Democratic Sentinel, Volume 15, Number 18, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 May 1891 — American Locomotives. [ARTICLE]

American Locomotives.

The Railway Gazette says: “German locomotives are said to cost, on an average, SII,OOO each. Our native establishments would be overjoyed at such prices. It has not, we believe, been questioned that the Americans can produce better as well as cheaper engines. The closer the comparison between the railway systems of this country and the old world the more reason we have to be proud of the skill of our artisans and the progressive spirit of our manufacturers.” Last year tho Baldwin Locomotive Works, of Philadelphia, built locomotives for the new railway between Jaffa and Jerusalem, in Palestine. It was to this fae»t that one of the speakers at the late protectionist banquet in New York referred when he triumphantly exclaimed: “It is due to this policy [protection] that the ruins of the ancient world vibrate with the shrieks of a Philadelphia locomotive.” Not long ago a ship steamed out from Philadelphia with an entire cargo of Baldwin locomotives bound for Australia. Last year we exported 161 locomotives, valued at $1,280,000, or slightly less than SB,OOO apiece. Facts like these certainly prove that we are abundantly able to manufacture locomotives in competition with all the world. Yet what does Major McKinley do? He put a duty of 1.8 cents per pound on all locomotives. This means a duty of $40.32 per ton, or a total duty of $1,128 on a standard passenger locomotive weighing twenty eight tons. There is absolutely no need and no excuse for this duty. The only purpose it\an serve is to enable the few manufacturers of locomotives to keep up prices in the home market at the same time that they are selling their locomotives in successful competition with all the world. Silly people, who are still asking whether the tariff is a tax, can find an answer in the fact that granulated sugar is now selling in the United States at from to cents per pound, whi e just across the border in Canada, the price is seven cents. The difference, you see is just this: Canada has a duty of 1 cent per pound and 35 per cent, ad valorem on refined sugar. Is the tariff a tax? Since Germany undertook to protect itself from American pork by an absolutely prohibitory law, the prices of all kinds of hog-meats have advanced 40 to

«W per cent, in that country. Meantime Germany's imports of our ho? products have fallen from §11,000,000 in 3881, to a very low figure last year, excepting tho single item of iard, which is still imported under a duty of about I cent per pound. Aside from lard, Germany took from us last year only a little more than §200,000 worth of hog-meats.