Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 July 1892 — AN ELASTIC TARIFF. [ARTICLE]

AN ELASTIC TARIFF.

Bet to C*teh ’Km Going or Owing. The advocate of the American Bystem of tariff spoliation has occasion to address now one class of people and now another. In doing this he is forever contradicting himself, and apparently never finding out that he is in any way inconsistent. He has occasion at one time to address the victims of the system—consumers who, in their other character of producers, are not and can not be benefited by taxes on imported article of any kind. 16 these victims the vereatile advocate says: “The tariff is not a tax. It adds nothing to the price of Anything you buy, whether it be imported or produced at home. On the contrary, it cheapens the things yon have to buy.” The organ of the American Protective Tariff league addresses the victims in substantially these words in every issue, and illustrates its assertion with singularly logical and convincing pictures of blankets, dresses, coats, kegs of nails, barrels of salt and so on without end.

But presently the versatile advocate has occasion to address the sheep farmer, and to him he says: “The tariff gives yon a higher price for your wool.” And again he has occasion to address the factory operatives, and to them he says: “The tariff raises the prices of the goods yon help produce, and so gives you higher wages than you would get without the tariff.” He gives them to understand that it is the tariff that makes wages in this country higher than in other countries. Thus the tariff advocate tells the working people in the protected industries that but for the tariff “the American manufacturer would have to furnish goods at as low a price as his foreign rival.” But he can not do that and pay present wages, because he can not manufacture as cheaply as his foreign rival, who pays lower wages. “To lower his

prices he would have to cut down wages.” That is to say, the tariff makes wages higher here by making prices higher here. By making prices higher, and in no other way, the tariff enables themafiufacturer to pay the higher cost of production due to higher wages. Addressing an audience of still another kind, our versatile advocate asserts not that the tariff reduces the prices of the tariffed articles, not that it raises wages by raising prices, but that the manufacturing capitalist Heeds protection because he must pay higher wages in this country, and if we shouldn’t protect him he would have to shut down and discharge his employes and general prostration and rain would ensue. Here the assumption is not that the tariff raises wages, but that the scale of wages in this country is high from some other cause or causes, and that the government most help him to exact high prices or calamitous consequences will ensue.

Now the versatile advocate can not be right in ail these positions. Either tariff taxes raise prices or they do not. They can not do both at the same time with respect to the same thing. Which do they do? Is it not reasonable to suppose that a tax laid on an imported article makes it come higher to the consumer? Is it not "reasonable to suppose that if the imported article is made dearer the domestic article of the same kind will be made dearer?. Is any other supposition reasonable? Is it possible to reconcile any other supposition with the fact that the home producer always welcomes a higher tax and always protests against any lower tax in the competing article when imported ? It certainly is not.

When our advocate asserts two contrary effects of the tariff we are at liberty to hold him to the most reasonable and likely. We accept his assertion that the tariff does raise rather that the contrary assertion. Having pinned him down to that, we demand to know what wisdom or what justice there is in compelling the mass of the people to pay extortionate prices in order that a few, comparatively, may carry on unprofitable works or make exorbitant profits. To this twofold question, which is the whole tariff question in a nutshell, no satisfactory answer ever has been or can be made by the opponents of commercial or industrial liberty.—Chicago Herald.