Jasper County Democrat, Volume 11, Number 37, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 October 1908 — REVISION BY ADVERTISEMENT [ARTICLE]

REVISION BY ADVERTISEMENT

Foreign Consuls Carry Out the Administration Bluff. The stand pat platform having said that the tariff must provide for difference in cost of production here and abroad, the administration has with a great flourish Instructed our consuls to ascertain the cost of producing foreign goods. News now comes that the American consul in Birmingham, England, has sent a circular to English manufacturers asking the cost of their products and propounding numerous other questions concerning their business. If the consul expects to get British trade secrets In this way be Is likely to be disappointed. But he probably knows that cost of production would cut little figure in a Republican revision of the tariff, and he might as well get a string of figures in the easiest way possible. It Is notorious that ’schedules have been written by the men who profit by them, not by officials honestly representing the people who are taxed by them. So why should any consul go on a still hunt for facts that will never be used? Would it not be well to advertise for Information as to the size of a “reasonable profit” which the protected manufacturers are to have guaranteed them? Our consuls might get light on this too.