Democratic Sentinel, Volume 15, Number 41, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 October 1891 — A Dead Loss. [ARTICLE]

A Dead Loss.

The standing bids for American tinplate are still unanswered, as the entire “output” seems to be required to supply the Republican campaign committees with badges which all sensible people are ashamed to wear. In the meantime the canning business is being very seriously cramped. Before the tax on tinplate was increased, small canning factories were beginning to spring up through the West, relying on neighborhood supply of fruits and vegetables, and making a living profit both for themselves and the farmers. The business, of course, depends wholly on having tin cans plentiful and cheap. Otherwise these small factories cannot preserve the food at a profit, and it is left to rot In the fields. The farmers of Howard county, Indiana, had such a canning factory at Kokomo, as a “home market” for their surplus vegetables, but the ’McKinley bill forced an advance oi over 25 per cent in the price of cans. The result is the demoralization of this new industry, which was one of the few the East could, not take from the West “The farmers of Howard county planted hundred of acres of tomatoes, ” says the Kokomo Dispatch. . “The crop is excellent and every grower stood to realize from 835 to 8100 per acre. There is no chance of this now. To-day the. Kokomo Canning Works refused to receive another bushel of the vegetable for an indefinite time. The reason given is that cans for packing the tomatoes cannot be had. Thousands of bushels are rotting in the yards at the works. Tons upon tons are decaying in the fields. The loss to Howard County farmers cannot be counted in less than five figures. No wonder they are asking for the whereabouts of the ‘infant tin industries ’ * The loss hero is a “dead loss. ” The tinplate combine does not gain it. They get their profit under the tax in other directions. Here this food, which under fair trade would have been marketed to feed the poor of the cities, is lost to them, and the labor required for its production is likewise lost Where plenty is created as a natural result of labor and trade, artificial scarcity is produced by the tax on trade. The result is a dead loss, in this case as in every case of taxation levied to produce artificial scarcity.— St Louis Republic.