Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 32, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 August 1892 — TARIFF NOT POPULAR. [ARTICLE]

TARIFF NOT POPULAR.

ITS REDUCTION WOULD BENEFIT THE NORTHWEST. Republicans Would Do Wall to Kay Stress on Some Other Issue In Many of the Northwestern States Vote with Both Eyes Open. •Tis Surely a Tax. A recent dispatch from Seattle says: The Republicans have already tried to begin in the Pacific Northwest a campaign on the question of protection, but since nearly every interest of this region would be benefited by a reduction of the tariff, the Republicans would do wisely to lay stress on some other issue. The following statement is now being printed by Republican papers in this State: “Tariff for revenue only would not leave much of the industries of this Northwestern coast, for it would mean free ore, free coal, free lumber, free wool, and free hops ” The astonishing part of the matter is that in this part of the country any man could for even a moment imagine such an argument effective. As to hops, it is the boast of the farmers here that while the cost of growing hops in the East and in England and Germany is from 15 to 18 cents a pound, the great fertility of the soil here and the equable climate reduce the cost to less than 10 cents. The great bulk of the hop crop of Washington and Oregon is shipped directly to England and sold in the London market. So far as hops are concerned, a tariff for revenue only would not make a soul in this part of the United States a whit the worse off, and the men who this year in this State are growing 10,000,000 pounds of hops cannot be held to the Republican party by the tariff issue.

But the lumber industry is the greatest of this region, employing more capital and more men than any one other. The local lumber market is now depressed and the lumbermen are seeking a foreign market. Were lumber on the free list, not one of the hundreds of logging camps and sawmills here would close, for the reason that there is no point from which lumber can be shipped here anywhere nearly as cheaply as it can be produced from the forests of Washington, and if extending the free list would enlarge foreign trade the lumber interests of Washington would gain greatly. Free wool would also be a great advantage. Oregon already has one or two woolen mills, and Seattle is trying to start one this summer. If vessels running from here to Australia could bring back cargoes of wool in exchange for their lumber both the lumber trade and the woolen mills would be helped. Free coal would undoubtedly lessen the profits of the coal mine owners of Washington and Oregon. To-day the coal of Australia is in the San Francisco market as a strong competitor of the coal from this point. Then, too, the Wellington mine on Vancouver Island produces coal that for many purposes is the best on the coast, and, were it not for the tariff, the Wellington coal would be much more generally used in the United States. Though the public as a whole would be better off with cheaper coal, yet the owners of the inferior mines in this country would inevitably lose.

The silver and lead mines in this State are as yet hardly developed enough to determine whether or not free ore would seriously affect them. From these facts it is evident that if the Democrats force the tariff issue here in Washington, Oregon and Idaho, a campaign of education will be extremely effective. Nature has already provided the Pacific Northwest with a protective tariff. The cost of living is high here, not so much because agricultural products are high as because manufactured articles are expensive. Nearly *ll clothing and manufactured articles are brought from the East, and the cost of transportation across the two mountain ranges adds materially to the price here. The people are beginning to understand that, were the tariff lower, no factories in this part of the country would be closed; and at the same time the ships carrying wheat from Puget Sound ports to England, and lumber and hops as well, could bring back cargoes of manufactured goods.