Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 6, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 February 1892 — Who Fays Tariff Taxes? [ARTICLE]

Who Fays Tariff Taxes?

It will be well for those who assert that high tariffs do not raise prices, and that, in any ease, the foreigner pays the tariff tax, to turn their attention to France. On the first of February the French “McKinley bill” went into operation. The duties were raised on all products coming from the United States in retaliation for the high duties imposed on French products by our own McKinley bill. This brief dispatch from Paris tells the story: - “Paris, Feb. 4. —Prices are rising rapidly as a result of the new tariff. Pork and mutton have been advanced 3 pence per pound. Italian and Dutch cheese has risen 100 per cent., and foreign*soap 200 per cent. The extra cost to workmen for necessaries of life is estimated at 1 franc daily.” Our exporters are not aware that they are paying the increased duties. In fact, they do not even know what the new duties aro. But the French laborers realize now what it is to live under a protective tariff, which does not help, but hurts them. An increase in the “cost of the necessaries of life of one franc daily,” or 20 cents, is the tribute which they pay to highly protected monopolies. Here is food for reflection for those who have been deluded into the belief that the foreign manufacturer, not the home consumer, pays the tariff tax.