo Machinery (cost $57) 22.80 Salt, 460 pounds 55 1 barrel lime 31 2 boxes soap £2O Medicine (cost $10) 2.50 Binding twine (cost $8) 3.20 Saddleries, etc. (cost S6B) 20.52 Boots and shoes (cost $28.50) 8,55 Total tariff on purchases $142.02 In this way Mr. Oeh mo figures out that the tariff compels him to pay each year $142.02 more for goods which ne requires than they would cost were the tariff removed. This he culls his “ihdireot” tax, and by comparing it with the direct tax which he pays his county, city and Slate he finds this to be the case: Tariff tax—indirect $142.02 City, county, and State—direct 76.82 ... i.,,; . Difference $55.20 And thus Mr. Oehme figures that he is paying indirectly a tax which is almoßt twice as large as his direct lax. and his tax is filched from him little by little in the shape of living expenses that make it hard lo make both ends meet. Were all the farmers as smart as Mr. Oehme, there would be a speedy end of the protection system. An importer who has been figuring on crockery ware and the new tiritf shows that McKinley asks the American workman to pay $21,600,000 for $8,000,000 worth of crockery. Mr. Butterworth says it will take $50,000,000 or more to put the wet-nursed tin-plate industry on its feet, and that the copper barons have declared sixty millions of dividends on an investment of a million and a quaiter.' Naturally this is an age of millionaires, but the people who deal in seven-figure fortunes must be further “encouraged." “Give me free ore.” said the President of the Pennsylvania Steel Company a short time since, “and I’ll sell pig iron in Liverpool and send steel rails to London. What American industries most want is free opportunity, and not legislative protection nor restriction.” Thin positive assertion by the Presi-

dent of one of the largest and most successful steel plants in the United States, if not in the world, is mnch more convincing than are the opinions of hightariff theorists who are protectionists for party politics only.

To show how badlv some of the proposed beneficiaries of the McKinley bill need protection, read this extract from the last report of William Whitman, President of the National Association of Wool Manufacturers, to the stockholders of the Arlington Mills. It is da. ed March 29, 1889. “I have been your Treasurer for a consecutive peiiod of twdntr years. During this period the average earnings have been 21) 8-10 per centum upon the capital. * * * The earniugs last year were nearly three and a hdf times those of the year previous, and there is every indication that the current year will be the most profitable one in the company’s history. "