Jasper County Democrat, Volume 12, Number 12, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 May 1909 — MAKE HIDES FREE [ARTICLE]

MAKE HIDES FREE

The Story of the Duty and What It Means POWER OF THE BEEF TRUST The Few Chiefs of the Beef Trust Making a Strong Fight Against the Welfare of the Shoe and Leather Industries, the Cattle Raisers and the People Who Use Leather. No civilized country on the face of the earth breeds enough cattle to furnish sufficient leather for domestic use. In this respect the United States is not different from England or Germany or France. We do not raise half enough leather for our shoes and belting and dress suit cases, for our harness and upholstering and a world of other things.

Industry Grow* With Free Hide*. This leather is called neat leather. It is the thick hide from the backs of beeves and is a byproduct of the slaughtering business. Hides have always been on the free list In our tariffs except during the civil war and up to 1872, because it is by all means best to have enough raw material to give employment to our citizens as shoemakers and harness makers and beltmakers and saddlers. All along all sorts of hides were on the free list. Nobody ever wanted them off; no statesman ever wanted them off; no farmer or tanner ever wanted them off. Of course it is most advisable to give employment to as many workers as possible by bringing in as easily ami cheaply as possible as much raw product ns is needed to enable the workers to be put to work mid provide for their families, We have greatly increased the wealth of the country by putting superior American brains and skilled American' fingers to manufacturing all types of leather goods not only for home use, but for consumption. abroad. The Duty Cripples Shoemaking, It was because hides were on the free list all along that the making of American shoes has kept so many thousands at work and made the support of hundreds of communities, If hides had been oh the tariff list the increased cost of the raw material would have more than counteracted the-effi-ciency of American labor, and foreign countries (none of which has a tax on hides) would have secured the stronghold in shoemaking that has been ours for years, a stronghold so great tliat we have been able to become the shoemakers of the world, fearing no competition anywhere. The Beef Trust Gets the Duty.

But this result was'obtained before 1897. when the Bingley tariff was passed. The Dingley tariff did not have hides on the schedule when it left the house of representatives. Dingley never put them in the schedule. The farmers did not ask to have them put there. The shoemakers did not ask it. The tauuers did not ask it. But. at the last moment, quietly and without warning, somebody with sufficient power and pull managed to sneak in a 25 per cent duty on neat hides just before the senate passed the bill. Through the best opposition that could be made at short notice this was cut down to 15 per cent. it Has Cost the People Millions. Thus the beef trust, for which the trick was done, by influencing certain senators, imposed a great burden on the American people. This 15 per cent duty has added only about $2,000,000 a year to the revenues of the i government, but It has cost the people untold millions. It has cut off thousands of men from employment, because. through the duty on sole leather, the American shoemakers could only | finish the uppers of millions of dollars' i worth of shoes which they have been ' forced to send abroad, where they . could put soles on them much cheaper than we could. It Wipes Out the Tanneries. Through this duty on hides, put on by senators to add to the profits of the beef trust, we have all had to pay more for our shoes and everything else made of neat leather. The farmer has had to pay more for his harness, the ranchman more for his saddles, the manufacturer more for bis belting, and every one more for trunks, satchels and furniture. We are handicapped in getting leather from outside. The control of the leather supply at home is entirely in the hands of the beef trust. The tanneries have been greatly injured, and many have been forced to either go into bankruptcy or to sell their plants to the trust. Thus the trust has been getting into a position where it could not only dictate the price of raw bides, but also on the tanned leather as well, through its command of the leather finishing business.

Th* Payne Bill and the Trusts. Now, through the pressure of aroused public opinion, the Payne tariff bill, as reported to and passed by the house of representatives, makes hides free of duty. A determined httempt was made in the bouse on the day the bill was passed to impose a duty of 10 per cent on hides, but it was voted down. The beef trust, however, Is not yet beaten. Its greatest strength is in the senate, where the destructive duty on hides was put on in 1897. And it is to the senate that the Payne bill now goes. There the rich, powerful and unscrupulous beef trust will marshal its senatorial friends and use all its resources to get a duty of not less than 10 per cent In this struggle in the senate between the welfare of nearly 90,000,000 of people on one side and the eight or ten chiefs of the beef trust on the other side, victory for the people win be won only by the most active and persistent demands from the people. Letters from the pebple should pour in upon the senate in overwhelming numbers demanding free hides; The Trust Tries Humbug. The beef trust tries to hoodwink the farmers by stating that if the duty is removed from hides it will make the farmers and cattle raisers pay for it by giving them less for their cattle. The absurdity and humbuggery of this are becoming plain to the sellers of cattle. They know very well that if the beef trust thought that it could buy cattle, by hook or crook, for even I cent per head less than it is buying it for today, the present market price on stock would be down to that figure, hide duty or no hide duty. The beef trust, like every other trust, forces down the price of everything it buys in every possible way and takes for itself every advantage it can. The farmers and cattle raisers are vitally Interested In the healthy activity of the independent tanneries.