Jasper County Democrat, Volume 7, Number 48, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 March 1905 — TRUTH ABOUT THE TARIFF. [ARTICLE]

TRUTH ABOUT THE TARIFF.

Different nations trade with each other for the same reasons that induce trade between individuals, that is each gets something he wants more than he gives. All surplus production of any country must thus be disposed of, else it would be wasted or not produced.

For a long time, people thought that the only real wealth was money, (which is now only the idea of the miser) and consequently a nation that could export more goods than it had to import, thus bringing a money balance, was supposed to be prosperous. In order to encourage manufacturing at home, thus lessening the necessity of importing, and thereby iucreasiug the money balance, a nation would place a tariff on the desired articles, thus keeping the foreign goods out, or making the people of the protected country pay the tariff difference to get them. Thus the home producer, by putting his price a little lower than the foreign price with the tariff addition, could get all, or nearly all, of the trade. For instance, you want to buy a quantity of silk which, without tariff, could be had from France at SI.OO per yard. In order to encourage the silk industry at home, the law jirovides a tariff of 65c per yard on silk, so to get the foreign article, you must pay the government 65c for each yard you buy, and the dealer SIOO, making the goods cost you $1.65 per yard. The home manufacturerer offers you the same goods for $1.50, so by reason of encouraging home industry, you pay either 65c more than the foreign article is worth or the home article, worth no more, although probably costing more to produce, is forced upon you at 65c more than it is worth. You pay a rebate or royalty to the home manufacturer, or nurse him, as a mother does her young, with the expectation that he will soon be able to shift for himself. But these infant industries should not always remain babies, depending on the parent for subsistence. Imagine a farmer trying to make it pay with a drove of hogs continually increasing, and the young never getting able to shift for themselves, but depending upon the maternal progenitor for existence, and cattle of the same kind, and horses likewise. A very rich farmer, just as the United States is a very, very rich natiou, could stand it for a while, and might think he was making money, but if his pigs always remained pigs, and his calves never grew into steers, and his colts did not grow into horses, how long would he be able to keep them? Now the average farmer would probably stop feeding this kind of stock and let it starve to death for his protection, but the farmer we call Uncle Sam has not tumbled to himself yet, and keeps on feeding his infant industries the tariff food, which, though it keeps them fat and sassy, does not seem to make them grow up and gain the strength necessary to do without it.

The two objects for which tariffs are levied are: To raise revenue for government expenses and to start industries. Few better things could engage the attention of wise and honorable lawmakers than these, for next to the provisions for education and the protection of life and liberty, is industrial expansion, thus making room and employment for greater population, and consequent greater supplies on which the increase shall subsist. But while one nation is building up a tariff wall, other nations may do likewise, and in most cases where a tariff shuts out an article from a foreign nation, that nation retaliates with a tariff shutting out some article from the first.

But since a person, or a nation, cannot buy without first having something to sell, the increase in wealth, if there be any, depends as much upon the one as the other. Therefore, with a tariff to face as a buyer, or the same thing if you are a selietvthe profit you might make out of a transaction, all goes up in smoke, and tariff. If an industry gives promise of its benefits exceeding the cost of the protection afforded by a tariff on the article produced, then the tariff iB well and good, but for a limited time only. Such an industry ought soon to be able to stand alone, not depending on the conntry for support other than to purchase its goods at popular prices, and if an industry should be inadvertently started that with--in reasonable time fails to do this, then the industry is oat of place, and does not deeerve to last. The injury to the few, thrown out of employment by the failure of such an industry, (who would soon be employed at something worth

while) would be small compared to the injury to the many by keeping the industry alive by means of a duty on the articles produced. ,

The tariff is not ordinarily noticed as is an increase of taxes, because it is paid out in a roundabout way. If all present tariffs were collected in the form of taxes, the average family of five persons would have to pay out each year SIOO. (Wright). The tariff ou steel and its products, which enabled the steel trust to make $85,000,000 profits in the first mine months of its existence, were paid by farmers in higher freights to railroads, and by millions of laborers in higher prices for every necessity. Increase in price for one thing calls for the same in another, and so on indefinitely, until everything is highpriced except labor, to which a tariff has never been successfully attached.

Common sense at one time approved of protection, as it also farther back approved of conquest for tribute, slavery, royal grants of privefeges for personal favor, and tariffs between states of the same country. Robert Fulton was once given a perpetual exclusive right to navigate the Hudson River. Market house people once got orders to drive farmers with produce out of the streets of tlje villages. Toll-gates were once common along country roads. Wars were once fought for the sole purpose of exacting tribute, and persons are yet occasionally kidnapped for a ransom The tariffs of to-day, while originally devised for an honorable purpose, are now used in a similar way, that is, to benefit the favored party by forcing value from others, or by preventing them from getting it. A wide-awake people know what industries they want to engage in, and soon learn which ones are the most profitable, and they will engage in them without being paid to do it by the government. A tariff systom devised by the Almighty himself could not benefit some without doing injury to others, and except for the two purposes before mentioned, any nation with abundant resources would make more progress without the tariff than with it Every man is naturally protected without the intervention of the tariff. This is denied by the tariff interests, but a little investigation shows it to true, nevertheless. Since no man gets nor has only what he himself grows or makes, it does not matter if others can make his product cheaper, he can not quit producing and buy of them. Whatever man gets, he must either grow it or make it, or trade something he has grown or made for it. No man can stop producing, for he has to produce in order to live. So the importation of goods can never stop home industry until they are shipped in and given away free. Until we arrive at this grand consummation, the exports and the imports are bound to be about equal in value. As foreign commerce of a country increases, so the benefits of the tariff are greater to the few, and more burdensome to the many. In time this fact will cause a popular uprising of ninety per cent of the people, whom the tariff does not protect, as was the case with the old State tariffs, which were squelched by the Interstate Commerce Law. The other ten per cent of the people, being those that have been benefited by years of tariff, and are consequently rich, will oppose this uprising with all their power and riches, for their money flows freely in such cases, and corruption will ruu riot. We are experiencing that stage now But as matters get worse, people will more urgently demand their rights, and the tariff will be thrown down to stay down. Before the Revolutionary War, England did not only not help the Americans with a tariff, but devised every possible means to keep manufacturing down in the colonies. She wanted the Colonies to furnish the raw material and let the mother country do the manufacturing, seeing the great profits thereof. Notwithstanding all the oppression of the English, however, Colonial manufacturing progressed marvelously until stopped by the' war. After the war industries again sprang up very rapidly, not on account of the tariff, but on account of the Embargo Act for one thing, and unlimited rescources for another.

With all the protection we have had in this coantry, industries have not been started in the sonth to any extent. Except in parts of Alabama and Georgia where the natural resoources are at hand, the south is an agricultural country. Industries are always star ted

aooording to the natural resources of a section, and would be started any way, with tariff or without it.

The tariff does not protect the laborer nor farmer to any extent. Stand-patters will tell you that it does, but that is hot air, worth so much per cubic yard to the standpatter so long as he can get a majority of the people to believe it. Let us see: The duty on steel is so much per ton; every time a man buys a ton of foreign steel he has to pay this amount of duty to the government. In order to protect labor equally with steel, there would have to be a duty of so much per day on foreign labor, so that the manufacturer, every day he employed a foreign laborer, so that the manufacturer, every day he employed a foreign laborer, would have to pay the government the amount of this duty, in addition to the man’s wages. Manufacturers would look upon such a consummation as ridiculous, yet the same thing is being done with a thousand and one different articles to-day. One of tjie main arguments of the standpatters is the fatherly care of protection for the laborer, but they are very careful to keep him so busy with fairy tales about protection and prosperity that he don’t have time to grasp the situation. The present tariff puts a dollar into the laborer’s right hand and takes a dollar and a quarter out of his left. Uncle Sam has built up a strong tariff wall and has left out a gap through which labor may pass free. Close to a million immigrants passed through the gap last year, among whom were the filth and scum of all the European countries. They are attracted here by wages that seem high to them, owing to their low standard of living. They are anything but desirable as fellowcitizens, and they tend to keep wages down to the lowest point. Americans are crowded out wherever they appear, thus overcrowding every other kind of labor and consequently driving wages down. This is j ust what the stand-patter really wants —low wages and high prices—while trying to delude the laborer into thinking that he wants the opposite —high wages and low prices. If labor was accorded the same degree of protection as the majority of things are by the tariff, laborers would receive from twice to three times in wages more than they now do. Years of favorable legislation, conceived and executed by themselves, have made a small body of men fabulously rich, their combined annual earnings being in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Do they really earn this immense amount, or are the people flimflammed out of it? Does not every man, in all the ordinary walks of life, those owning all the way from $50,000 worth of property down to nothing, pay tribute to this gang? •‘Let the tariff be revised by its friends,” but don’t hold your breath till they get the job „finished. *»*