Jasper County Democrat, Volume 13, Number 19, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 June 1910 — COST Of PRODUCTION [ARTICLE]

COST Of PRODUCTION

Deceptive Plank In Indiana Republican Platform THE VOTERS HOODWINKED Plausible Declaration Conceals a Mischievous Fallacy—False Theory of Economy Exposed —The Right Principle Made Clear. “We believe*in a protective tariff measured by the difference between the cost ’ of production here and abroad," These words are taken from the Indiana Republican platform adopted a couple <>f weeks ago. The Republican national platform of 19<>4 said. • The measure of protection should alw tys at least equal the difference m the cost of production at home and abroad." And the platform of 1908 affirmed substantially the same thing. It said, "The true principle of protection is best maintained by the imposition of such duties as Will equal the difference between the cost of production at home and abroad.” Now, all these declarations of principle look very plausible, but they conceal a mischievous fallacy all the same.

They contradict the elementary fact that foreign nations can make some things cheaper than we can and that we cannot afford to spend our time in making for ourselves such goods as we can get more cheaply from those nations. You would not think it economy for a merchant earning ssbu a_,week to be doing washing which he can get the Chinaman to do for a dollar a week, would you? And yet many sane people think it economy for high grade American labor to be employed on ■ jobs that are uuv.ortLy of it and are only til for the foreign "pauper,” to give him his classical title. 4 The right principle is to keep American labor employed in lines of .production where it will reap the largest product and to buy everything else that we need from the foreigner, paying him back with the goods that we produce. That is true economy and common sense. - The other principle, the one we are adopting now. is to keep producing everything—the thing we are fit to produce and the thing we are not fit to produce—and then to charge the resulting deficiency, to the acebunt of the poor American consumer. How ever, we are tit to produce a great many things more cheaply than the foreigner. To look at the tariff schedules it would seem that we can produce next to nothing. We have

plenty of coal, plenty of iron, plenty of technical skill and intelligence and plenty of land and of everything that a nation can expect. Ought .we not. then, to be able to undersell the foreigner with his obsolete ways and his imp**'••rishvd territory? We ought. *ant‘• . Thero is do need for a tariff •••,. fjr-as protection to labor is i co..r ....... hut there is a need for a tariff l<> protect monopoly. That is it does. “The difference between the cost of production at borne and abroad!” Before the tariff was made did its framers ascertain what that difference was? They did not. They rejected the idea as absurd. They went ahead and put up the schedules to suit the appetites of the tariff gluttons and not : the interests of the consumers. When Senator Owen of Oklahoma asked Senator Aldrich why the difference in cost of production had not been compiled as a basis for'framing the tariff Aldrich’s answer was that "be would have a clerk compile for him a list of publications relating to the tariff, but would be unable to furnish him with the intelligence to digest them!” That is how the tariff framers met the honest demand of those who wanted the party pledge to be literally kept. The machine politicians bad no intend tlon to keep this pledge when they made it. And t hey had the best of all reasons for their action. A true investigation of the relative cost of production would have shown t|jat tbe tariff was not necessary, and they did not want this damning fact to be brought out. Thus have the voters been deceived, and thus they may be deceived again if they are- not watchful. ' , THOMAS SCANLON.