Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 23, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 June 1892 — Tariff,Trusts and Tramps. [ARTICLE]

Tariff,Trusts and Tramps.

The June Supplement of the New Y'ork World, edited by Hon. John De Witt Warner, Is made up of “one hundred samples” of tariff trusts, under tho heading, “Conspiracies to Crush Competition, Restrict Product, Raise Prices and Lower Wages.” These trusts embrace most of the articles on which we have effective tariff duties. Among the officers of these trusts will be found hundreds of names published in the New York Tribune’s list of millionaires, thus in part, at least, answering the Tribune’s question as to whether or not tho tariff makes millionaires. We quote tho following lrom Mr. WArner’s preface to these articles: “Trusts are a consequence of human selfishness working under the new conditions of industrial development. Not all of them are consequences of the tariff 'npy more than all crime is a result of drink. It is just as plain, however, that our tariff promotes trusts ae that druukenness breeds crime. “For, in any industry whose produot our Government ‘protects’ by a tariff upon similar articles made abroad, it is in the power of homo manufacturers to extort from our people the full tariff rate as a bonus for their own pockets; whereas if it were not for the tariff no combine would ‘work’ unless it included tlie whole woild. As to a protected industry, therefore, the tariff makes it as much easier to form trusts than it would otherwise be, as it is easier successfully to combine the few manufacturers of a single nation than it is to get and keep together in harmony many times as many manufacturers scattered all over the world: “Monopoly onco secured, the results are: "First. These combines, covering as they do many great branches of protected manufacture, and affecting many others, raise tho price of manufactured goods, so that; the consumer gets less for the same amount of money. It Is generally the case also that a large proportion of tho consortia which have combined together are those whloh cannot manufacture the manufactured goods as economically ns the others. The ordinary course has been to pay such a certain price for remaining idle, leaving all of the product to bo made at manufactories which can produce it most cheaply, while Instead of returning this benefit in cheaper goods to the public and to wage-earners in other industries, the combine keeps up the price, not merely to afford exorbitant profit to the planlß still kept at work, but to pay 1o the idle manufactories the bonus agrood upon for their remaining non-productive, “Second—The object of a trust combino is to make large profits on a limited product. If successful, therefore, (ho members of a trust make up, by tho high rate of their profits, what they lose by the smallness of their sales, and they are, therefore, just as well off as though, by selling goods more cheaply, they made larger sales. It is tho amount of goods to be manufactured, and not the profit that the employer is to make out of each item, that determines the demand for labor and the wages he must pay. A trust combine in a protected industry is, therefore, an arrangement by which, government keeping out foreign competition, our manufacturers take advantage of this fact, and, making our people pay enough moro for the few goods they are able to buy, keep profits as large as they would have been for sales at more reasonable price, while employing less labor and at lower wagos than otherwise. Trusts, therefore, enable manufacturers to make tho most money by employing tho least labor. “Third. The more closoly organized the combine of employers in any one industry, the better able are they to conquer their laborers in disputes as to wagos or hours. Of course employers could organize for this purpose oven though not for the other. Late experience, however, has shown, as might have been expected, that combines, originally formed to inoreaso the price of goods, or restrict production, have been the most frequent foundation of a combine Successfully to cope with labor organizations.

“Below are given one hundred samples of tariff trusts, selected from the myriad in existence. Three things are so general that they may be considered as universal incidents of a tariff trust —the arbitrary crushing out of competition, reduction of the supply of the product, so as to secure the highest prices that will not destroy the demand, and the reduction of wages—both as a consequence of the reduction produced and to limit demand for labor and the advantage which employers, leagued in a trust Combine, enjoy in dealing with workingmen dependent upon their oarnings in tho different localities throughout the country, whence they and their families cannot move without hardship. Again, It must not be imagined that the writer considers all trusts as equally criminal on the part of those who engage in them. Indeed, in many of the cases given below the particular trust in question is the resort to which the manufacturers in the line of industry involved have been driven in self-protection against other trusts either iu the manufactures which aro their raw materials, or in thoso to which their own product is marketed.”

In Henry George’s Protection or Pres Trade, which is just now being extensively circulated by members of Congress, tho author thus clearly shows how oppressively indirect taxes—and especially tariff taxes—bear upon the poor, while the rich almost entirely escape: “A still more important objection to indirect taxation is that when imposed on articles of general use (and it is only from such articles that large revenues can be had) it bears with far greater weight on the poor than on the rich. Since such taxation falls on people not according to what they have, but according to what they consume, it is the heaviest on those whose consumption is largest in proportion to their means. As much sugar is needed to sweeten a cup ot tea for a workinggirl as for the richest la ly in the land, but the proportion of their means which a tax on sugar compels each to contrib- ! ute to the Government is in the case of i the one much greater than in the case of the other. So it is with all taxes that increase the cost of articles of general consumption. They bear far more heavily on married men than on bachelors: on those who have children than on those who have none; on those barely able to support their families than on those whose incomes leave them a large surplus. If the millionaire chooses to live closely he heed pay no mors of these indirect taxes than the mechanic. I have known at least two millionaires—possessed not of one, but of from six to ten millions eaoh —who paid , little more of such taxes than ordinary day laborers.”