Democratic Sentinel, Volume 15, Number 10, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 March 1891 — PROTECTING RAISINS. [ARTICLE]

PROTECTING RAISINS.

Tariff (o<t to the Country—California Raisin Business A’rearty Prosperous. Perhaps no single item show’s so well the sting of the tariff as raisins The Census Bureau has just made public, the statistics of grape and rais'n production for 1880. By comparing these statistics and those of raisin imports for 1890 very striking results are obtained. According to the census returns, 41,166 tons of grapes were used for making raisins last year, producing 1,372,195 boxes of raiolns, weighing 27,440,000 pounds. Besides these' raisins fit for table use, 23.252 tons of grapes were dried for other purposes, like cooking It would be safe to estimate the dried grape product at 14,000,000 pounds. Nearly all of the abovo were produced in California. The Ncw r York Merchants' Review estimates the price of California raisins at lu cents a pound, and of tho dried grapes at 7 cents. On this basis the raisin product of the country last year was worth $2,744,000, and tho dried grapes $980,000, a total cf $3,724,(0 ). Now the Treasury Department reports that during the year ending Dec. 31, 1890, we imported 44,798,000 pounds of raisins, valued at $2,315,000, or a trifle above 5 cents a pound. Tho old duty on raisins was 2 cents a.pound: the McKinley duty is 2% cents. The McKinlov duty on last year's importation? would have been $1,119,900. This is the sum which the taxpayers are now compelled to pay to insure big profits to the California raisin producers. The raisin business is already so profitable in that State that men have been rushing into it headlong. A California paper has recently stated that the vineyards of that State already in bearing, and those planted but not yet in bearing, will have a ca pacity of 7,750, CO3 boxes of raisins, or 155,000,000 pounds. The annual protection, then, guaranteed by the tariff law will be equal to $3,875,000. But there is another side to this matter. The California raisins are of very excellent quality and readily bring 10 cent-t a pound wholesale, while most of the foreign raisins arc not up to the California standard of quality, and are bought mostly by poorer people. This may be seen from the fact that the imported raisins come in at about Scents a pound. The California raisins find their way mostly to the tables of men who are able to buy tho best quality of food. Why should the cheap raisins of tho poor bo taxed one-half of their value; in order that, the prosperous vineyard ow’ners of California “iray get a higher price for rais ns so d to the rich? Are not the poor paying too much for the whistle for these California raisin men?