Jasper County Democrat, Volume 12, Number 18, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 June 1909 — AN ALDRICH ADVANCE [ARTICLE]

AN ALDRICH ADVANCE

Denunciation of Aldrich’s Attempt to Put a Duty on Hides—The Beef Trust Not an "Infant Industry" Hides Were on the Free List For Many Years Before the Dingley Bill. The restoration of the duty on hides in the Aldrich bill after it had been stricken out in the Payne bill as it passed the House of Representatives is one of the many outrageous advances which Senator Aldrich proposes* to have enacted by the Senate and insisted on in the Conference Committee, notwithstanding the overwhelming public demand for a genuine and honest revision of the tariff downward, and notwithstanding the universal protest of the independent tanners and of the manufacturers of shoes and other articles of leather. A big mass meeting of manufacturers in the leather industries was held in Chicago in the latter part of April and in speeches and ringing resolutions reported in the Chicago Tribune, one of the leading Republican newspapers of the country, declared that they were fighting for their business lives against the meat packers, commonly known as the Beef Trust. These shoe, harness, trunk and leather manufacturers declared that the meat packers were gaining coutrol of the leather business of the country, and they called upon the finance committee of the United States Senate to agree with the action of the House of Representatives in striking out the duty of 15 per cent on hides of cattle, so that their industries might have a chance to live. Their resolutions, sent to President Taft and to the members of the Senate, called attention to the fact that, prior to the enactment of the present L>lngley tariff, hides had been on the free list for twenty-five years and that, reviewing all of the tariff legislation prior to 1807, hides had been ou the free list for seventy-eight years and only subjected to a tax during about thirty years for purely revenue purposes. The resolutions also show that the duty in the Aldrich bill is solely for “protection" to the Beef Trust, which is certainly not an “infant industry” or in need of favors from Congress.