Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 4, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 February 1892 — BRAZEN EFFRONTERY. [ARTICLE]

BRAZEN EFFRONTERY.

WORKINGS OF REVENUE AND PROTECTIVE TARIFFS. In the Case of the Tin-Plate Tariff the Poll Duty Has Been Added to the Price —Domestic Manufacturers Can Pocket the Whole Duty. Revenue and Protection. Major McKinley has often undertaken to enlighten the public as to the difference between a revenue and a protective tariff. He thinks that he makes a strong point against a revenue tariff when he tells us that it is > a tax to the full extent of the duty, the total amount of it going into the national treasury, and being used to meet the Government’s obligations. And any duty, he is careful to add, whfleh does not protect some American industry is a revenue duty, not a protective duty. When McKinley took hold of the tariff bill he found a duty of one cent a pound on tin-plate. As there were no tin-plate mills in the United States, he proposed to raise *tbe duty, high enoughto be protective, thus getting rid of a revenue tariff. Niedringhaus, Cronemeyer and a host of others were on hand in Washington to persuade the willing McKinley to double the duty and make it protective, and they would set to work in short order to make tin plates for the American people. The plea of these applicants was a virtual petition to McKinley to pass a law to raise the price of tin-plates to all the people in order that they might make plates at a profit. Their plea was that they could not make plates and sell them in competition with the English plates under the old duty of one cent a pound; for Cronemeyer himself had tried it, and even after adding one cent to his prices the wicked English just would undersell him and drive him out of business. They must be able to add at least another cent before they could feel safe from English competition. Well', the good and patriotic McKinley took them at their word; he raised the duty 2.2 cents per pound—in order to make it protective; in order, that is, to compel freeborn American citizens to buy their plate of Niedringhaus, Cronemeyer, etc., at the enhanced price. Now let us see how the thing will work. Last year we imported 1,036,400,000 pounds of tin, worth, without the duty, $35,700,000, or about 3.4 cents a pound. The old duty on this yielded a revenue of $10,364,000, all of which was paid by the consumers and went into the treasury of the United States. Just here is where the brazen effrontery of Niedringhaus, Cronemeyer, and their abettors in and out of Congress is seen in its true proportions. They said that this ten milllion dollars’ tax was not enough; it must he more than doubled, must be made $22,800,000, and then we shall'have a protective tariff instead of a revenue tariff on tin-plate, with Niedringhaus, Cronemeyer and other prospective manufacturers of tinplate to collect and pocket the tax. We have now had the McKinley tinplate tax in operation since July 1, 1891, but it was practically a certainty a year before that date, and was even then causing prices to go upward with a bound. It was promised by the prospective manufacturers and their friends in Congress that the infant tin-plate mills would be in operation. within a very short time after the law passed, Senator Allison said within a month. Up to the present date no American tin-plate is quoted in our market reports, and the insignificant quantity produced by our manufacturers has cut no figure except as a political curiosity. If, however, the time should ever come when they make all that we need, is anybody so simple as to believe that they will sell it for less than they can get for it in competition with English plates handicapped by a duty of 2.2 cents? Manufacturers are not built that way. Meanwhile prices in the American market have come up to the McKinley tariff notch and even gone beyond it. In January, 1891, the price of tin plates of the largely-used grade known as “Bessemer steel; coke finish, IC basis,” was $5.55 per box in New York, $4.38 in London (difference $1.17), in January, 1891, against $5.70 in New York, $3.06 in London (difference $2.64), in January, 1892. The price in London last year was high, owing to the artificial demand caused by the anticipation of the McKinley tax. Now the price there has dropped back to the figure that prevailed three years ago, and has gone even slightly lower; but with us the price is higher than last year. It is all that the McKinley duty adds to the foreign price, and more, too. Thus McKinley’s tin-plate tax is getting in its work. It is making the people pay about twenty millions a year, so that Niedringhaus, Cronemeyer & Company may make experiments in plate manufacture for political purposes. If these men ever make tin plate there is no more reason to suppose that they will surrender their tariff spoils and sell at foreign prices than the steel rail trust does. A protective tariff is a tariff for private profit and collected by private hands.