Jasper County Democrat, Volume 12, Number 11, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 May 1909 — FOR THE TRUSTS [ARTICLE]

FOR THE TRUSTS

|The Payne-Aldrich Tariff Bill a , Sham and a Fraud INO RELIEF FOR THE PEOPLE (The “Friends of the Tariff” Make ■ Bill For the Favored Few—Most of the ; Tariff Hogs Taken Care Of—The Reduction of Duties on Steel Trust Products Will Not Disturb the Protection of the Trust. The three parties most interested in the tariff are producers, consumers and the government. Producers may be divided into protected and unprotected interests.

The protected producers Include to day a comparatively small percentage of our manufacturers, the owners of mines and timber lands afid a very small percentage of farmers—mainly those raising sugar cane, sugar beets, barley and sheep. The unprotected producers include about 95 per cent (by value of products) of our farmers, about 85 per cent of our manufacturers and virtually all of our wage and salary workers, professional men. merchants and transporters. The consumers include every man, woman and child inside of our national borders. As usual, when tariff bills are being made, the consuming class, those who pay the tariff taxes and who therefore are most vitally interested, were not consulted by the framers,of the Payne bill. The two or three men who appeared before the ways and means committee in the Interest of the neglected and forgotten consumer were treated with ignominy and contempt. The committee had no time to waste on those who did not appear to represent special and selfish interests.

Raises Cost of Living. The Payne-Aldrich bill will raise rather than lower the cost of living. Under it the breakfast, dinner and supper tallies will be taxed even more heavily than they now are. Under It and partly because of it the cost of living (measured in gold dollars) will continue to rise in the next decade as rapidly as it has risen in the one just ended. There are many ‘'jokers" in the PayneAJdrleh bill. Nearly all have been put there for g purpose—to-ltisidiously raise tariff duties, it is reasonably certain that if the Pay he- Aldrich bill in its present form becomes law not only will the percentage of goods (by value) imported free be diminished, but the average j-ate of duty on dutiable imports will be higher than it is at present. Consumers who asked for tariff " reduction. bread will lie given tariff enhanced stones—that is. “handed a lemon,” as we would now render it. Consumers should not, however, ex pect much from the tariff revision now, under way. It was not undertaken at their behest. . Their voice has never been heard at Washington since the civil war. It was undertaken because it was demanded by the unprotected or no longer protected manufacturers. Thus the boot and shoe makers, not being in a trust and therefore receiving little or no benefit from the duties on shoes, were beseeching congress for free hides, free leather and free coal. Manufacturers of implements, machinery and tools, who were benefited less than injured by duties on iron, steel, lumber and coal, were asking for reduced or no duties on these raw materials and supplies. Newspaper publishers were asking for free wood pulp and paper.

The Steel and Iron Cute. Most relief Is expected from reduced duties on Iron and steel. The country has heard much of the “50 per cent” cut in the duties on steel. It has seen the prices of some kinds of steel products cut SO or $8 a ton. Putting these two facts together, it imagines that we are in future to have cheap steel as a result of lower duties. There Is undoubtedly a connection between these two facts, but It is not where most people think it Is. Steel prices have been reduced for effect on Washington —that is. to prevent radical tariff reduction that might hurt and to save as much as possible of the present duties. In reducing prices so ostentatiously the United States Steel corporation would have the country believe that prices are reduced because of the proposed reductions in steel duties. It is also a part of the gams that the “independent” steel manufacturers are to make a loud outcry, to reduce wages and to claim that they will be ruined (f the proposed reductions are made.

If necessary, she steel corporation will reduce wages and perhaps pass its quarterly dividend at its meeting on the last Tuesday in April. All kinds of fits will be thrown to prevent drastic cuts in steel duties. That the proposed cuts are not drastic, except possibly the 50 per cent cut in the duties on steel rails (from $7.84 to $3.92 a ton), is certain. In fact, the most of the reductions take away only a part of the superfluous duties and will leave even more tariff protection than is now needed or used. Thus the duty on tin plate is reduced from 1% to 1 1-5 cents per pound. As foreign and domestic prices seldom differ by more than a cent a pound, the proposed rate would be just as protective as is the present duty. Similarly the proposed duties on wire, nails, bar Iron, steel beams, billets and cotton ♦tes would ns effectively protect the manufacturers in ordinary years as do the present duties. Steel Stock Going Up. Within two months of the enactment of the new tariff bill it is reasonably certain that the big and little steel manufacturers will be advancing prices working as harmoniously together as they have been doing for several years. This year the great steel corporation will probably earn 10 and next year 20 per cent on its common stock, which will almost certainly sell above 70 this year and 80 next year. The proposed tariff bill is avowedly made by “the friends of the tariff”— that is, by the favored few who have grown inordinately rich through their tariff license to tax our millions of hoodwinked consumers. The proposed modifications In our present tariff are made mainly in the interest of the little tariff hogs who have been crowded out of the protection through the big ones. The steel, sugar, lumber, leather, paper and other big trusts are getting an unfair share of the protection pap. The little trusts and others of the special Interests, who were formerly nourished at the tariff trough, do not ask the big hogs to get out of the trough; they only ask them to move over and to permit the trough to be patterned differently, so that the little hogs can again get their snouts into the rich, juicy food BYRON W. HOLT, In Moody’s Magazine.