Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 32, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 August 1892 — McKinley in the Northwest. [ARTICLE]

McKinley in the Northwest.

We do not suppose that the Republican managers will attach much value to our suggestions. They have, perhaps, no reason to regard them as friendly, though, as a matter of fact, they really are impartial. We venture, nevertheless, to make one, and that is that they “call in” Major McKinley from the Northwest. He is not likely to do any good there. He may do them much harm. In making this suggestion we do not wish to imply anything to the discredit of Mr. McKinley. Ho is apparently a very sincere advocate of the highest possible tariff. He seems to believe in it with a childlike simplicity and fervor. He is as thoroughly convinced that a nation can tr« itself into prosperity as any inventor of perpetual motion ever was that he had found the elusive secret of that impossible achievement. The tariff is no longer one on which the Republicans can win in the Northwest. The reason why Mr. McKinley is especially unsuited to the latitude of the Northwest is that he is a theorist, and the farmers, as well as the manufacturers of that region, are intensely practical. He can demonstrate to the farmers over and over again that taxation of the things that they buy will make a market for the things that they sell among those engaged in the products purchased by them, but there are too many of them who know that the prices of what they have to sell are determined by supply and demand abroad, where their surplus goes, and that on these prices the legislation of Congress has no more effect than on the weather. And as for the things that the farmers must buy, Major McKinley’s arguments are also far too theoretical. In his speech at Beatrice, Neb., he went into an elaborate exposition of the effect of taxation of foreign articles in reducing the price in this country. It was the old statement —taxation of imports stimulates competition at home, and competition brings down prices. But ths homely farmers of the Northwest are capable of pushing this reasoning to Its logical conclusion. If the competition of home manufacturers among themselves brings down prices, then competition between them and the foreign manufacturers as well would bring them down still lower. Then there are the manufacturers of the Northwest. Maj. McKinley’s theory does not fit their case at all. By far the greater part of them are not “protected.” On the contrary, they are obstructed and hindered by the tariff tax on their materials. Such industries as the manufacture of furniture and other products of which wood is the material, the manufacture of agricultural implements, that of wagons for pleasure or business, that of articles of household use in which wood and metal are employed—what have these to fear from the competition of the countries in which such things are either not made at all, or, if made, must be brought across the continent? On the other hand, they are affected, so far as they are affected at all by the tariff, injuriously, since their materials are taxed. The men of tne Northwest are not the men to send Maj. McKinley to talk to. They ask no favors. They need no

“protection. • But they do demand all open and fair field, and they will insist upon it until they get IL—N. Y. Times.