Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 10, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 March 1892 — EXTRACTS FROM MR. McMILLIN’S GREAT PLEA FOR LESS TAXATION. [ARTICLE]

EXTRACTS FROM MR. McMILLIN’S GREAT PLEA FOR LESS TAXATION.

Hon Benton McMillin, of Tennessee, in opening the debate on the bill to put woo on the free list and reduce the duties on woolens, in part said: “Mr. Chairman: The last Congress imposed the highest tariff taxes ever levied m this country. It also made the most extravagant appropriations ever made here in time of peace. This Congress was sent here to correot both evils. The expenditures including ’permanent appropriations in the two years for whioh the last Congress appropriated, besides the deficiencies, aggregated $1,009,000,000, S4O per family annually, or ssoo,ooo,ooo—each year—about one-thirdof all the money in existence in tie United States When we take from our currency the $100,0(H),000 of fold held fcr redemption purposes in the ’reasury, the reserves required in the national banks, and the different reserves .held from circulation in other ways, we find that these expenditures reached annually between one-third and on -half of all the money in actual circulation. Can there be permanent prosperity while onehalf or even one third of all the money has to go through the hands of a Federal tax-gatherer every year, besides the taxes for State, oounty Snd municipal purposes? There is a remedy. Impose less taxes and spend less m >uey! That is what th s Congress means and means to do. “Mr. Chairman, the tariff law has now been in operation for one year and five months. Where are the beneficial effeots that we eto flow from it? Where is that magnificent price the farmer and wool gri wer was to realize from it? Where are the increased wages the laboring man was to get? Has that millennium of general prosperity its friends promised come?

“I speak in the hearing of the representatives of our 63,000,000 people. I see before me many men who voted for that monstrous measure. If the facts were with lbern they would proclaim them to the world. I defy contradiction when I say the farmer has realized from two to three oents less on the pound from his wool than he did before, The millennium *of prosperity has not yet dawned, and seems farther away than ever. And I challenge any representative here to point to a single line of manufactures in which the laborers’ wages have been increased by that law. * * * *•* .# m *

HIGH HATES op DUTY. “Sir, in the speech which I made on this tl or protesting against the passage c f this legal outrage. I gave, so far as it was possible ,in advance, the extortionate lates which would result if the McKinley bill became a law,

I told you th* n that blankets, flannels and hats would, on some of the lower grades, be taxed as high as 110 per cent. In the last heme consumption statemont from the. bureau of statistics, some blankets imported last year under this bill actually paid 100.12 per cent.; flannels for n derwear, 105.90 p reent.; andhats. 109.15. I told you, then, with some miggivings, I admit, as assuming responsibility for a statement so directly at variance witi. those of the then majoritythat the effect of the proposed rate on yarns would burden the wool manufacturer us well as th» people as high as 100 per cent, op some kinds; and your statistician tells you that under that bill there has been collected since its passage on thousands of pounds of yarns duties as hi h as 120 per cent. 1 warned you then that the proposed rates on worsted shawls won d amount to as much as 93 psr oent. Your statistician shows you that it is over 155 per cent. I told you that Knit goods wo'd have to pay under this bill as high as 147 per oent. Your statistician shows that they actually paid as high as 323 and over.

DUTY on wool. “The duty on wool was in 1867 placed at 11 cents a pound on unwashed wool. This was by an agreement entered into between the National Association of Wool Manufact rers and the National Association of Wool Growers; and they diet .ted the terms to congress. It was claimed that this would foster the sheep Industry and increase the value of wool to the far a er. Let us see what the results were. In 18t 8, the year after the enaotment of the law raising the duty on wool, there were 37,685,000 sheep in the Statesßeugt of the Missouri and Mississippi rivsrs. In 1891 there were only 18,476,000 sheep in the same territory, a reduction of more than one-half in the twenty-four years when high, tariff on wool had been in force—this in faoe of the faot that the population in those States was vastly increased. If the increase of heep had kept paoe with the increase of popnlation there would have been probably 75,000,000. “Great things were promised to the State of Ohio in the way of increase of the sheep husbandry by increased tax on wool. That State had in 1868 6,730,000 sheep; in 1870 it had only 4,928,000; in 1880, 4,080,000; in 1883, 5,050,000, an 1 in 1890 it had but 3,943,000, the ugh in 1891 it had 4,161,000. A falling off of more than one-third in the State of Ohio dnr*nß Ihe twenty-one years of protective tariff on wool, and in that time the population had increased more than 1,000,0 f 0. “Mr. Chairman, the results are not more encouraging in the State of Illinois, which had in 1868 2,730,000 sheep, and in 1891 only 771,000. So I might go on thro’ the Eastern States. A thorough investigation of the question shows that the increase in the sheep husbandry has been m the West, where the grazing was limitless and cheap. The price of wool at this time is. about one-half what it was at the time of the passage of the act, of March 2, 18t>7. The whole matter may be summed up in th • fact that after twentyfive years of experiment with h'vh rates O duty on wool, the renolt haa been a red icnon of one half in the number of seeep in states east of t 'e Mississippi and Missouri rivers, and^reduction of abont one-half in the pric. of wool. “8 r, it is s isceptible furthermore of demonsrration—we have had calculations made that sstabli-lithe fact—that r- ducfing the import duties to a gold basis during the j eriod prior to our resumption of specie payments, the Port Philip fleece wool, which corresponds to onr Ohio medium wool, has borne substantially the same price in London that the Ohio .vocl has borne in the ity of Boston. I cha - leugo eontrudiotion when 1 say that after all this enormous increase in the rates of duty on wool, tae average difference in the price of the two countries has not been 2 cents a pound.*

manufactukes bestbicted. “The wool manufacturers have been re, stricted as to the quality of wool they co’d afford to buv in the grease by reason of the tariff; they ave been restricted in markets substantially to theirown conntrv They ha e been forced to use shoddy as a substitute for woo*. The rags that had already fallen from the backs of beggars in other countries have been need as a substitute for wool. So great was this that a petiti n came up fre m ons city,

Philadelphia, signed by Mr. Herwig aud others, introduced by Mr. Harmer, a republican member and protectionist, claiming to represent 40,000 laborers in textile industries, . omanding free wool for the manufacture i of the United States, The tax of 11 cents a pound on wool, it must be remembered, is not a tax on pure wool, but is 11 cents a pound on all the grease of the wool, and all t dirt in too grease, aud i&Bßtimated to amount to 44 cents on every pound of f lushed cloth. “Let me read a few words from that petition; ‘Now, it oanuot be the difference in the wages that is causing all this, when tho entiie wags account in the worsted and woolen iuuugmos is but 17.7 percent, of the product and in the cotton industries is but 20.88 per cent, of thejproduot, and it stands to reason that this very smalt account can play but a very trifling part in internati'nal trade; and this aptly illustrates the folly of the great hubbub about wages that is made in most of the discussions of this question,’

“Bear in mind these are practical workmen, not the owners of hooks, not the owners of factories, but the men who, after tne commandment of God, ‘eat their biead in the sweat of their faoes.’ “Then the whole lebor oost in the manufacture of woolens and of worsteds is jess than 20 per cent., and in this bill the j lowest rate of duty is fixed at 25 per oent.! Then if any man goes forth from this hall who, moved an.i seduoed by ti e wiles of Satan and not having the fe. r of tho Lord before his eyes, deolares that there is not a sufficient amount of tax left on these things to cover the labor that is embraced in them, you can denounce him neither too-foolish to know the truth or too kna- I vish to declare it. ”