Democratic Sentinel, Volume 14, Number 35, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 September 1890 — TARIFF LEITERS TO FARMER BROWN. [ARTICLE]

TARIFF LEITERS TO FARMER BROWN.

NO. 1. The Meaning.of Some Tarin Words. Dear Farmer Brown: Your letter asking me to tell .you all I can about the tariff is at hand. I need not tell you I am glad to knew that you are Interested in that subject, and that your son Joe, too, wants to know the meaning of “all this talk about the tariff, anyway.” One thing, though, at the start. We shall have to talk politics; or, rather, there shall be a division of the labor. I will do all the talking and you all the listening. Yes; we. shall have to talk politics. We cannot do as a Farmers’ \lliance in a Western State did. They met together not long ago to try to find out what is the matter with the farmer; but, as some of th“se farmers were Republicans and some Democrats, they agreed beforehand that there should be no talk about politics. When they ruled out politics of course they ruled out the tariff, too; for, although the tariff is not at bottom a political question at all, it has unfortunately become such by the action of the two political parties, and you and I shall have to accept things as they are. Well, these farmers talked a long time about their depressed condition; one thought this was to blame and another thought that was at fault —all agreeing unanimously on one point—that there was a very big screw loose somewhere. These good farmers thought it was bettor to have harmony than to let anybody talk tariff in the meeting. Well, they got their harmony—all they bargained so after a fruitless discussion they prudently passed a resolution to the effect that they did not know what- was the matter with them, and they went home. I do not claim that the tariff is the only screw loose in the farmers’ machinery, but I do know that thetariff screw is loose, and as you have asked me to tell you all I know about the tariff, I shall confine myself to that particular screw.

This letter I intend mainly for Joe as a sort of tariff ABC. We shall start right down at the stump; and as there arc many other Joe# in your county, I shall send a copy of this letter, and. of all my letters, to the county papers, in order that these other Joes and the daddies of these Joes may read them, too. Now, then, after all this preliminary rubbish, wo will teach Joe the tariff A BC. By this I mean the simplest terms that he hears in “all this talk about the tariff anyway”—such as per cent., ad valorem, duties, specific duties, and compound duties. Other expressions will be explained hereafter when we come to them. The first thing for me to make plain is the expression per cent. The full form of it is per centum, which is a Latin expression meaning, “By the hundred.” If you put it into dollars and cents it means precisely the same as the expression we hear so often, “so much on the dollar.” A man fails and settles with his creditors, we say, “at so much on the dollar,” or we sometimes say he pays a certain per cent, of his debts —and the two things are precisely the same in meaning. Now let us apply this to the tariff. When the law says that a duty shall be so much per cent, the meaning is that the tax to be added to the first cost will be so much on the dollar. For example, the new tariff bill taxes common spectacles such as yours and old Auntie Brown’s at 60 per cent. This means that when the New York merchant brings these spectacles into the country he has to pay the Government 60 cents on every dollar’s worth of them. If, for example, he brings in SIOO worth of spectacles he will have to pay the Government S6O, making the total cost to him $l6O. ■' Let us go a little further with these spectacles and see how the New York merchant will sell them. In calculating the money which he intended to make, he counts it by per cent. also. We will suppose that he set out to make 20 per cent., that is to say, 20 cents on the dollar. Twenty cents on the dollar on this SIOO worth of spectacles would be S2O, and if there were no duty he would sell the spectacles for $l2O. But we have already seen that the Government has made him pay $l6O for the spectacles, so he will have to count his profits on this basis. Twenty cents on the dollar, then, or twenty per cent of $l6O, will be $32, and he will have to sell his SIOO worth of spectacles for $192. In this way each pair of spectacles will cost about three prices by the time they reach you. Those duties which are counted at so much on the dollar are called “ad valorem” duties. “Ad valorem” is Latin, again, and means “according to value,” just like “so much on the dollar.” But most of the duties are not counted In this way; by far the larger part are what are called specific duties, that is to say, a certain fixed sum on each pound, bushel, gallon or yard. A duty of this kind looks simpler than an ad valorem duty; but if you do set kuew

the first price any article by thi pound, bushel, gallon or yard you are all at sea; you cannot tell whether the duty is high or low. For example, the new tariff bill puts a duty of $2.75 a pound on leaf tobacco, if the stems have been removed. Now, if this tobacco costs $5 a pound, $2.75 would not be a very high duty under our present high tariff. But get the average price of this tobacco, and you have smooth sailing. The average price, as stated by the Senate committee, is 57 cents a pound. Now change this specific duty into an nd valorem duty, and we find that for every dollar’s worth of this tobacco the buyer will have to pay a duty of $4.81 —or a total of $5.81 —instead of sl, the first cost of the pound of tobacco. For SIOO worth, therefore, we would pay $5Bl. Besides these two kinds of duties, there is a third called “compound duties,” and this is a very wicked kind. It means that both kinds are put upon the same article; after the buyer has paid so much by the bushel, pound, or yard he has to pay so much on every dollar’s worth; in other words, the duty is both specific and ad valorem, a cross-fire from two directions. As an example let us take the new duty on the cloth from which women and children’s dresses are made. This duty is 12 cents a yard and 50 per cent, ad valorem. Now, the average first cost of goods of this kind, as stated by the Senate committee, is about 20 cents a yard. Fifty per cent, of this would be 10 cents, then adding the 12 cents a yard we get 22 cents, and the yard costing 20 cents is made by the tariff to cost 42 cents. On every dollar’s worth, therefore, the duty is slightly more than 110 per cent. In other words, when a merchant buys SIOO worth of such goods the total cost will be $210.33. Of course he is compelled to charge this increased price up to his customers, and it goes on along the line till it reaches the women and children who wear the cloth, and there the head of the family pays the whole bill finally. No more shifting down the Une then. That will do for the present. Watch for next. Yours truly, Richard Knox.

Blaine's Brilliant Foreign Policy. Mizner, the United States Minister to Guatemala, is a Jim Blaine sort of a diplomat. He evidently took the Secretary of State at his word, and made up his mind to give the United States a spirited foreign policy, so far as Central America was concerned. He has been involved in scandal over since he reached his post, and he is now in danger of losing his life. Mr. Blaine has a paternalistic and adventurous policy as to Central and South America which takes no thought of the independence or the pride of the republics to the south of us. He would marshal them into line and make them our satellites. Ho would quarter? his friends upon them, and when they got their arms into the spoils up to their elbows he would send-such choice, diplomatic messages as that which Minister Hurlbut in Peru received from him in 1881, viz.: “Go it, Steve!” He would boss the continent, and, if war came, he and his contractor friends would profit by it as they did from 1861 to 1865. Mr. Mizner went to Guatemala thoroughly impressed with Mr. Blaine’s brilliant foreign policy and has sought to carry it out. He has forced this country to make one humble apology already and now he has managed to get a man killed on an American ship where he had sought refuge, and probably we will be compelled to pay a big indemnity for that. Heretofore Mr. Blaine’s dazzling foreign policy has been largely in your eye, but Mr. Mizner has given us an ocular demonstration of its real nature.— Chicago Herald. Why He Lett the G. O. P. Mr. W. F. Neat, of Kentucky, a Republican ex-State Senator, has deserted the G. O. P. He is proud of having been “a Republican, who voted for Abraham Lincoln for President, and for every other Republican candidate since his election,” but now Mr. Neat finds McKinleyism too heavy a burden to be borne, and so he shakes off the tariff dust from the soles of his shoes forever. He says: ‘T am opposed to fostering and building up monopolies. I am opposed to the McKinley tariff bill, gotten up, as the report of the hearings before the Ways and Means Committee clearly shows, in the interest of the capitalists and against the common people. I am opposed to legislation under the guise of protection so fraught with evil to the country that Secretary Blaine, a protectionist, becomes alarmed. McKinley Not a Hero, but a Dupe. McKinley is the creature and tool of a gigantic conspiracy against the United States. He is not a hero. He is a dupe. He is not even the author of the conglomeration of selfishness and plunder that is known by his name. It bears the finger-marks of all the monopolists in the country. It was cooked up by them in the room of the Committee on Ways and Means, where no man appeared for the people and where there was no pretense that the measure was other than spoils and plunder. The Ohio Democrats who gerrymandered him into a Democratic district dignified a weak sister by giving him an opportunity to raise the cry of persecution. That is all there is in McKinley.—Chicago Herald. Who Is Favored? Some years ago the salt makers in Western New York State asked for protection and it was given to them. This protection enabled them to make such handsome profits in the home market that they could afford to sell their salt at lower prices in Canada than in the United States. For some years Canadian farmers bought New York salt at lower prices than New York farmers living a mile from the salt works. The same thing is still true of many of our protected manufactures, especially of our farm implements. It is proved beyond all doubt that our plows, harrows, horse-rakes, in fact, all farm machinery, is sold at much lower prices abroad than at home. This fact is admitted by manufacturers themselves. If anybody doubts whether the tariff is a tax, let him reflect upon the meaning of this fact: In France there fe a duty on coffee of slightly less than 14 cents a pound; and the very same coffee that retails with us for 30 cents a pound is retailed at 44 cents in France. And yet there are so-called Republican statesmen who try to make people believe that the tariff is not a tax! The manufacturers of morocco leather in Lynn, Mass., are having trouble with their labor, and all the shops are going to close for the present. These manufacturers are protected, but protectfbn somehow has failed to make It ’ear happy Lyua.