Democratic Sentinel, Volume 15, Number 9, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 March 1891 — Getting Rid or the Sugar Tax. [ARTICLE]

Getting Rid or the Sugar Tax.

The MeKinley law seems to be doomed to teach the people that the tariff is a tax, even where it removes a duty. Raw sugar becomes free April 1, and already refined sugar (No. 4) has been sold in New York in wholesale lots for April delivery at less than 3 % cents per pound. The McKin’eyitos took off the sugar tax in order to prevent the reduction of the tariff on manufactures and in this way to save protection; but free sugar is going to teach the people very clearly that the tariff is a tax, and that it is a goad thing to get rid of such a tax.

The New York Commercial Bulletin has recently printed the following item about the carpet trade: “Carpet men say that body Brussels, velvets, and moquettes have been moving out rather sluggishly of late. This is probably due to the tariff-bred advances established a few weeks ago.” The protection journals, however, keep on protesting that the McKinley law has not caused an advance in pricqs of any of the necessaries of life. Let them quit fibbing, or else give up using carpets as needless luxuries.

It is said that' the Louisiana sugar planters ate preparing to produce an enormous crop of sugar this year in order to pocket as big a slice of the McKinley sugar bounty as possible. Sugarraising being looked upon by the McKinleyites as a public necessity, they vote the people’s taxes away to the sugar-growers to the tune of some $7,009,000 a year. But is sugar-growing any more a public necessity than corngrowing or wheat growing?