Evening Republican, Volume 16, Number 220, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 September 1912 — CLAPTRAP BY UNDERWOOD [ARTICLE]

CLAPTRAP BY UNDERWOOD

Tariff Duties Not Paid by Users of American Goods. HIS ADDRESS SHOULD BE READ Workers Will Recognize His Distortion of Figures and Facts and Will Not Be Beguiled by It—Shows How Hard Pushed the Democrats Are For an Argument. It Is to be hoped that every American worker in the various Industries protected by the tariff will read the address of Mr. Underwood, Democratic leader in the house of representatives, in which he sets forth as taxation the tariff duties on articles- In ordinary use. There is nothing novel in the Underwood distortion of tariff figures and facts. It is as threadbare as free trade, as threadbare as the American workingman would soon be If he should allow himself to be beguiled by Underwood and other votaries of the late Confederate constitution Into the surrender of Republican protectfon. , It is true, as Underwood says, that the tariff taxes he describes are Imposed on articles such as he describes —woolen clothing, shoes, the tin pail, window pane, carpet, etc., but he is wholly and deliberately wrong and misleading when he says that the duties in question are Imposed on or added to the cost of these articles, as used in the ordinary American family. The tariff tax Is imposed on goods' manufactured abroad and Imported for sale in competition with goods made In America by American workers earning American wages. The man or woman who is satisfied with the product of American labor — and nine-tenths of the American people are so satisfied —has no tariff tax to pay, and this is shown by the fact that the American article, with Its manufacture fostered by protection, is often cheaper In price than the Imported would be without paying tariff duties. The tariff duties prevent excessive Imports, which would flood the markets, as .imported goods flooded the market under the tariff reductions made by the Democratic Wilson bill of 1894, reducing not only the tariff, but reducing also the demand for American goods and for American labor to make American goods. Mr. Underwood’s statement Is cheap claptrap. We had supposed that style of talk too muddy and cobwebbed sos further exercise, and the fact that it is again dragged out of the discard proves how hard pushed the free trade Democracy is for something to bolster its waning cause.