Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 6, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 February 1892 — ABSURD STUMPORATORY [ARTICLE]

ABSURD STUMPORATORY

HOW IT IS NOW DEALT OUT IN OFFICIAL REPORTS. Coßfniiman W. L. Wilson Writes a Caustic Criticism of Secretary Foster’s Argument for a High Tariff—At Whose Expense Is the Wool Crusade Conducted? ProstitrAlng Public Documents. The Secretary of the Treasury, in his recent report to Congress, lapses into a reminiscence of the Ohio campaign when he says: “I do not believe that any considerable number of the people desired to see the manufacturing industries destroyed or wages reduced to the Europeiui standard, which would be the Inevitable result of a reduction of duties with a view to, revenue only. ” This is the utterance of a stump speaker who U6es boldness of assertion for argument, not the careful statement of a finance minister who has examined the industries and commerce of his country, for the very report in which it appears contains in immediate connection with it an overwhelming proof of its absurdity. The Secretary declares that a reduction of duties to the basis of a tariff for revenue only would inevitably destroy our manufacturing industries or reduce wages to the European standard. Revenue duties, according to the accepted definition of tariff reformers, aro those rates of taxation that will bring the largest income to the public treasury. Higher than these the law should never go, but it may place a lower duty on any article or for good reasons place it on the free list. This was the rule announced by the framers of the tariff of 1846, and Secretary Walker declared that experience had shown that a rate of about 20 per ceirt. was the revenue rate. Now in the vast majority of cases a duty of 20 per cent, on the finished product would far more than equalize the difference in wages in our own country and abroad, and the “incidental protection” of a revenue tariff would be ample so far as the question of wages is at issue. But Secretary Foster may say that by a tariff for revenue only he means -a tariff purged of all protection, incidental or otherwise, and I will give him the benefit of this latter meaning. Whenever an industry is able to supply our own market, and also to compete in foreign markets, it is clear even by the admissions of protectionists that it needs no protection. In other words, taking the rule as laid down by Prof. Denslow, whose book has been indorsed by Major McKinley and the foremost protectionists, wherever we do not produce an article ourselves, and wherever we produce more than we can confniftre, 'a tariff cannot protect. Thus a tariff on coffee, of which we produce none, and a tariff on wheat and cotton, of which we produce a great surplus, could not be protective. ■ If now we turn to the statement of our foreign commerce as made by the Secretary, we find that during the fiscal year of 1891 we exported of the products of agriculture about $650,000,000 in value. These products were sold in the world’s markets subject to the competition of the freest trade. They were produced in our home market subject to the high rates and grievous burdens of our protective tariff, and the difference between the wages of farm hands in the United States and farm hands in other .countries is far greater than the difference in any of the manufacturing industries that cry so lustily for protection. The wages of farm laborers in Dakota are from $24 to S3O a month, in Rhenish Prussia they are $4 to $6 a month, and in India still less. Why are not the agricultural industries destroyed when subjected to such competition as this, and why, according to Secretary Foster’s reasoning, are not wages reduced “to the European standard?” But turning again to his report we find that, our exports of manufactures last year reached the value of $170,0.00,000. If these industries could compete with the foreigner in neutral markets after paying the cost of getting to these markets, would they be destroyed or even distressed by a competition in our home market where they would escape that cost?

Moreover, an examination of the manufactures 6ent out of the country will show that they are not as a rule the products of our cheapest labor, but of our best paid and most skilled labor. Thus the very industries which show the greatest ability to compete with like foreign industries are those in which the highest wages are paid. We send out scarcely any woolen goods, although the average wages fortheir production for each hand (Massachusetts Statistics of Manufactures, 1890) is $367 a year, but we export largely of agricultural implements where the wages reach an average of SSOO per hand; of chemical preparations, where we pay $564 a year wages; of clocks and watches,where the average yearly wages are $656 per employe, and I may add here that the Waltham Watch Company, of Massachusetts, has three times secured the contract for supplying the India railroads in competition with all the watchmakers of Europe. We export $10,000,000 worth of leather and leather goads where the wages paid are $513 and more per employe; locomotives, sewing machines, musical instruments, and many other articles where the average yearly earnings of the American employe are often twice as large as •those paid anywhere else in the world except in England. In fact, the Secretary Would find, had he given the returns before him that careful study that ought to have been the basis of any official utterances on his part, that, paradoxical as it may at first sound, it is a law of modern production that the higher the wages the cheaper the product, and that the high wage paying countries are precisely those who have nothing to fear in the competition of the general markets. And if he had with equal care examined into the experience of our own country under past tariffs, he would have found that it was squarely the reverse of his off-hand and partisan prophecy. — Congressman W. L. Wilson, in St. Louis Republic.