Democratic Sentinel, Volume 15, Number 25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 July 1891 — A M’KINLEY TRUST. [ARTICLE]

A M’KINLEY TRUST.

THE WHIP MAKERS TO ENJOY M'KINLEYISM. Organised lir Tariff Spalls and Whip* Are Higher than Ever—Closing Out Petty Rivals—A Mo topoly es Materials—What Will Labor Get?—Tariffs and Trusts Akin. Another McKinley trust has come to light. It is a whip trust. Last year the McKinleyites raised the duty on whips, and now the whip manufacturers have combined to take possession of what was so freely given them. The* whip makers do not understand what protection means if it does not mean higher prices; they know of no other way to realize what Maj. McKinley calls the “beneficiencies” of protection, than through higher prices. Hence it is announced that whips are already higher now than ever before, and one of the monopolists adds, “with a chance of a rise in price as the stock grows scarce. ” This enterprising infant trust has provided, moreover, that stocks shall “run scarce. ” The trust got control of the rattan market and shut off tho smaller whip concerns from their supply of this indispensable material. Without rattan whips cannot be made; and with the smaller whip factories closed up and their workman out of employment, where dees labor come for its portion of the blessings which were to follow McKinley’s increased duties on whips? Labor simply gets left once more, and as usual a grasping monopoly pockets the tariff plums. The whip trust is a McKinley trust Under the old tariff whips covered with leather were taxed in a general “basket clause” at 30 per cent ; but this “basket clause” of the leather schedule was pushed up by McKinley to 35 per cent. Most whips, howev-r, are covered with flax, and here McKinley got in more of his “basket clause” work, by which whips of this kind were made dutiable at 50 per cent., in place of the old duty of 40 per cent. Tho McKinleyites have no right to condemn the whip trust. This trust, like all the tariff trusts, is simply a means by which to harvest the tariff ulums. The purpose of a protective tariff is to enab'e protected interests to chargo higher prices for thei&goods, since this is the only possible way in which protection can protect But a trust seeks to bring about precisely the same result. Tho trusts themselves understand perfectly that they are working to accomplish, by combination, exactly tho same thing that protection aims at by socalled legal methods. President Havemoyer, of the sugar trust, blurted out this kinship between protection and trusts last year when certain high-tariff organs were assailing that great monopoly. Here aro the frank and honest words of the sugar king: “The great cry of one of the great parties is for protection; that is, they cry for it loudly during campaigns. But when we proceed to give ourselves some protection a howl is raised. They demand protection for the industries. When an industry protects itself it is said that it is illegal.”