Jasper County Democrat, Volume 11, Number 41, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 October 1908 — TARIFF SUPPORTS THE TRUST [ARTICLE]

TARIFF SUPPORTS THE TRUST

Cleveland’a Secretary of the Interior Speaks on Paramount Issue, i It is useless for representatives of the Republican party to declare hostility to trusts while they maintain the protective tariff. The protective tariff which they made and which they support makes and supports the trust. The trusts, with their tariff protected monopoly, control the raw materials and therefore hold at their mercy the manufacturers as well as consumers. Individual enterprise Is artificially checked, and the reasonable chances of the average man are deatßiyed.___._ ______ _ For a long time an effort has been made to deceive the laborer with the claim that a protective tariff was intended to protect his wages against foreign pauper labor. With the combination of protected industries destroying competition among employers, with no restriction against pauper labor coming to take the laborer's job, with inflated stock and bond issues absorbing the profits from Increased prices brought about by the tariff, this argument has failed. At last the Republican party pathetically admits that the high tariff is to give profits to those who hold the watered Stocks of the tariff protected trusts. The Democratic party not only represents the financial Interest of the people on this question, but it represents the moral side. It is morally wrong to permit one class to tax another class. It is morally wrong for a few to destroy domestic competition by the aid of laws which cut off foreign competition and then to charge excessive prices for commodities so necessary to commerce, to industrial pursuits and even to daily living. The law may make it legal. It cannot make it right.—Governor Hoke Smith of Georgia in Letter to New York World.