Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 14, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 April 1892 — The Game Is Up. [ARTICLE]

The Game Is Up.

The sugar trust, now that it has secured complete control of all of the refineries in the country, and expects to make a profit of over $25,000,000 per year by advancing prices, has stirred up a great deal of excitement among those high-tariff papers which, when the McKinley tariff was being discussed, insisted that only- raw sugars should be put on the free list. They wanted to let the trust get its share of the taxes which are wrung from the people by the tariff, and so induced McKinley to leave a large duty on refined sugar. But now that the sugar trust is collecting its share of the tariff tax, these organs find fault with it because it does not wait until after the Presidential election. The Manufacturer, the ororgan of the high-tariff Manufacturers’ Club, of Philadelphia, calls the trust to account as follows: “Within a few months the political parties will enter upon one of the most important campaigns in the history of the country. The contest will be made chiefly upon the issue of continuance of tariff protection to American industry as that system is, exemplified in the McKinley act. The men whose function it is to maintain the cause of protection before the people, in the press and on the platform, have intended to present as an important part of their argument the fact that the removal of certain of the duties from sugar, by the McKinley act, has conferred large benefit upon consumers without injuring any domestic industry. This is a fact that has come within the personal experience of everybody, and it should have great value in commending to the people the new tariff law and the principles embodied therein. But, before the campaign has begun, certain refiners of sugar, protected in their operations by thetariff law, piopose to put the entire refining industry into the control of a trust, which shall use the monopoly thus obtained to force up the prices of sugar. Congress has provided that many millions of revenue heretofore obtained from sugar duties shall be diverted from the public treasury and be given to the people. The trust, unless the duties given to it by Congress for a wise and fair purpose, proposes in turn to divert a portion of this money’ from the pockets of the people to the pockets of the members of the trust. “Brethren, we say to you that, if the protective system is to be employed for such purposes as this, the game is up. No champion of that system can succeed, even if he were willing to try, in commending to the people, at one and the same time, the protective system and the sugar trust. It is quite impossible to expect the nation to regard with enthusiasm, because it proposed to reduce the price of sugar, a law which enables the sugar trust to defeat that intention. What the purpose of the act is, consumers do not so much care. The thing that appeals most strongly to i them is the actual fact that sugar prices ' have fallen; now, if sugar prices shall I again advance under the manipulation ’ of a protected conspiracy against the I people, it will be useless to commend i consumers to the purpose of Mr. McKin- ; ley. They will conclude, and regret- ; fully, that if the whole benefit 01 the : home duties is not to come to them, it i should go once again into the Treasury • of the tnited States. The opponents of i the protective system will have placed ! in their hands, at tlie most critical moi ment in the history of American protection, a potent weapon with which to assail the protective theory: and we venture to say that there is small reason to doubt that the result will be overwhelming defeat for the protective system. Openly, in view of every man in the nation, there will be unanswerable demonstration that the free traders do not lack justification for their oft-repeated allegation that the protective tariff is used by manufacturers for the purpose of enriching themselves at the cost of iheir fellow-citizens.”