Democratic Sentinel, Volume 14, Number 51, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 January 1891 — TARIFF VETTERS TO FARMER BROWN. [ARTICLE]

TARIFF VETTERS TO FARMER BROWN.

NO. 18. Dmi a Tariff Restrict Foreign Trade? Dear Farmer Brown: The question which I put at the head of this letter may seem to be an entirely needless one; since most intelligent men, whether protectionists or tariff reformers, are agreed that protection does restrict importation, and most of those accepting this conclusion agree also that the restriction of importation must necessarily, in the long run, restrict exportation. I” say the question may seem a needless one, but when I take up the protectionist journals and see what they are trying to teach the people, and when I read the utterances of their leading men, I cannot regard the question propounded as being unworty of treatment in these letters. Two such eminent protectionists as President Harrison and Maj. McKinley are not agreed as to the simple question whether a tariff diminishes imports. In his speech in the House of Representatives on the 7th of last May, McKinley combated the. opinion of the Democratic minority of the Ways and Means Committee that the proposed tariff bill would not reduce the revenue, saying: “The very instant that you have increased the duties to a fair protective point, putting

them ahovo the highest revenue point, that very instant you diminish importations, and to that extent diminish the revenue. * This is a very clear and true proposition. Upon it McKinley proceeded to reduce the revenue by increasing taxation, and thus in so far to prevent the people from buying the things which they want. On the other hand, when President Harrison c-ime to write his message to Congress he found that the imports at the port or New York for the first three weeks of November were actually greater than for the corresponding periods In 1889 and in 1888; and he called attention to this singular fact with evident satisfaction as showing that “the prohibitory effect upon importations imputed to the act is not justified. ” Bqt tho President was too hasty in his conclusion that the McKinley law is not reducing importation. Taking as an example the dry goods schedules, in which the increase of duty was relatively much greater than in other parts of the tariff, we find that for the two weeks ending December 24, the imports at New York were only $3,959,338 worth, against £5,376,641 for the corresponding two weeks in 1889, or a difference of $1,417,303. When the President wrote many manufactured goods were still coming in from orders sent off before tho pew tariff law went into ODeration, with the expectation that the goods would be landed before tho expirationof the old law. The goods did not get in in time to avoid the extra McKinley tax, and there was thns no longer any motive to hurry them in. If, however, it should turn out at the end of the fiscal year that our imports have gone on increasing, will this fact prove that the McKinley law has not restricted imports? Our population continued to grow during the four years of the war; can any sane man claim, therefore, that the war did not diminish the population? The thousands who fell on the battlefields were not so many as the children that were born at the same time. Yet we know that the war caused a loss of population, and this loss was revealed in the census of 1870 in the relatively lower rate of increase for the

previous decade than ia the earlier decades. You are not a horse-racer, but you know what a handicap is. When one horse is lighter or swifter than its competitor it is sometimes agreed to handicap the former- A certain quantity of lead is fastened to the saddle in order to diminish the speed and give the other horse a chance to win. Now if the handicapped horse wins the race, notwitstanding that it is weighted with lead, who but a fool would claim that the handicap had not lessened its speed? Yet Jt is such a monstrous claim as this that the protectionist sets up who claims that the tariff does not diminish imports. Such a claim was made in the latest number of the American Economist, the qjrgan of the Protective Tariff League, in an article entitled, “Does Protective Tariff Curtail Foreign Trade?” Its answer to this question is, “Never was a greater fallacy promulgated.” Yet in another column this organ of protect tfonist heresies prints as an article of its own an extract from a speech of Senator Jones, of Nevada, ip the United States Senate oh Sept. 10, in which that Senator ■attempts to show that foreign trade is in itself bad, and is, therefore, not to be desired. “Foreign trade,” he says, “spoils the equilibrium of a nation’s industry; it leaves them one-sided and disjointed, and postpones indefinitely the period of their

natural co-ordination. ” The Senator views with satisfaction “our geographical situation, separated as we are by the fiat of nature from the older forms, tho stagnant conditions, and the imbruting civilizations of other continents.” This was said In defense of a bill which had for its object the diminution of foreign trade, and the words of the Senator were consistent, at least, with that object. And yet what a piece of inconsistency is it for the Economist to print such sentiments as its own, and then attempt to show elsewhere that protection does not curtail foreign trade. In disposing of the whote matter I need not trouble you with a long array of figures. I will only call your attention to the familiar fact, which you have often observed In your own buying, that as the price of goods rises the fewer will be the sales of them. When sugar, for example, is dearest our housekeepers are most economical in the use of it. Fewer pies, cakes, preserves, etc., are made by the great majority of poor and moderately well-to do people; and when clothing is dear they wear their old coats longer to escape buying a new one. Now, when these simple economies of poor people are added together they make a very large stream of loss to the trade of the country. What the people do not buy the retail merchant will not order, and what the retail merchants do not order the wholesale dealers, Importers and agents of manufacturers will not supply. The rise of prices narrows the circle of buyers; and anything which adds to the cost of goods will raise the price to the consumers. A tariff duty on imported goods clearly raises the cost of them, and must therefore increase the price at the same time that it diminishes the buyers of them. The duty on Imported goods is added to the price to the consumer—not only the whole duty, but an extra gain on the duty itself. As those buyers of imported goods are driven away by higher prices, the importation of such goods must necessarily decline. There can be no two opinions about this; It must- be so with absolute certainty. Ti ch aed Ksox