Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 12, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 April 1892 — PRICES OF TIN PLATE. [ARTICLE]

PRICES OF TIN PLATE.

HOW MR. CRONEMEYER JUGGLES FIGURES. He Tries to Show that Tin Plate Pries Have Not Gjvally Advanced—Tariff* and Exports—Coffee Is Taxed—Effect ol the Wool Duty. Cronemeycr’s Compilation. Some days ago we notieed the simultaneous publication in sevoral hightariff journals of some remarks about the price of tin plate said to have been made by William C. Cronemeyer, who was for some years Secretary of tiio American Tinned Plate Association, and is netj ih-t President rt th: J'alted States Irofi and “in Plate Manufacturing Company. Alir. Cronemeyer has for years been familiar with statistics relating to tin plate', and tho assertions ascribed to him were so far from the truth that we were unwilling to believe that he made them. It now appears, however, that these statements concerning prices were made by Mr. Cronomeyer in a letter written by him cn Feb. 8 and real at the recent convention of the Western Packers’ Canned Goods Association. They were as follows: "Two years ago the duty was only 1 cent per pound, or SI.OB per box, and a box of coke tin plate cost in New York $5,20; to-day tho duty is 2 2-10 cents per pound, or $2.37 per box, and the price of coke [tin plate] in New York is $5.35 per box; increase in duty $1.30 per box, increase in price only 15 cents per box.” This has been going tho rounds of the high-tariff press. The Chicago Inter Ocean published it with tho custoihary comments, forgetting that it had published only six weeks earlier in its own trade reports a table of prices which showed that tho price of tin plate in February, 1890, “two years ago,” had' been only $4:50, instead of $5.20. The Tariff League’s Bulletin, or American Economist, brought it out for the benefitof the 2,000 journals to which it supplies McKinleyism in stereotyped plates. In many places it served as a text for learned discourses in journals that do not look to the Bulletin for all their high-tariff essays. The Portland Oregonian appears to have relied upon a treacherous memory, lor it surpassed Cronemeyer in the following assertion: “Two years ago the duty was only 1 cent a pound. Now the duty is 2 2-10 cents; yet the price is no higher. ”

The Rochester Democrat and Chronicle quoted the assertions of Cronemeyer’ s letter, and remarked that “this trifling increase is not perceptible to the consumer or tho retail grooer, and is but an insignificant item to the canning trade.” We might point to dozens of papers which have asked their readers to believe this story about the price of tin plate “two years ago.” The truth is that the price tor the month of February, 1890, was $4.50, and that the price declined in the following three months. In May, 1890, it fell to $4.35, and from that point, immediately after the passage of the McKinley bill in the House, it began to rise. The price when Cronemeyer wrote his letter, $5.35, was $1 per box higher than the price paid just before the passage of the bill in the House, and 85 cents higher than the price in February, 1890. No one is more familiar with the history of prices in the tin-plate trade than Mr. Cronemeyer has been for some years. It is announced that this same William C. Cronemeyer has been appointed by the Tin Plate Manufacturers’ Association a member of a committee of two persons which is to “have full charge of the matter of an exhibit at the Republican convention at Minneapolis.” Mr. Cronemeyer, as Secretary of the American Tinned Plate Association, had “full charge” of an exhibition of tin plate In Pittsl*urg, in September, 1889. While conducting that exhibition he published and distributed a circular in which he and his association said: “To counteract and offset the selfish greed of these importers is the aim of the American Tinned Plate Association, and for that purpose it has erected this plant to awaken the interest of the public and to demonstrate that tin plates can be made here as well as anywhere in the world. And it is a fact, and we can prove it by figures, that they can be made here and sold with profit at present selling prices. ” What were those prices? The Iron Age shows that tin plate was selling here then at $4.30 per box, and that the price had not been higher in any of the preceding months of that year. This price was within five or ten cents of the lowest on record. It was lower than the prico of tin plate when the higher duty was demanded by Cronemeyer and his associates from the McKinley Ways and Means Committee. But even at those figures it was possible, Cronemeyer and his association said, to make tin plate here and sell It at a profit under the old duty of 1 cent a pouna. At the Minneapolis convention Cronemeyer should resurrect and explain the circular of 1889, but before the date of that convention he should withdraw the deliberate misstatements in his letter of Feb. 8, 1892. Cronemeyer professes to despise a “tin-plate liar.”—Now York Times.