Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 42, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 November 1892 — TRUSTS AND PROTECTION. [ARTICLE]

TRUSTS AND PROTECTION.

How Mr. Barrows Would Abolish Trust* by owing Us “British Free Trade." A doctrine which has found favor with certain of the protectionists in high prices is that where manufacturers engaged in a protected industry enter into a trust to raise prices the-duty should be abolished and the advantages of protection thus withdrawn from the offenders. This remedy, it is openly proclaimed, will operate to bring the guilty parties to their senses and compel them to reduce prices to a more reasonable basis by reason of the competition admitted from abroad by the abolition of the protective duty. This doctrine has been openly advocated by Hon. Julius C. Burrows, the leader of the Republican minority on the ways and means committee in the recent session of congress. But what does this mean? Do not Mr. Burrows and his followers see that their proposition to crush out trusts by abolishing duties gives away the whole case of protection as it is held and explained by the latter day school of McKinleyitesf The view of McKinley, which he is never weary of reiterating at Republican conventions, in joint debates and at Chautauqua assemblies, is that the protective tariff lays a tax not upon our own people, but upon the foreigner. But if McKinley’s view is correct how can Burrows and his followers do any damage to our domestic trusts, whose name is legion, by abolishing duties? Their proposition to wipe out duties which serve as a protection , to trusts is a direct confession that the tariff puts into the pockets of the domestic manufacturer profits which he would not otherwise be able to make. It means that the tariff raises the prices of domestic goods above what should be their normal level, that it enables the home manufacturer to plunder the home consumer, and that the tariff is thus a tax not only where we use imported goods, but also where we buy the domestic product. Alas, how sadly this demolishes the preposterous claim that the McKinley law has reduced the cost of livingl But if Burrows could carry out his Idea where would he land us? Does he not know that his proposition would mean “British free trade” in nearly everything that we consume? He evidently does not know to what extent trusts and pools have permeated our industrial system. A recent publication gives 100 of these ns mere “samples.” There are trusts in anthracite coal and In axes; in barbed wire, boilers, boots and shoes, borax, brooms, brushes and buttons, and trusts all the way down the alphabet to wood screws, wool hats wrapping paper and yellow pine. There are, in fact, few important industries left in which trusts or “combines” of some sort do not exist, aud Mr. Burrows’ proposition to wipe them out by wiping out their protection would prove the most radical free trade measure of the present generation.