Jasper County Democrat, Volume 15, Number 4, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 April 1912 — WILL GUARD “CITADEL” [ARTICLE]

WILL GUARD “CITADEL”

REPUBLICAN BLUFF AT REDUCING TARIFF IS AMUSING. People Indulge in False Hopes If They Imagine the Wool' Manufacturers Are in Any Danger of 1 That Sort. Because the Republican members of the house; ways and means committee have introduced a bill which purports to reduce the tariff on wool and woolens, we are not necessarily to assume that the leopard has changed his spots.”'' The wool schedule has been denounced by President Taft on several occasions as absolutely indefensible. It is absolutely indefensible because its authors pretended to revise its tax rates downward, but in fact marked them tip; because it taxes coarse and cheap goods much higher thgm fine and costly goods, and because it was notoriously written by agents of the wool growers of the west acting in collusion with the wool manufacturers of the east. When this infamy w as under way in 15*00 Nelson W. Aldrich warned the standpatters of the senate that “the w ool' schedule is the very citadel of the protective system and to reduce that schedule is to destroy the whole system.” The wool schedule is the citadel *of , the protective syst em because in .hat measure are centered and combined the selfish interests of agricultural st2*es and the selfish interests or manufacturing states. It bribes the farmer to connive with the mill owner. The reason why the protective system would be destroyed if this schedule were to be substantially rrdueed is found in the fact that any truly remedial legislation would be certain to cut off the plunder of the big shepherds of the west and in that case turn the farmers against the tariff generally. For many years it has been the votes of farmers rather than the votes of so-called protected labor that have perpetuated cur tariffs of extortion. These things being true, let no one take it for granted that there has been any change of heart on the part of the Republican members of the ways and means committee. It is against reason to suppose that any Republican tariff bill contemplates a reductionjof taxation, no matter what its authors may say. It is flying in the.face of all the probabilities to assume that a Republican tariff bill presented in a presidential year is intended to cut off one cent of plunder from the. most unconscionable conspiracy in restraint of trade that ever has existed. It is the extreme of ignorance arid gullibility to accept in good faith, a pretense that is belied by the records!cf forty years,—St, Louis Republic.