Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 42, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 November 1892 — A Republican Senator on Prices. [ARTICLE]

A Republican Senator on Prices.

Ia the recent debate in the senate upon the report of the committee on finance on retail prices and wages one Republican senator was honest enough to admit the truth. In answer to the contention of Senator Aldrich that prices had fallen a fraction of 1 per cent, under the operation of the McKinley bill, Senator Stewart used the following language: “Of course the tariff upon any article will raise the price of that article until there is competition produced here. Then it may cheapen it. But that the tariff would have an important effect to reduce prices is most ridiculous. Its first tendency is to advance prices. * * * No one ever before contended that a tariff would in the year it was enacted lower prices. On the contrary, it has not had that effect. It has not had that effect in reference to the McKinley act, because the prices in Europe have fallen lower than here. It has the effect to sustain prices here rather than lower them.” To prove the correctness of this view Senator Stewart then quoted from the London Economist as follows: There has yet been no cessation of the fall in the prices of commodities which, generally speaking, have been steadily dwindling for the past couple of years. Throughout the whole of the first half of 1892 the quiet downward movement has been continued, with the result that our index number, representing the prices of twenty-two leading commodities, stands *t the close of the half year at 2,081, and sompares with immediately preceding half years thus: Index number. July 1,1892 2,081 Jan. 1, 1892 2.188 July 1,1891 2,199 Jan. 1,1891 2.221 July 1,1890..., 1 2,259 Since the middle of 1890. therefore, the fall in prices, taken as a whole, has been about 7.9 per cent., while during the past half year the decline has equaled 2.4 per cent. The greatest humbug of the nineteenth century, the Republican cry of “protection to American labor,” has been exposed within the last few days in such a way that Satan himself would non blush to try to impose it upon intelligent people.—Sullivan Times. In all the pulpits of the land last Sunday the Homestead affair was referred to and Carnegie’s acts condemned. Now if the clergy should take a stand against the system which taxes the many to enrich the few. they would be doing God’s service,—Logansport Pharos,