Democratic Sentinel, Volume 21, Number 4, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 January 1897 — GORGED, BUT GREEDY [ARTICLE]

GORGED, BUT GREEDY

ALLEGED NEED FOR HIGH TARIFF IS ALL HUMBUG. Onder Normal Conditions the Present Law Is Sufficient—lnstructive Figures from Statement of Foreign Trade—Republicans Degenerated. The Main Object. The organs of Republicanism are continually asserting that the main object of the bill which Mr. Dingley’s committee Is hatching is to supply more revenue. If they are sincere why is it that they either ignore or dismiss with a sneering line a bill recently introduced in the House by Representative Gooilwyn of Alabama? The bill is a short one. It provides simply for doubling the present tax on beer and other fermented liquors. There is nothing elaborate about it. There is no reason why there should be. It is so plain that anybody can understand it and it requires no new machinery and no additional officer or employe for the collection of the increased tax. Even at the increased rate the tax would be far lighter than that on distilled spirits. This bill would produce an additional revenue of at least $30,000,000 a year. It would bring all this revenue into the public treasury and*not put a dollar into the private revenue of any millionaire philanthropist who pretends to live only to promote the happiness of his hired men. And this revenue would begin to come into the' treasury immediately, which is precisely what the organs profess to want. They claim to be distressed about a deficit not prospective, but present. Here Is a chance to furnish relief inside of two days if only the Republicans In Congress would. And the relief would be sufficient and more than sufficient. The pretense that we need $00,000,000 a year more revenue is all humbug. Under normal conditions the present law would produce all the revenue needed anil more than all for any purpose save that of getting ready for a so-sum blood banquet. The proposed increase iu the beer tax would easily tide over until the return of normal conditions if the war dogs would stop their baying long enough to permit normal conditions to be restored. Then why is it taken for granted with evident satisfaction in all Republican quarters that the GooiUvyn bill has been pigeon-holed by the Republicans of Mr. Dingley’s committee and will never reappear? Obviously because the pretense that their main object Is to raise more public revenue is false. Their main object is something obje. They are well pleased because fne present administration lias accumulated a sufficient surplus to keep things goiug until they can accomplish their main object. To raise a sufficient revenue is one of the easiest tliiugs iu tlie world. Congress could do it iu forty-eight hours and not shed a drop of sweat. But It takes much longer to frame a bill to the satisfaction of all the numerous interests that are hankering after more private revenue out of the public pocket. That is why nothing has been done when everything necessary to provide government revenue could have beeu done easily before the holiday recess. That is why all the "hearings” have been granted. If the object had been to raise revenue there would have been no need of a single hearing. Did the •drug men, the pottery men, tlie iron men, the eotton goods men, the wool men and all the others go to Washington to be heard about raising reveuue for public use? Not a bit of it. Every hungry jackal of the lot would laugh at such a suggestion. The main object' of the tariff revision which is going on Is to meet the demands of the selfish and the greedy who fattened the campaign fund upon the understanding that they should have a chance to recoup themselves from the pockets of the people just as soon after election as a Congress, convened for that purpose in extra session, could be induced to act. The problem which requires so much time for the solution is to satisfy the interests without waking up the victims.

The Grand Old Humbug. The degeneracy of the Republican party is nowhere more strikingly seen than in the State of Illinois. The party was once eager for power not for the mere sake,of spoils, but for the enforcement of an idea. .Originally designed to prevent, if possible, the extension of slavery in the Territories, it became under the leadership of Mr. Lincoln the emancipator of the slave wherever found under the American flag, and, with the cordial support of war Democrats, who constituted a large part of the armies of the Union, suppressed the slaveholders’ rebellion. No sooner was it intrenched in authority than its decay began. It saw and profited the advantages to a favored class of a tremendous war tariff, and in profund peace it refused to repeal the tariff taxation that it stated upon its enactment was to coniuue only during the exigency that demanded it. In tlje period of reconstruction it became the apologist. of military despotism and the champion of bare-faced scoundrelism operating through carpet-baggers in the South. It tasted spoils and its appetite was insatiable. The warning voice of good men within the party demanding trial of the merit system went unheeded, and it was not until a Democratic leader in a Democratic house perfected the law and a Democratic executive succeeding Arthur gave it effect that a rationa). honest system of public employment was introduced, maintained and enlarged. Lincoln was intensely a partisan, and though it was necessary upon the part of the administration to lean upon war Democrats l or support, he had not been In office six months until he had discharged every Democrat in the civil service. The party took possession of every place of employment within sight. But if, like the politicians of his time, Lincoln had not risen to a just conception of public employment or lacked the courage and support to give effect to a rational program, he was a man of strong intellectual force, of high alms and of entire respectability. In the Senate of the United States, before JJncoln was President, Illinois was represented by an able man, mighty la debate, patriotic in impulse, capable

of Intellectual leiderihip. and not de p«ndent gpon a petty machine. To iliapute the Senatorahip with Douglas the Republican party thought it necessary to unite upon Lincoln. Tears elapse, during wffiieh the Republican party that assisted in destroying chattel slavery has become a champion of commercial slavery, and in the processes of the party’s degeneracy we find that its most prominent candidate for Senator, where Lincoln once was honored, was one boodler, who, when turned down, was superseded by another; and it was by the rarest chance —a fight between the spoilsmen themselves—that a respectable man was chosen. The Republican party may be old now, but it Is no longer grand. Its return to power is likely to be brief. Prosperity If selling more merchandise abroad than w r e buy means good times, then we should be more prosperous to-day than we ever have been in our history, for our exports last year were greater thau our imports by over three hundred and twenty-five millions of dollars, which is fully twenty millions more than is shown by any previous year of which we have any record. The exports during 1806 were also absolutely greater than in any previous year, being $1,005,000,000, in round figures, as against $970,000,000 in 1891, which is the next highest, the difference between the two being $35,000,000. The imports, on the contrary, were less than at any time in ten years past, with the one exception of two years ago—1894—when they were only $4,000,000 below the record of 1896. With these figures before us the question naturally arises whether the difference between the exports and imports has been paid to us or whether it is still due, nud if the latter, when and how will it be turned over? The treasury statistics show that during the year of 1896 we received $46,000,000 more thau we parted with. Deducting this amount from the excess of merchandise exports there is still a balance of $279,000,000 unaccounted for. It would be interesting indeed to find for a certainty that foreign countries owe us this much for merchandise today, and will pay it to us in cash within the next few months. • The importation of such a large amount of cash could hardly help setting all our idle factories and workshops going, and give us an era of prosperity as a certainty. The fact that our imports have diminished and our exports increased is due either to the AVilson tariff, which the Democratic party gave to the country, or to causes that have a much wider anil deeper foundation than any legislative act can have, or perhaps to the two combined. The AA'ilson tariff did one good thing for American industry when it reduced or abolished the duties on raw material. This gave our workingmen a better chance to compete with those of other countries in the world's markets, and the result is unquestionably an increase in our exports and a decrease in our imports. We sell more abroad because we can do so more cheaply since the imported raw material costs us less than it did under the former McKinley bill, and we buy less because, for the same reason of having cheaper raw materials, we can hold our own markets to a greater extent against competing foreigners. _

Combined with this advantage, for which the Democratic party is alone entitled to credit, is the recent great demand for our breadstuffs from the countries in which the harvests are, and have been, bad. Our exports of cotton, too, have been very lai'ge, Thus legislation, which the Republican party opposed, and which it intends to sweep away at the earliest opportunity, is responsible for at least a partial increase in our exports, and entirely for the decrease in imports, while natural laws, which are independent of governmental action, have led to the further growth of the export figures. That this large balance of trade in our favor ought to be conducive to our prosperity is not to be disputed if ordinary business reasoning—which is also the reasoning of political economists—is correct. The nearly three hundred millions of dollars still due us, according to the treasury statistics, should come to us in cash if the current of events is not suddenly reversed. That it will be at least partially reversed by the re-enactment of the McKinley tariff is more than likely, and if it is then the Republican party will have to answer for the mischief. Gorared, but Want More. Among the most vicious and preposterous pleas made before the Ways and Means Committee recently were those of some proprietors of patent medicines and monopolists of certain drugs and chemicals. For instance, we were treated to the sight of the sole maker of chlorate of potash in the United States, a man who employs but half a hundred men, asking for a duty of 5 cents a pound, a demand which if acceded to would raise the cost of the product nearly 75 per cent. There are about 5,000,000 pounds of this material imported and the tariff beggar admitted with refreshing frankness that the duty he asked for would be twice the entii'e cost of production in this country. Another candid mendicant who is engaged in making what is known as ul-tra-marine blue asks for an increase of from 3to 414 cents a pound. Only two men in the United States make this article and the reduction of the duty nearly three years ago was due to a trust which these men maintained contrary to law. The makers of linseed oil modestly suggested that the duty be raised to 25 cents a gallon, an increase of 5 cents. As the protective tariff used to be 33 'Scents it is hard to explain the moderation of their demands unless they wished to hide from a committee not top anxious to investigate the methods of the late trust in that lubricant. There must be something serious the matter with the quality of American linseed oil when, in .addition to an advantage of 17 cents in price over the foreign oil, this extra duty is deemed neccessai-y. Political Points. They have atf “elephant in the New York Central Park zoo which blows a trumpet. He is supposed to be a half brother to the Republican elephant.