Democratic Sentinel, Volume 15, Number 40, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 October 1891 — Who Pays the Tariff Tax? [ARTICLE]

Who Pays the Tariff Tax?

The American Economist, organ of the Protective Tariff League, asserts that binding twine has fallen in price from cents per pound in October, 1890, to 11 cents per pound now. And a Kansas paper, taking up the cue, says, “Will some free-trader kindly tell us why the best binding twine costs only 10 cents per pound now, where one year ago it was sold for from 15 to 17 cents per pound? Does an increase in the tariff always result in reducing the price of a commodity to the consumer?” True, binding twine has fallen In price, but not because, as the Kansas paper thinks, of an increase in the duty. McKinley and h's associates tried hard to keep the duty on binding twine where It was in the tariff of 1883, but the same forces which compelled him to put sugar oh the free list, namely the Representatives of the Northwestern States, also demanded as the price of their votes on his tariff that manila, sisal grass, jute, and sunn, the materials from which binding twine is made, should be put on the free list, and that the duty on binding twine should be lowered. The following were the changes made in these duties: Materials. Old Tariff. New Tariff. Manila $23 per ton Free 6lßal gran *ls per ton Free Bunn ~...*15 per ton Ire© Jute *2O per cat Free Binding twine... .21$ cents per 1b 7-14 ct Protected by a high tariff of 2% cents per pound, the twine trust was able to charge the farmers high prices and force them to pay besides the duty on the raw material. Now, however, since the materials have been put on the free list and the duties on twine reduced the farmers get their twine cheaper. The American Economist and the Kansas organ of high tarifflsra are at perfect liberty to get all the consolation they desire from this. All the farmer wants is the facts in the case, and he can be trusted to draw his own conclusions. In short he has already begun to learn who pays the tariff tax, his first two lessons being on sugar and binding twine.

In May, 1810. the McKinley bill was advocated by its author on the express ground that it wou d check the business hereof foreign merchants and diminish the importation of competing foreign goods. Then its advocates did not want to conceal the fact that this was its chief purpose; they wanted their countrymen to know it In October, 1891, they not only seek to conceal this purpose, Dut try to make people believe that the real object of the bill was to increase the importation of foreign goods. McKinley himse f, who a year and a half ago “viewed with alarm” the figures giving the value of our imports, and promised that his bill would check such importations, now “points with pride” to the fact that imports have really increased, and applauds Senator Sherman while the latter boas T s that the law comes nearer the ideal of free trade than any previous tariff ‘act Evidently the lesson of the elections of 1890 was not lost even upon McKinley.—N. Y. Evening Post A correspondent asks the Cleveland Leader where the money required for the payment of the sugar bounty -» obtained, “from the duty on imports, or,

directly or indirectly, from the people of the United States. ” This inquiring person appears to have been taught that the “duty on imports" is not paid by the people of this country, but is contributed to the National Treasury by for eign manufacturers. The Leader makes this reply; “Most of the money paid as bounty to the producers of sugar comes from the duty on imports, but it is a direct outlay by the people of the United States.” How can it be a direct outlay by the people of this country if the duties are paid, not by them, but by foreigners?—New York Times.