Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 22, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 June 1892 — The Price of Nails and the Tariff. [ARTICLE]

The Price of Nails and the Tariff.

A recent issue of the organ of the American Protective Tariff league was adorned with a picture of a beer keg labeled “wire nails” and of a man in the act of driving a nail into a fence. Beneath this very impressive work of art we read: “It is only a few years ago when, under a new tariff, wire rutile were so dear that farmers could not afford to buy them at all. Now, under the McKinley law, they sell cheaper than ever before, and the farmer can drive them knowing that he is driving absolutely the best and cheapest wire nails in the world.” One one side of the picture is the statement that the tariff tax on wire nails is two ceuts a pound. From a document prepared under the direction of the senate finance committee we loam that two cents a pound is the McKinley rate on wire nails, two inches long or more. And we further learn that the rate under the old law of 1883 was four cents a pound. Was teat the new tariff to which the organ refers under which farmers could not afford to buy wire uails ? If cutting off half the tax has given the American farmer the best and cheapest wire nails in the world, what would be the effect of cutting off the other half ? And of what possible use to any body is the other half if we now have “the cheapest wire nails in the world r If we have the cheapest there can be no need whatever of protection against foreign competition.—Chicago Herald.