Democratic Sentinel, Volume 18, Number 39, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 October 1894 — A TARIFF COMMISSION [ARTICLE]

A TARIFF COMMISSION

AN ABSURD AND IMPRACTICABLE PLAN. Ridiculous Scheme to Make a Tariff Bill Based on **Dlfl e rrnoe of Labor Cost”— Wanamaker’s Advertisements Will Make Good Campaign Literature. A Foolish “Voice.” The New York Voice (Prohibition paper) has been advocating a tariff commission to make and revise our tariff laws. It believes that we could, in this way, avoid the unsettling of business every time a new Congress meets and begins to discuss the tariff. The Voice says the work of such a commission would be “chiefly mathematical. to determine from cold figures what the relative labor cost in different industries is here and abroad, ” and “that would determine the measure of protection." The commission “is not to use its own judgment as to how much protection -to give this industry or that," but simply “to ascertain a mathematical fact." The commission should be composed of “such men as Carroll D. Wright” Evidently the Voice is not acquainted with past experience in dealing

with “cold mathematical tacts” in regard to difference of labor cost. All who have examined the subject and tried to state this mathematical difference of labor cost have come to the conclusion that it is impossible to state it accurately. In t.ie first place, statistics must be obtained from producers. These producers are protected manufacturers, who would doctor their statistics, just as they now do when they go before Congressional committees. Such statistics are absolutely worthless. Even our census statistics are but rough approximations. For example, those on sugarrefining and on manufactures of shirts, collars and cuffs, in our last census, are ridiculous and grossly inaccurate. But supposing that all protected manufacturers were honest and capable of making intelligent statistics, would any two experts agree as to the labor cost that should be considered’? Take pianos. Some sixty or seventy trades are recognized in making the different parts. Most manufacturers buy actions, plates, strings, pins and other parts ready-made. Some buy cases, and do but little more than to string and tune and fit in actions. In a few cases the majority of the parts are made by one firm. It is simply impossible for any expert to determine the labor eoet of making a piano and to have his conclusions accepted by any other expert. But supposing that the exact labor cost could be determined in any industry and in any country, what foreign country would be chosen with which to compare labor costs in this country'? Would we take England, where, as a rule, wages are highest and actual labor cost lowest; or India and China, where wages are lowest and labor cost, in most manufactures, highest? The impractibility of the whole scheme must be apparent to all who have thought on the question. Even Carroll D. Wright could not make a scientific tariff bill on this basis. He admits that his own statistics in cost of production are unreliable. In his report on cost of production of textiles and glass, published in 1891, he says that, “It was found upon careful study that but few industries could be brought under investigation in the lines specified in the law, the most practicable work being limited to iron and steel, and the materials of which iron is made, the textiles and glass. ’’ But suppose that such a commission would reach the conclusion (which is undoubtedly true) that labor cost is often lower in this than in any other country, what then'? Are we to levy an export duty to cover the advantage in our favor? In 1881 Secretary of State James G. Blaine said, in his exhaustive report on the subject of cotton goods, “undoubtedly the inequalities in the wages of English and American operatives are more than equalized by the greater efficiency of the latter and their longer’hours of labor.” There should then be absolutely free trade, or something worse, in cotton goods. As we make boots and shoes, stoves, agricultural implements, pig iron and refined sugar cheaper than they are made in any other country, all of these, with hundreds of other articles, would have to go on the free list, or, perhaps, be subject to an export duty. Under such a system (and it would be in strict accord with the Republican platform) we would, in fact, have practical free trade in most articles extensively raised or produced in this country, and would have heavy duties only on such articles as coffee, tea and tropical fruits, nuts and dyewoods that cannot be produced here at anything like the same labor cost as in other countries. It is absurd to hope to settle the tariff question with any such commission and in any such way. Congress is the only body with power to levy taxes.

Every report or recommendation of a tariff commission would have to be acted upon by Congress, and the debate could be as prolonged as under the present system. “The power to tax is the power to destroy.” The people should never let go of the taxation strings attached to their Congressmen. The tariff question must and shall be settled in the old-fash-ioned way. Protected monopoly is dying hard, but it is surely dying. Buatnsva Men on the Tariff. Politicians who have preached high tariffs until their place in public life depends on the success of McKinleyism are not the authorities on the effects of the new law that business men are. Mr. Wanamaker, for examp:e, as a Republican politician, believes that anything short of the McKinley tariff means disaster to the country, but as a business man he must recognize facts and he advertises that dry goods have been made vastly cheaper by the new law. Here are some choice bits from a recent advertisement of his: Forty-one cases more taken out of bond yesterday—under the last tariff. And so the stream of fresh new goods flows In day after day. like fresh blood Into the body, and thus the business, like the body, gets its good health. It Is surprising that any one supposed that the common people—Abraham Lincoln said it better, “the plain people”—could not count for themselves That reduced charges at the custom:house would make no difference in prices' What was the tariff fight about if it were not to put down prices?

At the first go-off it certainly does that —at least it does it in this store. Five per cent, or 10 per cent or 20 per cent less duty means something less In cost It doos not mean full 5. 10 or 20 per cent less price, because the reduction Is only on the duties paid. Whatever it is, however, that part comes off the price. Similar testimony comes from all parts of the country. A newspaper published in New Jersey prints an advertisement of a store at Deckertown in that State headed: “The New Tariff Bill and How It Affects Us.” Then the advertisement gives a comparison of prices charged by the proprietor under the McKinley law and the new law. For example, muslins for which he was charging 10 cents he is now selling at 8 cents. Calicoes have been reduced from 5 and 6 cents to 34 cents, percales from 124 and 16 cents to 10 cents, sateens from 18 cents to 124 cents, mackerel from 12 cents to 9 cents a pound, flour from $4.40 to $4.25 a barrel, and fruit jars from 70 cents to 60 cents a dozen. There is no better object-lesson than is contained in these advertisements of fact that the consumers have been paying the tax and that the abolition and reduction of tariff taxes mean a reduction of the cost of living. Nor can the mournful groans of political Cassandras overcome the cheering influences of such advertisements as Wanamaker and other intelligent men are publishing in the newspapers.—New York World.

Wanimaker Forgets Politics. Wanamaker leaves the Philadelphia public in no doubt as to his conviction that a tariff is a tax, and that the removal of duties lowers the prices of goods. For a number of days past he has been advertising the great “bargains” which he is enabled to offer by reason of the new law. This morning, for example, he made such announcements as the following: Everything that tree wool and tariff influences can do to put prices on a lower level has been much more than discounted in the handsome new dress sluffs that are crowding to the counters every day. This fifty-inch serge, for instance—black and navy blue, worth 50 cents by any measure of dressgoods value, never before heard of at less—the price is cents. This allwool camel’s-hairserge—navy blue, black, brown, modes—only a little while ago we could barely meet the demand at 50 cents; the price Is 25 cents. The ex-Postmaster General’s advertisements have attracted the attention of his former chief’s home organ, and provoked an outburst of wrath. Mr. Harrison’s spokesman, the editor of the Indianapolis Journal, even goes so far as to say: In trying to make the public believe that these and other reductions named in the advertisements are due to the new tariff, Mr. Wanamaker. or his advertising agent. Is guilty of disingenuousness amounting almost to lying. But there is no occasion for anger' Even if the new tariff does make things cheaper, is it not true that “a cheap coat means a cheap man under the coat,” and will not the American people rise in a body at the first opportunity against any party which thus threatens to cheapen humanity? Put True Tariff-Reformers on Guard. It is of vast importance to the Democratic party that all its conventions should make strong tariff-reform platforms and nominate only faithful and able advocates of tariff-reform. Nothing has more disgusted the country and injured Democracy than its divided counsels on this issue of supreme moment. Of six Democratic Congressmen from Louisiana four voted against the Wilson bill on Feb. 1. At the same time one of California’s three, one of New Jersey’s eight and six of New York's twenty Democratic Congressmen voted against that bilk