Jasper County Democrat, Volume 1, Number 13, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 July 1898 — The Dingley Law a Failure. [ARTICLE]

The Dingley Law a Failure.

Indianapolis New* (Republican.) It seems clear that the government will have to rely largely on its internal revenue for the means with which to prosecute the war, for the reports, so far as they have been made up, indicate that the Dingley tariff bill will not yield much, if any, larger returns from customs duties than those yieldedj by the Wilson bill. For the'fiscal year ending with June, 1895, during practically the whole of which the Wilson law was in force, the amount derived from customs was $152,158,617; for the year ending with June, 1896, during the whole of which the Wilson law jrraa in force, the amount was $160,021,751; and in the next year, 1897, which was also under the Wilson law, the customs receipts rose to $176,554,126—some portion of this large sum, of course being due to the heavy importations made in advance of the passage of the Dingley tariff, which became a law in July, 1897. The Dingley law has therefore, been in operation almost the whole of the present fiscal year, which ended with June; and the customs receipts for the year will probably be a little less than . ; A- . <" . v' > ' ' ’ ,•

■*” —-r —■ —’frwyw $160,000,000, or smaller than for any year of the preceding three. Going back three years further we find that the customs receipts for the years ending with Juue, 1892, 1893 and 1894, respectively, were; $177,336,944, $203,142,670 aid $131,807,758, all these yeaTs being under the McKinley law. Thus beginning with 1892 there has been only one fiscal year in which; the revenue from customs was smaller than in the year just closed; that year being 1894, in which imports were held back to get the benefit of the lower duties of the Wilson bill, which was passed in August, 1894. It is, of course, possible that the situation may improve, but it must be confessed that the outlook for much revenue from’customs is not encouraging. The returns for June, after the law had been in force almost a year, were only abont $14,500,000, which is slightly less than the average monthly receipts from customs during the preceding fiscal year. The truth is that, on its customs side, the Dingley bill was not intended to be a revenue producer except secondarily. Its main object was protection* ■'