Jasper County Democrat, Volume 11, Number 43, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 31 October 1908 — IGNORANCE OR WORSE. [ARTICLE]

IGNORANCE OR WORSE.

How Mr. Taft’s Tariff Speeches Affect Friendly Newspapers. Journals which pay some attention to common truthfulness and economic sense and which desire Mr. Taft’s election are alarmed by his recent statements In the west concerning the tariff. Thus the New York Times under the heading, “The Facts Versus Mr. Taft,” takes up his charge that Mr. Bryan was responsible for those features of the Gorman-Wilson tariff blfl of 1894 which led Mr. Cleveland to denounce it as “a piece of perfidy.” As the Times points put, It is well known that President Cleveland denounced only the corrupt protective features which were added to the bill in the senate by Gorman and his allies, representing the sugar trust and other trusts, and to which Mr. Bryan and other Democrats in the lower house were bitterly opposed. The Times next takes up Mr. Taft’s claim that the tariff of 1894 sent down the prices of farm products aud was responsible for the business depression of 1893 and following years, proving Mr. Taft’s price figures to be much too low by comparisou with the statistical abstract issued by the government and showing that if the tariff sent corn and oats down it Just as surely sent wheat up during the three years tn which it was in force. The truth is that neither the changes in the prices of grain nor’the general depression In business is now attributed to the Wilson tariff by any one who regards the undisputed facts. As a cause for the depression of 1893 and the low prices of that period as compared with later prices Mr. Taft can see nothing but ibe tariff, taking no account of the financial causes of the panic, the uncertainty in regard to the standard of value brought about by both parties and the extremely low general level of prices caused by the scarcity in the world’s supply of gold. In explaining the higher prices of recent years Mr. Taft attaches no significance to the crop conditions of foreign countries aud their demands upon our farm products, nor has he apparently heard of the great depreciation of gold, the general rise of prices caused by the increase in the world’s gold production from $157,000,000 in 1893 to $400,000,000 In 1906. The Wilson bill, after being Germanized in the senate, lowered very slightly the rates of the McKinley tariff, only an average of 3 per cent according to one estimate. As farm products are exported in large quantities, their prices being fixed in the open markets of the world, it Is absurd to contend that changes in our tariff were the cause of the depression during the i>erlod following 1893, especially In view of the existence of well known and adequate causes. The New York Evening Post, also supporting Mr. Taft, says that the panic of 1893 “was distinctly foreshadowed by causes having not the remotest relation to the tariff.” The Post adds that, Judging from letters received and general comment, “something like two or three thousand hesitating voters must be turned from Mr. Taft every time he expounds anew his peculiar doctrine.”