Democratic Sentinel, Volume 18, Number 23, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 June 1894 — IT MOST BE DEFEATED [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

IT MOST BE DEFEATED

SENATE S OUTRAGEOUS SUGAR SCHEDULE. Let the Member* of the Hmue See that It Doe* Not Become a Law—No Beet Trom Tariff Keri*lon Vntll Tariff Is Reformed Out of Existence. The House Must Defeat It. The McKinley bill is filled with schedules that speak of bargain and sale, of surrender to greedy trusts, of shame and disgrace: but it contains no schedule comparab'e in occult meanness with the sugar schedule as it passed the Sena'e on June 5, The only hope for the Democratic party lies in the prospect that the House will undo this outrageous piece of work. If it does not lift the stigma that the Senate has left upon their party the Democrats may prepare for a funeral procession next fall The disgrace attached to this schedule and the unpopularity of the sugar tax will more than overcome the po r ularity of the income tax. Each feature of the sugar schedule is worse than the others; all will rise up to curse the p>arty that put them there.

L The 40 per cent, duty on allsugars was put ca at the instigation of the trust. Though Senator Gorman said in his speech that “the refiners derive no benefit whatever from this 40 per cent, duty,” yet it is certain that it yields a protection of between 20 and 40 cents per 100 pounds to the trust. The average difference between the price of foreign refined sugar and the price which the trust pays for raws is about leant per pound; 40 per cent, of this difference (after allowing for the loss in clear protection to the trust. With raws at 3 and foreign refined sugar at 4 cents, the protection is about 33 cents on 100 pounds of refined sugar. ' 2. The specific duties of 4 of a cent per pound on all refined and of 1-10 of a cent additional on all sugars impdrt■ed from countries which pay export duties are robbery, pure and simple. They will not put a penny of revenue into the treasury, but will add from $8,000,000 to 810,000,000 a year to the unjust dividends of the trust. 3. The provi don to admit raw sugar free from the Hawaiian Islands makes a present of $4,030,000 or $5,000,000 a year to the trust, which has a five-year contract with the planters. 4. The provision to continue to pay the sugar bounty until Jan. 1, 1895, besides being unconstitutional and coninary to the Democratic platform, will be a drain upon the treasury when it most needs every dollar it can obtain. 5. But most outrageous of all is the provision to postpone, until Jan. 1, 1895, the enforcement of the sugar duties. The New York Times says: “How much revenue the sugar tax would yield if it was levied on and after July 1 cannot be exactly computed. It would depend on the amount imported and the range of prices, but $40,000,000 a year is a very moderate estimate. Now to postpone the tax for six months is obviously to deprive the treasury of $20,000,000, ana as the trust has the certainty of the tax after Jan. 1 to rely on, and the McKinley tax to protect it meanwhile, what the treasury is deprived of is given to the trust. But that is not all, nor is it the worst. During these six months the trust will be able to bring into the country free of duty all the raw sugar it can buy in any of the markets of the world. The only check on its purchases will be the enhancement of the price by the full amount of the duty imposed in the bill. Until that limit is reached it will be profitable for it to buy, and on every pound thus bought the treasury loses the revenue. The stock thus provided for cannot be less than six months’ supply. It may easily be more. The adoption of the Senate provision in this matter, therefore, will deprive the treasury of at least $40,000,000 in revenue, ana may easily cost it $50,000,(00 or $60,00J,000." The effect of the whole schedule will be to raise the price of refined sugar about one cent per pound to the people. The tax on the people from the beginning of 1895 will be about $00,000,000 a year. At least one-half and perhaps 90 per cent, of the tax for 1895 will go into the coffers of the trust. After that about two-thirds will go to the treasury. Well may the Philadelphia Record say: “In every light in which the sugar schedule of the Senate bill may be viewed it serves one sole interest —that of the trust. The interests of the consumers, of planters in Louisiana, and beet raisers in Nebraska, of independent refiners and of the government itself, are all subordinated to the claims of monopoly. As the character of this measure becomes thoroughly understood U is inconceivable that it should be enacted into law. — Byron W. Holt.

The Mission of the Democracy, If the bill should really become law it would arouse a storm of indignation among all Democrats, who would see in this bungling performance a shameful departure from the tariff platform. That tariff agitation subside even for a while is therefore not to be expected, although this would have positively happened if the present Congress had given even a half way satisfactory solution of the problem. We cannot see, therefore, why under the circumstances such a bundling performance should be shouldered: and we believe that honest Democrats will not submit to it, but will much rather allow the bill to perish. We are pretty well persuaded that the “conservative” Denjocr us would not take the responsibility of j, failure, but would much rather s pport the will of the their Colleagues if the latter wKuld agree upon a bill which would lie between the Wilson bill and the Voorhees bill. Then at any rate we could count upon the uniScation of the Democratic party and upon a stop to tariff revision for a time.* That we expect no permanent rest we frankly and freely confess. The end of all revision must be the giving up o f the protection idea the conversion to an entirely revenue tariff. If any thing were needed to show us that a protective tariff is not suitable for our political system, the present action on the tariff certainly points it out plainly Finally, we believe a tariff tax will not always be retained as a source of revenue. With a reform of the tariff will come a general and fundamental reform of all taxation, both federal and local. Our entire tax system is outgrown and fundamentally wrong. Something has been gained toward the understanding of the tariff question, through the miserable inefficiency of the present Congress. The action of the monopolist has never before been so plainly seen by the people in its utter shamelessness. The working people have had destroyed the last remnant of that illusion that their interests were in the least degree regarded by the beneficiary of the protective tariff. All the evils of concentrated production must, under the protective tax system, be intensified to the worker.

This point must be plain to every thoughtful workman. On the one side the protective tariff increases the concentrative tendency of production and possession, the absorbing of the small by the greater; on the other hand, it destroys the weapons which the workman, through organization a rainat the unscrupulous grain of the employer, until now has been able to fashion. The entire people, indeed, through the protective tariff, fall more and more under the power of the great industries, which make law-makers their puppets, and which must do so, if they are to continue their system of plunder. This must be clear to the dullest understanding, when we see see the antics which the puppets of the monopolists in Congress are now performing. The loosening of the chains in which the people are bound on every side is still, alas, in the distance, and through such a bill as Gorman will give us nothing can be done. Yet the release must come: and so long as it is not reached the Democracy have not fulfilled their peculiar mission, and should not give up striving to fulfill it.—New Yorker Staats IWtung.

Brooklyn’s Mag* Meeting. Brooklyn's business men held a big mass meeting in the Star Theater, to protest against the passage of the Gorman surrender bill. The resolutions, which were adopted with enthusiastic applause, were similar to those adopted by the Cooper Union Mass Meeting, in New York City, two weeks previously. After reciting the promises of the Democratic platforms in 1890 and 1892 and declaring that the House had passed a bill “which, to some extent, embodied the reform demanded by the people, “it declared that the Senate bill, if passed, “would be a heartless denial and a derisive mockery of the repeated popular demands for lower taxes, more equal opportunities and freer exchanges. ”

The resolutions also declared that the delay in the passage of a tariff bill, and the obnoxious modifications made in the Wilson bill, at the bidding of trusts, “prolong and intensify the distress now afflicting our people, invite distrust and contempt of the Senate and jeopardize the prosperity of the whole country;” and that “Earnestly as we desire the speedy termination of the present uncertainty, we will not be content to accept from Congress any tariff bill founded upon a compromise with injustice, upon the trading of political influence, and upon the granting of special privileges, all of which are embraced in the Gorman Surrender bill now under consideration by the Senate, and that if, in effect, the McKinley tariff is to be perpetuated, it were preferably done by authority of the Republican party than by that of the Democratic party. “That we call upon those Democratic Senators who seek to be guided by principle, and who recrgnlze their responsibility to the people, to manfully rebuke the attitude of certain of their party associates who are bartering their honor and betraying their country for personal advantage. We en. treat them to arrest the suicidal course to which these self-seeking politicians would commit their party, and to insist, without compromise, upon the passage of a tariff bill which will place all crude raw materials on the free list, and impose such moderate ad valorem duties upon manufactured products as will provide revenue, without becoming oppressive, to the same intent, in spirit and in substance, as stipulated by the Wilson bilk" These resolutions are strong, but they only half express the feelings of thousands of honest Democrats who worked hard to place their party in power—to give a few traitors the opportunity to barter away their own and their party’s honor. As was the case in New York City, speeches in favor of an income, as against a tariff, tax. were received with great favor by the audience. The Income Tax Not Sectional* When the parrots were ridiculed out of their screeches to the effect that the income tax is “monarchical” and “inquisitorial” they took up the concerted cry that it is sectional. It is evident, however, that, parrot-like, they have no accurate idea of the meaning of the word they have been taught to repeat. Yesterday, for instance, they showed clearly that the tax is not sectional at all. They printed dispatcher against it from all sections, and one of them remarked: “They come from all parts of the country, showing that hatred to class legislation is not confined to any one section.” The dispatches referred to come from bankers, merchants and capitalists. They show that the opposition is not geographical, but comprises those in all parts of the country who will pay the tax when it is imposed. It is not the South and West against the East, as has been pretended. It is simply the desire to escape the payment of any tax that can be avoided. And this desire is confined to no section and knows no class. —New York World. The Pauper-Mummy Industry. The purchase of two mummies by Mr. Andrew Carnegie for scientific purposes, the history attached to which is supposed to indicate their roval lineage, has served to elicit the startling statement from an official of the Philadelphia Custom House that imports of this character are not subject to any duty—thus revealing a most extraordinary oversight in the framing of the McKinley tariff, the result of which will be to expo.e the home market (consisting mainly of museums) to the unbounded competition of ancient Egypt, with its pitch-preserved dynasties as far back as the days of Menes. — Philadelphia Record. I The Unyielding Democracy. If anybody, Republican, Populist or half-baked Democtat, thinks that the rank and file of the Democratic party is weakening on tariff reform, he is wofully mistaken. Their backs are stiffer than ever, and the only effect of a traitorous surrender by a few Senatorial accidents is only making them madder and more earnest. —St. Pau) Globe. Told tn a Cut.

“SIMPLY DRIFTING." — N. Y. World