Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 29, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 August 1892 — What a Revenue Tariff Would Do. [ARTICLE]

What a Revenue Tariff Would Do.

Repeal the McKinley law and bring the tariff to a revenue basis, and these trusts, the children of “protection," would go out of existence: The iron and steel trust. The coal trust. The ax trust. The barbed wire trust. The biscuit and cracker trust The bolt and nut trust. The boiler trust. The boot and shoe trust. The borax trust. The broom trusfe. c "? The brush trust. ' ’• The button trust. «»rThe carbon candle trust. 3# The cartridge trust. The casket and burial goods trust. The castor oil trust. The celluloid trust. The cigarette trust. The condensed milk trust. The copper ingot trust. The copper sheet trust. The cordage trust. The crockery trust. The cotton duck trust. The cotton seed oil trust. The cotton thread trust. The electric supply trust. The envelope trust. The flint glass trust. The fork and hoe trust. The fruit jar trust. The galvanized iron and steel trust The glove trust. The harrow trust. The harvester trust. The hinge trust. The indurated fiber trust. The lead trust. The leather board trust. =' The lime trust. The linseed oil trust. The lithograph trust, The locomotive tire trust. T The marble trust. The match trust. The morocco leather trust, The oatmeal trust The oilcloth trust. The paper bag trust . <

The pitch trust, ,V| The plate glass trust The pocket outlery trust .. The powder trust. ", •, '7*3!® The preserves trust The pulp trust The rioe trust The rubber gossamer trust The rubber general trust The safe trust. The salt trust The sandstone trust The sanitary ware trust The sandpaper trust. The sash, door and blind trust. The saw trust. The school book trust. The school furniture trust The sewer pipe trust. , The shot and lead trust >' v ■ The skewer trust The smelters trust. .. f The snath trust. £; The soap trust. The soda water machinery trust The spool, bobbin and shuttle trust The sponge trust The starch trust. The merchant steel trust. The steel rail trust. The store board trust. The straw board trust. The structural steel trust. The sugar trust. The teazel trust. The tinned plate trust. The tombstone trust. The trunk trust. The tube trust. The type trust. The umbrella trust. The vapor stove trust. The wall paper trust. The watch trust. The wheel trust. The whip trust. The window glass trust. The wire trust. The wood screw trust. The wool hat trust. The wrapping paper trusts. The yellow pine trust. These are not all the trusts in tha country by any means. They are merely the list of one hundred prepared by Congressman Warner for the New York World, and cited by Senator Vest in his crushing reply of June 28 to Senator Hale’s resolution extrolling tha

effects of protection on industry and wages. Every one of the hundred is the result of a tariff—a creature of McKinleyism. Under a tariff for revenue only these trusts would he broken, domestic competition compelled, more goods produced, more men employed and higher wages paid. To quote Congressman Warner, who considers each of the trusts in detail, showing the amount of the tariff tax and how it protects the trusts in their plunder of the people: First —These combines, covering as they do many great branches of protected manufacture, and affecting many others, raise the 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 the concerns which have combined together are those which can not manufacture the manufactured goods as economically as the others. The ordinary course has been to pay such a certain price for remaining idle, leaving all of the product to be 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 plants still kept at work, but to pay to the idle manufactories the bonus agreed upon for their remaining non-productive. Second—The object of a trust combine is to make large profits on a limited product. If successful therefore, the members of a trust make up by the high rate of their profits for the smallness of their sales; aud they are, therefore, just as well off as though by selling goods more cheaply they made larger sales. It is the 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 wages he must pay. A trust oombiue 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 more for the few goods they are able to buy, keep profits as large as they would have, been from larger sales at a more reasonable price, though they employ less labor and at lower wages than otherwise. Trusts, therefore, enable manufacturers to make the most money by employing the least labor.

Third—The more closely organized the combine of employer* to any one industry the better able are they to conquer their laborers In disputes as to wages or hours. Of course, employers could organize for this purpose even though not for the other. Late experience, however, has shown, as might have been expected, that combines originally formed to increase the price of goods or restrict production have been the most frequent foundation of a combine successfully to cope with labor organizations. McKinleyism is the parent of these trusts. McKinleyism must go.